Not all AI tools are built the same for job searching. Here’s what I’ve found works best where: - Resume tailoring: Claude — its longer context window handles a full resume plus a job description without losing detail. - Fast company research: Perplexity — it cites sources and updates in real time, so you’re not working from stale training data. - Interview prep and mock Q&A: ChatGPT’s voice mode — practicing out loud beats typing every time. - Brainstorming a networking message: Gemini — especially if you’re already in Google Workspace and want it to pull from your docs. None of these is the “right” answer. Use what you have access to, but know the strengths so you’re not asking the wrong tool to do the wrong job. What’s your go-to and why? Curious what’s working for people right now.

Ending week one of the surge. If your win this week was “I actually opened my laptop and applied to something,” that counts. If it was a callback, that counts more. If it was catching yourself about to send a generic cover letter and stopping to actually customize it, that really counts. I’ll go first: my win this week was catching a JD that used the word “scrappy” four times and realizing that was a red flag before I wasted an interview slot finding out the hard way. Drop your win below, no win too small.

Every year the internet tells you September is when hiring “surges.” There’s some truth to it, hiring managers come back from summer with budget to spend. But here’s what nobody says out loud: September doesn’t get you hired. It just removes the excuse of “nobody’s hiring in summer.” During my 30 days of job hunting, the hardest week wasn’t the slow one. It was the week things picked up and I had to actually show up consistently instead of coasting on “the market is bad anyway.” So here’s my honest question for this month: What’s the excuse you’ve been using, and what changes if you drop it this week?

September Surge is here. Hiring picks back up after summer, and if you're going to run a faster search this month, stop starting every AI conversation from scratch. Here's a 10-minute setup that works in any tool: 1. Open a new Project (Claude), Custom GPT (ChatGPT), or Gem (Gemini). 2. Add Custom Instructions with: your target role, your top 3 transferable skills, your current location and remote preference, and your biggest search obstacle right now. (You can explain to the GPT in a separate chart what you want to do and have it write the custom instructions for you, then copy and paste). 3. Upload your resume as a reference file. 4. Every future conversation in that space now has your context loaded automatically. That's it. No more re-explaining who you are every single time you ask for help. This is the single biggest time-saver I found in my own search. Try it this week and drop a comment with which tool you used.

Surge month starts now. Before you get swept into application volume, spend 20 minutes doing this: 1. Open your AI tool of choice and ask it to help you list every role type you're realistically qualified for, not just your ideal title. 2. Pull your last 10 applications and ask it to spot patterns in what you've been applying to versus what's actually landing responses. 3. Pick your top 3 target companies for the month and set a research task for each. Twenty minutes now saves you from spraying applications for the next four weeks with no strategy behind it. What's your top target company for September? Curious what people are aiming for.