THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO JOB HUNTING: Apply to 15 jobs per hour, use a multi-resume strategy, and win at LinkedIn

20 min readFeb 14, 2017

Getting a job you’re satisfied and fulfilled with is probably one of the most important decisions you should get right in life. A good job can change your world, a great job can change your life.

As it so happens, finding a great job is one of the hardest things to accomplish. Besides having the right experience, skillset, character, and personality, you need one thing above all else: resilience.

Those who have been through this awful process know how easily it will break you down and how it will make you feel inadequate and purposeless.

Tons of very smart, very capable people have tried to crack the broken employment system. From LinkedIn, to Monster, to Glassdoor, to Career Sushi, there are a ton of platforms that attempt to solve this problem, but unfortunately none of them do.

So since it doesn’t look like the system will be fixed anytime soon, I decided I needed to make the best of it. In the past it had taken me roughly 4–7 months to be hired for a job. From application to interview, the process was annoying, grueling, and overall stupid. This is bound to happen when you try to condense your entire being into a one page resume and a 3 paragraph cover letter, then wait for people who are already busy with their real jobs, to a) find your application b) read your application c) decode your application and d) decide if you’re worthwhile to have a phone call with.

That being said, if we can’t fix it, we need to work with it. So after earning over 14 jobs, going through 36+ interviews, and many months of struggle, here’s the bullet-proof system I’ve created to make this process as pain free as possible.

In this blog post I’ll take you through the entire process. From finding the right jobs, building multi-resumes, crafting a stand-out cover letter, fixing your broken LinkedIn, and even picking the right job app platforms. We’ll go over how to streamline the job application process so we can apply effectively with maximum speed and minimum stress.

If you’d like to see these lessons in action or download any of these templates, check out the full e-course this post is based on here.

STEP 1- Decide what job you want

This seems obvious, but a lot of people go about this all wrong. They decide what they are (i.e. a programmer, a writer, a lab tech) and then start building their resume without even looking at what jobs they will be applying for. Then they try to fit the job description to their pre-made resume.

The most effective way to start building your resume is to first search for jobs. When I was looking for content marketing jobs I had a very vague idea of what that position was anymore. That’s because job requirements are always changing and, if you’ve been out of the job market for a while, chances are you have an outdated understanding of what’s now required. So the first thing is to look up your given subject and see what’s out there and what’s in demand.

Here’s what my search looked like:

Here’s how to decipher what you see:

Job Description: This is mostly a useless section. Most companies use this section of a job posting to hype themselves, hype the position, and write generic things about “culture fit.” I don’t even read section this anymore.
Responsibilities: This is the most important section to look at. This is really what you’ll be doing on the job. You want to be able to do at least 70% of the things listed on here. If there are some things you can’t do or haven’t done, that’s okay, that’s called “room for growth.” We’ll also be using this section to create an amazing set of resumes and cover letters later on.
Requirements: This section is just a filter and should be used as one. Employers like to exaggerate these qualifications because they think it will get them better candidates. I use these requirements very loosely. If it says “minimum 8 years experience…” and I only have 3 years experience then it’s probably not a good fit and they want someone more senior level. If it says “minimum 4 years experience…” and I only have 3 years, then I’ll apply anyway. Use this as a very rough filter of what they want.

Step 2- The Multi-Resume

During my job search I noticed that a lot of companies had similar job requirements with slight variations that emphasized one skill-set over another. Rather than struggling to create a master resume that could address every single job I found, I discovered that it’s a lot easier to create 3 or 4 resumes that I could choose from depending on the emphasis.

There were 3 main points of emphasis for a content marketer:

Writing/Blogging
Social Media Management
Content Producer/Video Producer

Click to get my free course plus a few special tips not covered here^

I have experience in all three of these fields, but if I try to put them all into one resume it looks very scattered and unfocused. Here’s a better way to create a stand-out resume:

Use Google Docs’ Resume feature to start with a clean modern template
Choose the first type of job you’ll be applying to (i.e. Content Writer)
Use the “Responsibilities” section of the job posting to format your experience into 4 bullet points per position, limit this to 3 positions max even if you have more experience. Keep it focused!
Use the “Requirements” section of the job posting to fill in keywords for your Skills section. This helps automatic bots (link) that scan your resume see you as a worthwhile applicant.
Use the “Responsibilities” section of the job posting to find the right keywords to describe your Project Highlights section

Note: Only fill out information that stands out among other applicants. Things like “proficient in microsoft word” make it seem like you’re stretching to fill in skills and actually devalues you.

It took me roughly 4 hours to create my first resume. Don’t overthink it, a 100% amazing resume won’t give you better results than an 75% amazing resume. Trust me, I’ve wasted weeks building a “perfect” resume and got less results than just putting something together quickly.

According to Time magazine, a recruiter spends an average of 6 seconds on a resume. Now that statistic might be exaggerated, but it definitely means they’re spending seconds, not minutes, when it comes to reviewing your resume.

That’s why the two most important things about your resume should be that it’s focused and that it’s scanable. The job poster isn’t going to read your resume, they’re going to scan it. They’re only going to be looking for relevant job titles and some impressive stats.

After I made my first resume, I made a copy of it and repeated steps 3, 4 and 5 to quickly fill out my other 3 resumes. Here’s how my Producer resume compares to my Writer resume:

Notice that there’s very little difference between the two, but the Job Titles, Skills, and Projects have been modified to better reflect the language that the hiring manager will be looking for. We’re not really modifying our experience here so much as modifying how we’re presenting it.

Step 3- Create a cover letter that matters

I’ve been on both sides of the hiring process and I can tell you that although the cover letter isn’t crucial, it does matter. I treat the cover letter as my opportunity to begin a conversation with the person who I’m looking to work with.

This is an opportunity and a pitfall for many applicants. If you get the cover letter right, you will be called in for an interview. If you get the cover letter wrong, you will be disqualified before even speaking to someone.

First, here’s what NOT to do:

DO NOT use this kind of template! I cannot tell you how many of these cover letters I received when I was hiring editors, designers, and writers for our agency. It screams generic and adds absolutely no value to your job application.

This type of cover letter has more language than substance (language>substance). In other words, it uses lots of words and says almost nothing. Let’s look at a few sentences for instance:

“I welcome the opportunity to speak with you about this position and how my experience could help your company achieve its goals.”

You welcome the opportunity? That’s like saying, “I welcome you to give me a beer.” It sounds obnoxious or at best unpassionate. And what experience are you talking about? What goals will you help me achieve? Generic.

I’m writing in response to your recently advertised position.

Duh. The only thing this demonstrates is that you don’t care about wasting their time.

My experience could help your company achieve its goals?

What experience? Which goals? How can it help? This is the equivalent of saying, “I think this beer has water in it.” Okay maybe not the best metaphor but you get the idea.

When writing a solid cover letter you want it to show three things:

you know the company
you have skills
you have personality

When I was applying for jobs I tested over 54 different cover letter variations. I kept all other variables the same because I knew if I didn’t make a solid cover letter I was just throwing applications into the wind and hoping someone would catch one. Here is the format that now gets me a 40% reply rate:

Click to get my cover letter template plus videos showing you how to fill it out^

All jobs have different levels of formality and while the exact language might differ from job to job the principle remains the same: say more with fewer words (substance>language). There is a human being who is reading your cover letter and they’re not doing it for fun, so get to the point.

Let’s break it down:

Hey (Name): use Hey for less formality. Use a name if you can. If there’s no name on the job posting you can write, “Hey Zenefits team,”
I’m a huge fan of: this doesn’t need to be specific it’s just a great friendly opener
Bullet points: bullet points are much easier to read and later allow you to customize your cover letter with ease from job to job

By using this cover letter I was not only able to get a higher reply rate, but I was also able to customize my cover letters for every job posting in minutes. Speed is the name of the game here.

To fill out the bullet points I used the “Responsibilities” section of the job posting. To fill in the first 3 bullet points I find the 3 most important qualities it seems they want and address them with specific areas from my experience. Again be specific, so instead of saying, “I have 3 years of writing experience.” Say something like, “I’ve written over 57 articles for B2B companies.”

The final bullet point is very important. This is a place to stand out from the rest and really show a hint of your personality. Add something personal and professional. Instead of the example above, for a design job for instance you could write something like, “I’m an avid enthusiast of Stefan Sagmeister and constantly study his portfolio to improve the relevance of my typography, design language, and clarity.”

Step 4- The Archimedes Lever: LinkedIn

Steps 2 and 3 have been all about first impressions. First impressions get you in the door, but in order to win a job you need to have lasting substance, that’s where LinkedIn comes in.

This is a step that I largely neglected and was punished for time and time again. I would get interviews with companies but then after the initial phone screening they would never call me back. Part of this was because even though I thought I was great, I was actually terrible at interviewing.

But the other reason was because my LinkedIn didn’t reflect the promises I made in my resume and cover letter. There was a disparity between the two, and while you wouldn’t think that’s a big deal, it’s actually enough to disqualify you. This is simply because the hiring manager doesn’t want the hassle of unraveling your zig-zagging work history for you.

To fix this problem I turned to my good friend Tom Tran. After many months of suffering from the same blight of job seeking that I did, he sat down and dedicated weeks to learning about and mastering LinkedIn. As a result, his profile is now in “All-Star” status and he frequently gets unsolicited messages from recruiters who want to steal him from his current job. He’s living the dream, I know.

So here’s a cheat sheet that I learned on how to create an all-star LinkedIn profile.

Headline: If your headline is just your job title you’re missing a huge opportunity here. Use your headline as the elevator pitch of how you help companies become successful. For example: “Helping Businesses Drive Growth with Media Planning and Advertising Across Search, Display, Video, Content & Social” This boosts you in recruiter search results and shows you know your market.
About: This is the most important part of your profile. Write at least 4 solid paragraphs that detail your work experience and your character. Paragraph #1 should be a short summary that includes recruiter-friendly terms like, “builds strategic campaigns, engaging content, and connects with customers.” Paragraph #2 should lay out your work history in a concise story that shows forward progress and focus. Paragraph #3 should show how you work hard to take on additional responsibilities including special projects, non-profit work, etc. Paragraph #4 should finish off by saying what you’re currently doing.
Experience: Fill out all relevant positions you’ve had in the past. Keep this to the same bullet points format as the resume so that it’s easily scanable (adding company logos is a good way to do this). You’re essentially trying to arm the Hiring Manager with weapons he can fire at you during your interview. The beauty of this is that by giving them the weapons here you’ll know exactly how to counter-punch when they ask you about your experience.

Important: Do not add work experience like being a server, a dog walker, etc. These kinds of positions should be well in your past and not relevant anymore.

Education, Projects, Publications, Etc: This is where you put in all the extra stuff you’ve done. Even if you don’t think you have a ton of these, you should still fill this out as much as possible. A good way to fill this section out is by pulling projects & publications from within your work experience. Maybe you haven’t done these projects solo, but you’ve helped your company complete them and that should be reflected in your profile. For example, even though I was only an assistant on the Clinton Global Initiative and not a director, I still put it in my projects highlights to show that I’ve worked with important high-level leaders.

The name of the game with LinkedIn is length. The goal is not to have a Recruiter read your entire LinkedIn, after all if they only spend 6 seconds on your resume they probably won’t spend a ton of time on your LinkedIn. But you want to impress them with the amount of experience you’ve accumulated. It shows that there’s a lot of depth to you as a person, which makes them want to get to know you better a.k.a. interview you.

I can’t stress enough how important it is to have a solid LinkedIn profile. If you don’t put in the work upfront you’ll only be wasting your time down the road. It took me about 12 hours to get my LinkedIn to “All-Star” level, but it was well worth it. Now when I’m interviewing I can always look through my LinkedIn and pull examples and stories to share with Hiring Managers rather than trying to think of them on the spot.

Your LinkedIn is your cheat sheet

Step 5- Applying to 15 jobs per hour

Now that everything is prepped we need to put all these assets to work. To do so we need to identify the best job application platforms and then streamline the process to make it as stress-free as possible.

There are two approaches you can take here, each with it’s own benefits and drawbacks.

#1 The Sharpshooter approach

This is mostly for people who are looking for a long-term job with a company that they want to stay at for at least 3 to 4 years. This means you have a lot of experience already and are looking for a place where you can impact the world in profound ways. If this is you, then you want to look carefully at each job posting, examine the culture of the work environment, dig deep into their mission statement, and then apply with full force.

If you choose this route, then you should definitely make something custom to stand out among the other applicants. My dream job (or so I believe) is to work with CreativeLive. They’re a forward-thinking company that’s making huge changes in democratizing the education system, which is something I’m very passionate about. When I was applying to CreativeLive I spent 2 months planning and shooting this video, where I teach a mock lesson of why they should hire me. I brought together my friends and spent over $200 to produce this stand-out piece.

The result: I received a phone and in-person interview. BUT they felt that the position wasn’t a good fit for me and so they went with someone else. After stewing in my devastation for 6weeks, I realized that they were right. So while I was waiting for the right position to open up I decided to take approach number 2, and damn did it pay off.

#2 The Multi-Job Approach

This is the approach that I would recommend for 90% of the people reading this. Before we dive into the how let me explain the why.

As we’ve established, the entire job hunting process is broken. There are three main reasons for this:

There is a surplus of applicants right now so the chances that your application will be viewed is slim.
Hiring Managers are busy with their regular jobs. They only spend a few seconds looking at your application and don’t actually read it anymore.
A company’s timeline for hiring can be months long and there’s no way of knowing when they’ll get back to you.

I used to wait weeks or even months at a time for a company to get back to me about my application. This lengthy process doesn’t happen because the company doesn’t value you (as the gremlins in our heads like to tell us) it’s simply because they are busy.

According to Fast Company the problem is getting worse each year. On average it now takes a company 52 days to fill a job opening. And even after you get an interview it takes an additional 23 days to actually be selected for the job. For comparison here are the cities with the longest wait times from interview to hire as of 2016:

Washington, D.C.: An average of 34.4 days
Portland: An average of 25.3 days
Seattle: An average of 25.0 days
San Jose: An average of 24.8 days
San Francisco: An average of 23.7 days

With this in mind, the only way I’ve found to speed up the process is by applying to as many jobs as I can, as quickly as I can. In addition to expediting the job hunt, this approach also provides two huge benefits: it gives you leverage and it gives you practice. You don’t want to have your first interview, especially if you haven’t done this in years, to be with your dream company because you will most definitely suck. (Don’t believe me, here’s a video practice of my first attempt at interviewing)

Alright that’s the why…

Here’s the HOW:

Step #1: Find the Job Platform that best speaks to your career path. Here are my recommendations based on my experience:

LinkedIn: for speed and quality of jobs. According to Capterra last year over 89% of recruiters used LinkedIn to hire. On average a job posting on LinkedIn costs the company $500/month so they’re motivated to hire pretty quickly.
Angel List: for ease of use. Although it’s mostly startup jobs there are now larger companies on this platform. Plus you don’t have to worry about a coverletter or resume, you just send the company a 500-character note.
GlassDoor: for transparency. Glassdoor gives you a ton more information when applying for a job. You can see company reviews, salaries, and more.

These three have been the only platforms I’ve needed in my job hunting pursuit, but each field has it’s own best platforms. My only suggestion would be to stay away from Craigslist, Indeed, and Monster. Their search algorithms are pretty bad and you’ll waste a lot of time looking at jobs that aren’t tailored to your skillset. If you’re looking for an outside-the-box platform you can also try CareerSushi which I’ve had some success with, but setting up a profile is very involved.

Pick only one platform and stick to it for awhile

Once you’ve found the platform that has the best jobs for you, you want to master it. Each platform has it’s own way of listing jobs so by sticking with one platform you’ll get faster and faster at applying. Here’s how to setup your application arsenal using LinkedIn as an example.

What you’ll need:

3 Resumes
Cover Letter
Links to: your work, your LinkedIn

Here’s an example of what your desktop should look like:

This is all about eliminating the pain-points of the application process. Switching back and forth between your desktop and your online profiles may not seem like a big deal, but it eats up hours of your time in the long run! Even more importantly it interrupts the flow of your application process.

Next we need to choose which jobs to apply for. Here are some qualifiers:

LinkedIn Test: Use LinkedIn Premium to see if you’re in at least the top 50% of applicants. If you’re not, then don’t even bother
Resume Test: Apply only to jobs that fit within your 3 resumes. There are plenty of jobs out there so don’t go chasing jobs that you need to make even more resumes for.
Experience Test: Do NOT apply for jobs that are way above your experience level. If a job asks for 7+ years of experience and you only have 3, you may be able to get the interview only to be disqualified later in the process and have wasted a ton of time.

If a job doesn’t fulfill these requirements chances are it’s going to be a waste of time to apply for it. I think that a lot of us hope for that magical coincidence to happen where we apply to an out of the ordinary job and it ends up becoming our dream job, but 99% of the time that doesn’t happen. Sure you’ll hear stories about people who have gotten jobs in extraordinary ways, but that’s because those are the interesting stories worth telling.

“We don’t rise to the hopes of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.”

This job hunting game is a lot about momentum. Nothing kills your momentum more than sending out 20 unqualified applications and getting zero responses. So I suggest applying to jobs that you’re at least semi-qualified for. To do this I suggest using the Responsibilities tab of the job page to determine your qualification over any other section.

After spending a few weeks with LinkedIn I didn’t even read the job title, description, or requirements anymore, I knew how to qualify the job solely based on the Responsibilities tab. This is something I can’t recommend enough and it is how you too can get to applying to 15 jobs per hour.

So here’s a sum up of the process:

Search ideal job title
Read Responsibilities tab
(Optional) reference first line of Requirements tab to check eligibility
Attach PDF resume
Edit Cover Letter bullet points and details
Copy & Paste Cover Letter (this increases the chances it will be seen instead of attaching it as a PDF)
Send & Repeat

Note: An exception to the rule. A lot of people shy away from applications that take you off-platform to fill in a proprietary application. While you definitely don’t want to waste too much time on an application, I believe this is one of the best ways to stand out from other applicants.

No Hurry. No Pause.

You’re probably reading this article because a) you don’t have a job or b) you have a job that you don’t like. In either case, you might be feeling a sense of desperation and that’s perfectly okay. What’s not okay is to let desperation steer your path forward. The only thing that comes out of desperation is rushed work, rushed decisions, and few results.

It’s hard. I know because I’ve been there. I’ve gone through more than 19 jobs since I was 13 years old and while I’d love it if all those were jobs I wanted, the truth is that sometimes you need a job more than you want a job. The problem is that even though you might land a job by rushing through the job hunting process, 99% of the time it won’t end up being a satisfying job and you’ll be right where you are now in a year or two.

“How you do anything is how you do everything.”

As you apply the methods above it’s crucial that you keep track of your momentum. Job hunting is a depressing affair no matter how you do it. It will make you feel under valued, under appreciated, and worst of all, purposeless.

The only way I’ve found to keep those gremlins at bay is by recording my progress in great detail. I keep a notebook of progress so that I don’t forget how far I’ve come. If I get an email response to my application, I write it down. If I do an interview and it doesn’t go well, I write it down. If I get a phone call, I write it down.

Progress isn’t linear. You’ll have good weeks and bad weeks, good months and bad months. But when you get good and it finally clicks, you’ll see that you are valued, you are appreciated, and you do have a purpose.

Until then remember this: No Hurry. No Pause.