I'm not a PM, but I PMed it very aggressively. I made a Notes.app personal wiki tracking every company I spoke to, with a timeline in reverse chronological order of every contact I'd had with them, like:
Foo Corp
Recruiter: [Jane Smith]
* 2025-09-15 On-site prep call with [Joe Brown]
* 2025-09-13 Coding screen with [Pat Doe]
I kept a "pipeline" note with companies in each stage, like:
# Leads
* [Adam Albert] at [Bar Corp]
# Initial Contact
* [Brenda Baker] at [Qux, Inc.]
# Recruiter call
...
# Phone Screen
# Tech screen
# Onsite
# Rejected
* [Shifty Corp] (they gave me the heebie-jeebies)
And then there was a separate Interviews note, which was a lot of the content from the Pipeline doc, but ordered chronologically and with more detail:
# 2025-09-15
* On-site prep call with [Joe Brown] from [Foo Corp]
* Recruiter screen with [Chris Carter] at [Deluxe Pinkies]
# 2025-09-14
* Reference check with [Arctic Drilling and Waste]
And I replied to
every recruiter I talked to, even if just to say "thanks for reaching out, but I'm looking for something more like ... right now", which often led to followups like "ooh, I have another client looking for that! Want to talk to them?"
Hyperorganization is one of my superpowers, and I leaned into it. Every morning I'd review the pipeline and timeline docs and ping every recruiter or company who I should've heard from but hadn't yet: "hey, it's me! Thanks for the chat the other day. Hope your Maltese, Mr. Pickles, feels better! Here's a picture of my cat waving to Mr. Pickles!" A lot of times that'd nudge them to respond and move things along.
I'm looking at my timeline right now and seeing the day where I had 2 recruiter screens, a tech screen, and an onsite. It was busy. But I was ready and willing to work, and at the end I turned down 3 pending offers to accept the one I most wanted.
Again, I count myself as exceptionally lucky. That said, half of "luck" is putting yourself in the right place, in the right condition, to jump on a good opportunity.
Hyperorganization is one of my superpowers, and I leaned into it. Every morning I'd review the pipeline and timeline docs and ping every recruiter or company who I should've heard from but hadn't yet: "hey, it's me! Thanks for the chat the other day. Hope your Maltese, Mr. Pickles, feels better! Here's a picture of my cat waving to Mr. Pickles!" A lot of times that'd nudge them to respond and move things along.
I'm looking at my timeline right now and seeing the day where I had 2 recruiter screens, a tech screen, and an onsite. It was busy. But I was ready and willing to work, and at the end I turned down 3 pending offers to accept the one I most wanted.
Again, I count myself as exceptionally lucky. That said, half of "luck" is putting yourself in the right place, in the right condition, to jump on a good opportunity.