100 Job Strategies
100 Job Strategies · 1 of 100
Backfill Sniping
That seat is empty for six weeks. Be the only person who noticed.
In short
When someone posts that they are leaving a job, the role behind them is already open but will not be advertised for three to six weeks. Backfill sniping means contacting the hiring manager during that gap, while the job ad does not exist and you are the only candidate in the conversation. It is the cheapest timing advantage in job hunting and almost nobody uses it.
The situation
Someone in your industry posts the update everyone scrolls past: "After 4 incredible years at Northwind, today was my last day..." It collects a few hundred likes. People comment congratulations. Everyone moves on.
You just watched a job open.
Not a job that will open. One that is open right now — the work that person was doing still needs doing, their manager found out weeks ago, and the requisition has not reached a careers page yet. For the next month or so, that role exists in exactly one place: the manager's head.
Why this works
A job ad is not the beginning of a hiring process. It is the middle.
Before a role is posted, someone resigns, serves notice, gets a farewell lunch. The manager absorbs the work, waits on headcount approval, argues with finance, rewrites the job description, and eventually sends it to a recruiter who queues it behind other roles. Three to six weeks is normal. In some companies it is three months.
Every one of those days is a day when the manager has a real, painful, unsolved problem and zero applicants — because there is nothing to apply to.
The moment the ad goes live, that same manager gets 200 applications, a recruiter screen, a scoring rubric and a shortlist. You become a row in a spreadsheet. Before the ad, you are a person who turned up exactly when they needed one. Same resume. Completely different odds.
How to run it
- 1
Build a watchlist, not a job alert
Pick 20–40 companies you would actually join. You are going to watch people, not postings — so follow the teams you would sit in, and the managers who run them.
- 2
Watch for the leaving post
Departure announcements are formulaic: "After X years", "my last day", "excited to share I'm joining", "closing a chapter". Search those phrases alongside a company name, and check the profiles of people in your target function every couple of weeks.
- 3
Work out what they actually did
Read the leaver's profile properly — their title, their last few projects, who they reported to. That tells you the shape of the hole. A "Marketing Manager" who ran lifecycle email is a very different gap from one who ran events.
- 4
Find the manager, not the recruiter
You want the person who lost a team member, because they are the one in pain. Usually that is the leaver's direct manager — findable from their profile, the team page, or a conference talk.
- 5
Message in the gap, and be specific
Reference the departure without being strange about it. You are not offering condolences; you are offering to solve the thing that just landed on their plate. Keep it to five sentences and make the close easy to say yes to.
- 6
Follow up once, ten days later
Managers in a backfill are busy doing two jobs. One polite follow-up is normal and often the message that actually gets read. Two is pushing it.
What to say
When it does not work
- The role gets absorbed, not backfilled. Sometimes the work is split among the remaining team and no job ever opens. You will not know in advance — treat each attempt as cheap, not certain.
- Hiring freezes. A departure during a freeze produces no requisition however painful the gap. If the company has announced cuts, the odds drop sharply.
- Being creepy about the departure. Do not speculate about why they left, do not imply they were pushed, and never message the leaver asking them to refer you into their own vacancy on day one.
- Messaging the recruiter instead of the manager. Recruiters cannot act on a role that does not exist yet. They will tell you to watch the careers page — which is the exact advantage you were trying to skip.
- Sending a resume and nothing else. The whole point is that there is no vacancy to apply to. Lead with the specific problem you can take off their desk.
Job ads are a lagging indicator. By the time one appears, the opening is weeks old and the queue has formed — so learn to read the departure instead of the posting.
Questions
Is it unprofessional to contact a manager about a job that has not been posted?
No, provided you are direct about why you are writing and you lead with what you can do for them. Hiring managers are contacted by candidates constantly; what makes a message unwelcome is vagueness, not timing. A short note that names a specific gap and a specific, relevant skill is read as initiative. What you should not do is speculate about why the person left, imply anything negative about them, or pretend you have an existing relationship with the team.
How do I find out who the hiring manager is?
Start with the person who left: their profile usually names their team, and often their manager. Failing that, look for whoever holds the next title up in the same function at that company, check the company's team or about page, and look at who from that company has spoken at industry events or been quoted in press. For smaller companies the manager is frequently a founder or department head and is easy to identify.
What if they tell me to apply through the careers page anyway?
That is a normal outcome and not a failure. You now have a named contact who has seen your background before the ad went live, which means your application arrives with context rather than cold. Apply as instructed, then reply to the same thread letting them know you have done so. Candidates who are already a name to the manager survive resume screening at a much higher rate.
Does this work for freshers with no experience?
It works, but less often, because backfills usually replace a specific person's output and managers under pressure tend to reach for experience. Freshers get more out of it when the departing person was themselves junior, or when the offer is help during the gap rather than a full replacement. If you are early-career, pair this with a proof-of-work tactic so the message carries evidence rather than only enthusiasm.