Just Wait for It

How a perfectly timed DM gets a job in a week.

👋 Hiya, job sneaker!

I grab my first cup of coffee, saunter into my office, and log on, fully expecting just another day of Slack messages and status meetings. Then my boss’s boss pings me: “Got time for a quick chat?”

Oh, fantastic. Nothing ominous about that at all.

Turns out, a bunch of folks have been laid off, including my immediate manager. But don’t worry, he says—my job is safe. Safe? Sure. But suddenly, this place feels different. And different isn’t always good.

So, like any rational person facing an existential career crisis, I take a casual peek at the ol’ job boards. Just to see what’s out there, you know? I apply to one. Then another. And another. Before I know it, I’m deep in the trenches of blind applications, convinced that with enough resumes launched into the void, the perfect job will magically materialize.

Days turn into weeks. Silence. Deafening, soul-crushing silence. Damn it, Steve, you fell for it again. You know better than to trust the job boards.

I'm not standing still; I am lying in wait. — Aaron Burr

But then, like finally seeing the all-clear message after a late-night production fire drill, a reply. Someone thinks I’m a good fit. They actually want to talk to me. Four rounds of interviews, five weeks of suspense, and then—that email. That dreaded “We love you, but not enough to hire you” email. Second place. They’d totally hire me... if only they had two jobs to give.

This one stings. I usually shake these things off, but my motivation is toast. I declare my job search officially dead. Unstar the job boards. Delete my secret “open to work” banner. Unfollow the recruiters. Done.

And then, in an act of career minimalism, I clean house on LinkedIn—narrowing my connections to just the strongest working relationships I’ve built. Ironically, that turns out to be the game-changer.

Soon after, I spot a post that would’ve been lost in the noise before:

And just like that, I slide into his DMs:

One intro later, I’m chatting with the hiring manager. Four rounds—this time, just one week—and boom: job offer in my inbox.

The door prize? Referrals change the game. Instead of blasting applications into the abyss, what if I had just waited for the right moment and made one strategic move? One DM, one week, one job. Lesson learned.

Yours in service,

✌️ Kirby