Before you apply, check the role

A lot of engineers spend too much time improving applications for jobs they should never have applied to.

They see Senior iOS Engineer, Backend Engineer or Staff Engineer, scan the stack, recognize a few technologies and hit Apply.

I would do something else first.

I would spend five minutes deciding whether the role is worth the application.

Here is what I look at.

What is the company really hiring for?

Ignore the title for a moment.

Read the responsibilities and ask:

What problem are they paying this person to solve?

Two jobs called Senior iOS Engineer can be completely different.

One company might need someone building product features in SwiftUI.

Another might need someone who can untangle a ten-year-old UIKit application, improve build times and work across several teams.

Same title. Different engineer.

Which requirements are hard requirements?

Job descriptions mix several things together:

things you need on day one; things the team would like; technologies someone added because they are somewhere in the stack; generic HR language.

You need to separate them.

If the company needs someone with production Android experience and you have never shipped Android, that matters.

If they mention one library you have never used but you have solved the same class of problem with another tool, probably much less important.

Do you have evidence for the important parts?

Ask yourself:

What have I done that proves I can do this?

If the role requires architecture across multiple teams, your evidence might be an architecture migration you led.

If it requires performance work, maybe it is the launch-time problem you diagnosed.

If it requires mentoring, maybe it is the team you helped move onto a new architecture.

This is the evidence that should later shape the CV and the interview.

What would make them reject you quickly?

This is the part people often ignore.

Look for obvious mismatches:

location, work authorization, required language, compensation, seniority, domain requirements, required platform experience.

You do not need a 100% match.

But you should know what the weak part of the application is before you send it.

Would I still apply if it took me 30 minutes?

Good final test.

If the only reason you are applying is because LinkedIn made it one click, the role probably has very little value to you.

A good application costs attention.

Spend it where there is a credible match.

AI can help with the next part.

It can summarize the description, compare it with your CV, help rewrite a bullet or point out missing evidence.

But it cannot make a bad target into a good one.

And applying faster does not fix poor job discovery.

That is one of the reasons I built The 2026 Job Discovery & Search Kit.

It is for engineers who have been checking the same job boards, seeing the same roles and repeating the same search every day.

The kit contains the search workflow, sources, search recipes, role variations, verification steps and the Search Desk included in the kit.

It gives you a better way to search.

The 2026 Job Discovery & Search Kit $19.99, with purchasing power parity enabled.

Get the kit