✍️ "LinkedIn Posts Are Trash"

Spoiler: they're actually some of the most valuable jobs on the board. Here's why a LinkedIn post and a LinkedIn job are two completely different animals — and why the distinction changes everything.

👋,

I’ve seen a few comments written lately with some version of this:

"Honestly, everything on LinkedIn is over-submitted and low quality and I could have just found it myself without the board. I'm not sure it's even worth my time anymore."

Thank you for saying it. We always want to hear when something on the board isn’t landing.

But I want to gently push back. I think you might be conflating two parts of LinkedIn that look identical at a glance — job info, a logo, an apply button — but are actually doing two drastically different things underneath. Once you see the difference, the posts we send you on the board flip from “crowded noise I could’ve found myself” to some of the highest-leverage opportunities in your week.

Let me explain.

🙅 LinkedIn Posts ≠ LinkedIn Jobs

That’s the whole essay in one line. But it’s worth slowing down on.

Here’s a LinkedIn job:

Notice the giveaways:

• “Over 100 people clicked apply.” That’s the public pool — and that’s just the clickers. Actual submissions are likely several times that.

• “Promoted by hirer.” Translation: someone paid LinkedIn to amplify this listing. So LinkedIn pushed it hard — to every aggregator, every job-board API, every search tool pulling from their feed.

• “Reposted 2 weeks ago.” It’s been out in the wild for a while. You have no idea how many people are already in the pile or whether the role is even still open.

This is what most people picture when they hear “LinkedIn job.” It’s public, it’s huge, it’s algorithmic, and it’s the part of LinkedIn that makes LinkedIn money.

Now here's a LinkedIn post:

Look at what’s not there:

• No applicant counter. No “promoted by hirer.” This isn’t a paid placement. It’s just Evan (the alias I’ll give him).

• It’s a person. His face is right there. His title is right there — Lead Publisher at On SI, covering the Bulls, Cubs, and White Sox. You can click through to his profile and learn how he writes, what he publishes, who he’s worked with.

• He gives you his email right in the post. (I blurred it out in case he ever wants to take the post down — but it's there.) That's not a black-hole apply portal. It's a direct line to the human doing the hiring.

• The post itself is the pitch. Evan tells you exactly what he wants: writers who care about Chicago sports, 400-word articles, freelance to start, two samples required, and tell him which team you’d cover. (When was the last time a careers page was this personal?)

• It travels one or two degrees, then it’s gone. LinkedIn isn’t paid to amplify it, so it doesn’t. The post moves through Evan’s network — the writers and editors he's built relationships with — and because he's connected to people in our network, it surfaced for us. Then it slides off the feed like it was never there.

Now look at how many angles exist on a post like this:

1. Research what On SI publishes so your pitch sounds like you’ve actually read the site.

2. Read pieces Evan (that’s what has edited and reference one in your message.

3. Scroll his profile for mutual connections and a line in his career history that becomes a real conversation starter.

4. Pick the Chicago team you love most and tell him exactly why you’re the right voice for it.

5. Shape your two writing samples to match the audience he’s already building.

6. Email him directly. That's an actual conversation, not a resume dropped into a black hole.

7. Keep the thread. Whether you go LinkedIn DM or email, you now have a record. “Oh — I remember this person” is a real thing on the other side. You can reference past notes the next time you reach out.

8. Follow up over time. If you really connected, ping him every few months. Hiring managers are almost always quietly looking, even when they’re not actively posting. Staying lightly on someone’s radar is a superpower.

So many variables here. So many ways to stay connected, get to the source, personalize the pitch, and come at it with your best foot forward.

Compare that to dropping your resume into a careers portal and waiting six weeks for a “we’ve decided to move forward with other candidates” email. (That may or may not actually arrive.)

That second one is what we send you on the board.

And the only reason it ever lands in front of you is that Evan is someone our network knows, on accounts Amy and I — and our team — have spent nearly a decade cultivating. Without that, you’d never see this role unless you happened to be a second-degree connection of his.

☹️ “Yeah but 12 People Already Commented…”

Totally fair. I understand feeling that way.

Putting yourself out there — even a single application — is real work. The strain is real. The little stomach-flip when you hit submit is real.

But here’s something worth noticing: what we feel and what’s actually true can be wildly different things.

It reminds me of something Timothée Chalamet said in an interview once — riffing on that old Invictus line: “You could be the master of your fate, you could be the captain of your soul. But you have to realize that life is coming from you and not at you — and that takes time.”

What we see comes from us, not at us. No matter how tired or beaten down you are, you get to choose what you see.

You can be mad at the asshole who cut you off on the freeway because he's a lousy piece of shit ruining everyone's day for no reason. Or his dad is in the passenger seat, having a heart attack. One's probably more likely than the other — but we don't actually know. All we know is what we choose to believe.

You can see the comment number and think, “damn, already 12 comments.”

Or you can think, “damn, only 12 comments!”

Same number. Different world.

When we post a featured job for a memoir ghostwriting role to this community of tens of thousands of subscribers, sometimes only five people apply.

When we posted to hire curators on our own team, you'd be astonished by how few writers actually applied — and how many of the ones who did had ChatGPT write the application for them. We always ask, "what's your favorite snack?" Eighty percent of applicants say chocolate-covered almonds. I have never, in my entire life, met a real human who said chocolate-covered almonds were their favorite snack. But ChatGPT? It says it almost every time.

That’s the secret almost nobody tells you about this market: most people don’t actually show up, or if they do, they do poorly.

So that “12 comments” you’re scrolling past? A bunch of those are random spammers. A bunch are people leaving “interested!” with no follow-through. A bunch are treating it like a lottery ticket. The number of people who actually submit thoughtfully is much smaller than the comment count suggests.

A director-who-shall-not-be-named had a line: 80% of success is showing up. Quoted into oblivion because it keeps being true — no matter the source.

Submitting is the superpower. The one thing almost nobody else is doing as much as you think they are.

And if the submitting itself is what’s wearing you down — that’s exactly what we built CozyApply for. It fills out applications faster, more accurately, and gets you farther in less time. So the friction isn’t the thing standing between you and the work.

👌You’re Closer Than You Realize

Don’t be that miner (you know the one).

Most writers quit right before the part where it starts to work. Right when the third “no” lands. Right when the fifth role feels like a long shot. Right when a LinkedIn post has 12 comments and looks “too crowded.”

What you’re calling a fool’s errand is closer to working than you realize.

Somebody is going to land that role. Somebody is going to DM the hiring manager and start a real conversation. Somebody is going to send the application that actually gets opened.

Why not you?

Right?

Why not you.

🗝️ Key Insights

• LinkedIn /jobs ≠ LinkedIn posts. One is public and oversaturated. The other is private and undersaturated.

• You can’t actually find these yourself. Amy and I have spent nearly a decade building the network that surfaces them.

• “12 comments” isn’t what it looks like. Most of that is noise. Real serious applicants are far fewer.

• Out of thousands of subscribers, sometimes only 5 apply to a featured job. We are not unique. This is happening to every person hiring we know. Most writers are not actually showing up.

• Submitting is the edge. Use CozyApply if the friction is wearing you out.

• You’re closer than you think. Don’t be the miner who walks away from the diamonds.

I’m here rooting for you, like I hope you are, because—

“Why not you?”

-kyle