Pre-flight checklist
What you'll need before we start.
~15 minutes to gather, ~24 hours until your first shortlist lands. Read this once, then ping me.
What success looks like from day one: Every morning you open your queue and ~10–15 roles are waiting — researched, filtered, ready. That's the outcome. You don't tune watchlists or scoring on day one — those only help once you have a week of results to compare against. An early user told us they spent too long on optimization knobs before seeing any output, so we changed the design: get to the automated baseline first, optimize on outcomes later.
Part 1Stuff to have ready
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01
Your LinkedIn profile as a PDF
On LinkedIn → your profile page → "More" button (top-right, next to "Open to") → "Save to PDF". Send me the file.
Heads up: the richer your LinkedIn, the better the tailoring. If a role on your profile is two lines long, the AI has nothing to work with. Spend 10 minutes filling in real bullets before you export — it pays back tenfold.
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02
3–8 role keywords you'd actually take
Be honest — these are the filter. Too broad means noise, too narrow means nothing surfaces.
"head of product", "founder in residence", "AI product lead", "VP engineering", "chief of staff"
Too vague: "product", "manager", "tech". You'll iterate these in week 1 — that's the normal flow, not a sign you got it wrong.
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03
Locations
Cities and/or
Remote. Multiple is fine. Be specific — "Europe" is too broad, "London, Lisbon, Amsterdam, Remote (EU)" is right. -
04
Hard NOs optional
Things to filter out aggressively. The triage layer takes these literally, so be plain-spoken.
"no equity-only", "no crypto", "no agency", "skip Meta + Amazon"
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05
Your email
For your dashboard login at
work.velab.org. I'll send the password to you separately (not in the same email).
Part 2Concepts to grasp before day 1
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Two URLs, two audiences
work.velab.org/work/p/<you> is your private kitchen — queue, applications log, profile editor. <your-slug>.here.now is your dining room — polished, read-only, password-protected, what you share with mentors or recruiters. Same data underneath, different posture.
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The robot doesn't apply for you
It discovers, triages, tailors. The "click submit on LinkedIn" step stays yours. Auto-apply is what ATS systems flag and what gets ghosted — the "I read the JD and chose to apply" signal is the whole point.
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Tailoring is on-demand, not automatic
New roles appear on your dashboard daily. You pick the ones you actually want to apply to → send me the URL → CV + cover letter back in ~30 seconds. Tailoring 30 roles a day is wasteful and dilutes quality; tailoring 3 you actually want is the point.
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Keywords are the filter
Garbage in, garbage out. If your week-1 results feel noisy or sparse, the keywords are the lever — we'll tune them. That's the normal flow, not a failure.
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Your data lives on a VM I own
Not Vercel, not Google Drive, not OpenAI's servers. Your LinkedIn PDF, your applications log, your dashboard — all on
ve-code. Nothing leaves unless you intentionally share your here.now URL.
Part 3What to expect
Day 1
You send PDF + keywords. By morning, your dashboard has ~10–15 roles waiting. You log in, scan, mark 1–2 worth tailoring.
Day 7
You've refined keywords once (too broad or too narrow), tailored ~3–5 CVs, applied to 2. You have a feel for which roles cluster and which don't.
Day 30
~350 discovered, ~150 passed triage, ~25 considered, ~7 applied to. Conversion is up to your background and the market — but the funnel works.
Two things you get that aren't on LinkedIn: your daily shortlist also pulls roles from company career pages and other job boards, and — for the companies you're targeting — points you to real people inside with a school/alumni tie and a suggested way to reach out. Warm intros, not cold DMs.
Part 4Be calibrated — what it WON'T do
- Apply for you. Deliberate. Auto-apply gets you flagged.
- Fix a sparse LinkedIn. Better PDF in = better tailoring out.
- Find roles you didn't ask for. The keywords are the filter. Broaden them if you want broader.
- Cold-DM recruiters on LinkedIn. Against ToS, kills your account, doesn't work anyway.
- Promise interviews. It optimises for quality applications. Conversion is up to your background and the market.
Got everything?
Send me your PDF + keywords + locations and I'll set you up tonight. First results land within 24 hours.