Most job search plans die in week three. Week one is energy. Week two is the first silence. Week three is the week nobody writes a plan for, and it is the week the plan has to carry you. This one has six parts: a target, a master resume, three channels, a weekly count, a tracker, and a Friday review. The Friday review is the part that survives.
Key points
- Decide the target before you open a job site. A title, a level, a place, a floor on pay.
- Three channels, not ten. The employer's own listings, people you know, and one board you check daily.
- A weekly count you can keep on a bad week. Ten tailored applications beats forty untailored ones.
- A tracker from day one, so week three has numbers instead of feelings.
- Review on Friday. Change one thing at a time.
Decide the target first
A search without a target is a search that reads every posting and applies to none. Write four lines before you open a browser.
| Line | What goes in it | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Title | The two or three titles the role goes by | Product designer, UX designer |
| Level | Where you sit, in their words | Senior, or five to eight years |
| Place | Where you can work, including remote | Lisbon, or remote in the EU |
| Floor | The number under which you stop reading | 60,000 |
The floor is the one people skip. Without it, you spend an hour on a posting that pays half of what you earn. Our wages page shows what a title pays by place, so the floor comes from data and not from hope.
Build the master resume before the first application
The first application is where most people write their resume, under pressure, for one posting. Then every application after it starts from that one.
Build the master first. Every role, every project, every true bullet, two or three pages. Nobody sees it. Each application is a cut from it, which takes fifteen minutes and not an evening. The guide on tailoring has the method.
A resume written for one posting is a tailored resume with no master behind it. The second posting gets a worse one.
Pick three channels
Every job site tells you that it is the one. Three channels cover the market, and a fourth adds noise.
- The employers' own listings. Every company posts to its own hiring system first. Aggregators copy it later, with a delay and with duplicates. The board on this site pulls from those systems and nothing else, so a posting here is one the employer wrote, refreshed twice a day.
- People you know. Not a network. Six people who know your work. Each one gets a short message with the four lines of your target. They do not need to have a job for you. They need to know you are looking.
- One board you check daily. One. Set an alert for each title in your target. Read the results once a day at the same time. The guide on alerts says how to set them so the results are jobs and not spam.
LinkedIn is a channel for the second item, not the first. Its listings are copies, and its Easy Apply button sends a resume into a pile the employer rarely reads first.
Set a weekly count you can keep
The number is applications sent in a week, and it has to be one you can hit on a bad week. For most people with a job, that is five. For most people without one, that is ten. Past fifteen, the tailoring stops and the reply rate falls with it.
The count is not the goal. It is the floor. A week with twelve good applications is a good week. A week with forty untailored ones is a week that produces forty rows of silence and one decision to give up.
Track every application from the first one
Open the tracker before you send the first application, not after the tenth. One row per application, with the date, the stage and a next action. The four numbers it gives you, sent, replies, interviews and offers, are what the Friday review reads. The guide on the tracker has the columns.
A tracker is not admin. It is the only honest record of what you did.
Review on Friday and change one thing
Every Friday, read the four numbers. Not every day. Then ask one question: which ratio is low?
- Thirty sent and under three replies: the resume or the target is wrong. Change one of them.
- Replies but no interviews: the screening call is failing. Rehearse it.
- Interviews but no offers: the interview is failing. Practise the question that keeps coming up.
Change one thing. If you change the resume and the target in the same week, the next Friday cannot tell you which one worked.
What week three looks like with the plan
Week one, you send ten. Week two, you send ten and hear nothing. Week three, you send ten and get two replies from week one.
Without the plan, week three is the week you rewrite the resume at midnight, apply to twenty postings that do not fit, and stop tracking because the tracker is depressing. With the plan, week three is a Friday review that says thirty sent, two replies, both from one kind of role. That is a finding. You apply to more of that kind.
Questions
How long does a search take?
Longer than the first week suggests and shorter than the third week feels. Our employment page has the current figures for how long people stay unemployed, by age and by industry. Plan for the median, not for the story your friend told you.
Do I apply to jobs I am not fully qualified for?
Yes, when you meet most of the must-haves. A posting lists what the manager would like. The hire meets about two thirds of it. Do not apply to a posting where the missing third is the job itself.
What if I need a job this month?
Shorten the loop. The weekly count goes up, the target gets wider, and the follow-up goes out at seven days instead of ten. Keep the tracker. Speed without the count is panic.
Do I need a cover letter?
When the posting asks for one, yes. When it does not, a short one does no harm and sometimes gets read. Tailor on this site writes one with every tailored resume.
Is it fine to take a break?
A planned one, yes. Write it in the tracker as a week with zero sent, so the next Friday does not read it as a collapse.