Looking for a job becomes a very different experience once you're doing it every day. At first, I was quite selective: I'd open LinkedIn, find a few interesting roles, read about the companies and apply. After a while, I was checking several job boards, getting alerts throughout the day, talking to recruiters and trying to remember which version of my resume I'd sent where.

I also learned pretty quickly that simply applying to more jobs wasn't making the process easier. LinkedIn Easy Apply is convenient enough that you can send ten applications without really noticing, but a few weeks later I often couldn't remember half of those companies. Some applications disappeared into company career sites, others sat on LinkedIn with no response, and occasionally a recruiter would come back weeks later about a role I barely remembered.

After doing this for a while, I ended up with a few habits and tools that made job searching much more manageable. None of them magically gets you an offer, and some of them are slightly uncomfortable at first, but together they helped me spend less time refreshing LinkedIn and more time on applications that actually had a chance of going somewhere.

1. I stopped relying only on LinkedIn

LinkedIn was still the site I checked most often, but I stopped treating it as the complete job market. The same popular vacancies can collect hundreds of applications very quickly, and Easy Apply makes it particularly easy to apply without spending much time thinking about whether the role is actually a good fit.

I started checking other large job boards such as Indeed, Glassdoor and Wellfound, but local websites turned out to be useful too. If you're looking for work in a particular country or city, it's worth finding out where local companies actually post jobs. Smaller businesses and local startups don't necessarily publish every vacancy on all the big international platforms, so searching only LinkedIn can mean seeing the same pool of jobs again and again.

Company career pages are worth checking as well. If there are 10–20 companies I'd genuinely like to work for, I'd rather look at their career pages regularly than hope LinkedIn happens to show me the right opening at the right time.

2. I set up job alerts instead of searching for the same thing all day

For a while, I was repeatedly running almost identical searches: Product Designer, Senior Product Designer, Barcelona, remote Europe, and a few variations of those. I'd check in the morning, get distracted by it again after lunch and somehow end up looking at LinkedIn before bed too.

Alerts and job-search bots made this much less repetitive. I set up searches around the roles and locations I cared about and let the vacancies come to me instead. Depending on where you're searching, this can be a built-in alert from a job board, an email notification or a Telegram/Slack bot that monitors new vacancies.

Getting a vacancy soon after it's published is useful for another reason: you don't always arrive after hundreds of other applicants. I still check job boards manually when I feel like browsing, but I no longer need to repeat the same searches several times a day just because I'm worried I'll miss something.

3. I started asking people for referrals

This was probably the least comfortable habit to build. Writing to someone you haven't spoken to in a while and asking about a referral can feel transactional, especially if you're used to thinking that you should only contact people when you already have a close relationship.

I became much more comfortable with it once I stopped treating every message as “please get me a job.” If I know someone at a company I'm interested in, I can ask what it's actually like to work there, whether they know anything about the team or whether they would feel comfortable referring me for a specific role. Sometimes the answer is no, sometimes they don't reply, and that's completely fine.

I also started telling friends that I was looking instead of keeping the search to myself. People can't send you an interesting vacancy or introduce you to someone if they don't know you're open to opportunities. A friend saying “I think someone I used to work with is hiring designers” can be more useful than another evening spent scrolling through hundreds of listings.

4. I started tracking every application

Once I was applying through LinkedIn, company websites and different job boards, keeping everything in my head stopped working. I'd open a vacancy and realize LinkedIn said I'd already applied, or receive a recruiter email and have to search for the original job description before I could remember the role.

A spreadsheet was my first attempt at keeping track of job applications. I recorded the company, role, vacancy link, date, status and a few notes. It worked well until I started applying more actively, because manually copying information after every application was exactly the kind of small task I kept telling myself I'd do later.

I eventually switched to AB Job for this. I keep vacancies in one place and move them through a simple pipeline:

Saved → Applied → Interview → Offer / Rejected

What I like about having a job application tracker isn't just being able to remember where I've applied. After enough applications, I can see whether they're actually turning into interviews. If I've sent 50 applications and received two replies, I probably need to look at my CV, portfolio or the roles I'm targeting. If I'm getting plenty of first interviews but rarely moving forward, sending another 50 applications probably isn't going to solve the problem.

I also keep notes after interviews in the same place. When several companies are interviewing you at once, it's surprisingly easy to forget which recruiter mentioned the salary range or which hiring manager told you about an upcoming project. A few notes immediately after the call make preparing for the next interview much easier.

5. I made a boring resume in DOCX

As a designer, this one hurt a little. I like a nicely designed resume, and for a long time I assumed that making mine visually distinctive could only help. Eventually I separated the resume I use for applications from the more visual materials I use to present my work.

My application resume is now deliberately simple. It's a DOCX with a straightforward structure, normal headings and text that can be easily parsed and copied. I avoid complicated layouts, decorative elements and anything that makes the document harder for an ATS or recruiter to scan.

That doesn't mean I stopped caring about presentation. My portfolio is still where I can show visual thinking, case studies and personality. I just stopped asking one document to do two different jobs: the resume needs to communicate my experience quickly and survive whatever application system I upload it to, while the portfolio can do the visual storytelling.

6. I stopped rewriting everything for every vacancy

At one point I was spending far too much time customizing applications. I'd find an interesting role, start rewriting large parts of my resume, adjust descriptions, think about a cover letter and eventually realize I'd spent an hour on an application before even knowing whether anyone would read it.

I still adapt my resume when the role genuinely requires it, but I don't start from scratch anymore. I keep a strong base version and change the parts that actually matter: the summary if necessary, the order or emphasis of relevant experience, and keywords when the company describes something I already do using different terminology.

The same goes for cover letters. If a company doesn't ask for one and I don't have anything meaningful to add, I don't automatically write a generic letter explaining how excited I am about the opportunity. I'd rather spend that time researching a role I really want, contacting someone at the company or preparing a stronger application elsewhere.

7. I started looking at the job search as a funnel

Tracking applications changed the way I thought about the whole process. Before that, a bad week mostly felt like “nobody is replying,” and my instinct was to apply to more jobs. Once I could see the numbers, it became easier to separate different problems.

Applications, interviews and offers are different stages:

Applications → First interviews → Next rounds → Offers

If very few applications become interviews, I look at the roles I'm choosing and how I'm presenting myself on paper. If I'm getting interviews but consistently dropping out after the first call, I pay more attention to interview preparation. If I'm reaching final rounds, I probably don't need to completely rebuild my resume just because one company chose someone else.

I don't think you need to obsess over conversion rates or turn job searching into an analytics project. I just found it reassuring to have something more concrete than the feeling that I had applied “a lot.” It helped me decide where to put my effort instead of changing my resume, portfolio, LinkedIn and application strategy all at once.