Hey {{first_name}},
I recorded an episode this week with Adair Robins, who led the national Women in Tech program at the Tech Council of Australia and ran the Women in Highly Technical Occupations research with Commonwealth Bank.
She has spent her career getting women into tech and keeping them there, so she sees the hiring market from the inside.
Somewhere in the conversation, she said something that matched exactly what I am living every single week.
When she applied for roles cold, she heard nothing back.
The moment someone referred her, the whole process sped up and happened in a couple of days.
I love that she was so honest about it, because it is the truth almost nobody likes to hear.
Applying online is the slowest move you can make right now
We posted one role a couple of months ago. We had over 600 applications. We had to close it early because they were still coming in.
Do you know how many of those 600 people reached out to me directly to say they had applied? Not one.
600 people trusted the apply button to carry them, and here is what actually happens to those 600. No human reads them first. AI filters them, scanning for the exact language of the job description, and most never reach a person at all.
So if you are applying and hearing nothing, you are very likely not being rejected. You are simply not being seen.
It's not about who you know. It's about who knows you
Adair said the thing that surprised her most when she came into tech was how much of it runs on being referred by someone. The senior roles especially. They are filled through a conversation, often before the role ever reaches a job board.
You are not trying to win a lottery against 600 strangers. You are trying to be the name someone says in a room you are not in.
Build the relationships before you need them
Here is where most women get the timing wrong. They only reach out to their network when they want something, usually when they are already unhappy or already out.
By then it is a cold ask, and it shows.
The best time to look for a job is when you are in one. When you are settled and not asking for anything is exactly when you should be having the coffees, replying to the recruiter, staying in touch with the old colleague. You are not job hunting. You are making sure that when the moment comes, the relationships are already warm.
If you are job hunting right now, remember that most jobs come through people, not job boards, so having a networking strategy is key.
Map your market before you need it
This is the part I want you to do this week, and it takes about 20 minutes.
List the companies you would genuinely want to work for. Not where you would settle, where you would thrive. Ten is plenty.
Get specific on the one role you actually want inside them. The title, the level, the remit. If you cannot name it, that is the first thing to fix.
For each company, work out who that role would report to, or who would be doing the hiring. The head of that function. That is your person.
This is the manual version of a tool I built for exactly this inside the Bold Move Career Accelerator.
Now you are not staring at a job board hoping. You have a short list of real people at real companies. Follow them. Read what they post and leave a thoughtful comment now and then, and the day a role opens, or better, before one does, you already have a warm way in.
And when you do apply, do not stop at submit. Send that person one short, warm message. You skip the AI filter and land in front of a human.
That is the whole game now. Not applying harder. Being known by the right few people before the role even exists.
The full conversation with Adair is up now.
We get into why women keep leaving tech mid-career, why so few of the new AI roles are going to women, plus the free training she has built for people coming back from a career break.
With confidence,
Georgie 💜
P.S. If putting yourself out there is the thing you keep meaning to do and never quite start, that is exactly what we get moving inside Bold Moves. Building your presence is inside one of the three pillars, and you are not doing it alone.
If you want to find out more about September’s cohort, you can book a call below - we start next Tuesday!
