Before LinkedIn, before Seek, before any of today's job platforms, job hunting started with a newspaper: a classified ad or a display listing on an actual page. You'd read what an employer needed and reach out directly. It was simple, and it was also remarkably accurate as a hiring signal, if a job was advertised, someone genuinely needed to fill it.

Decades later, the fundamentals haven't really changed, we've just swapped the physical page for a screen. What has changed is convenience, to the point of being almost counterproductive. A single click can send off a hundred applications, and then the silence sets in, with little clarity about why nobody's responding.

The truth is that hiring signals function much like buying signals in sales, and corporate growth marketers have understood and used them for years to read purchasing intent long before a sale happens. There's no reason job seekers can't apply the same thinking. A company expanding into a new city.

A startup closing a new funding round. Key staff moving to a competitor. Even understanding when a financial year opens and closes can indicate the right moment to approach an organisation. All of these are signals that hiring activity may be coming, well before any job ad appears.

The information behind all of these signals is genuinely out there and accessible. The real challenge isn't access, it's volume and noise. Sorting a meaningful signal from the general clutter of everyday information is where most people get stuck, and doing it manually simply doesn't scale.

That's exactly the kind of problem worth solving systematically, with a bit of the right technology behind it, rather than by watching job boards and hoping for the best.