Taking my Knowledge of Sales Pipelines to the Job Search

So, What Am I Doing to Land My Next Job?  I am treating it like a sales pipeline

Let me start with a confession that may or may not get me banned from a few dinner conversations:

I’m batty for AI.

Not in the “make me a picture of a shark wearing Crocs” way (although… that’s not nothing). I mean the real stuff. The stuff that actually changes outcomes. The kind of AI that doesn’t just make noise, but makes work lighter. Faster. Smarter. Less “why am I doing this with my human hands.”

And that obsession is exactly why I’m in Wake Forest’s Master of Science in AI Strategy program. I’m not trying to become a software engineer. I’m trying to become the guy who knows how to weaponize the tools while everyone else is still arguing about whether ChatGPT is “cheating.”

Spoiler: it’s not cheating. It’s leverage.

So the question became:

How can I use AI to make my job search faster, sharper, and more targeted… without spending half my life clicking “Careers” links like I’m mining for gold in 2006?

Here’s what I’m doing.

Step 1:
Pick the companies I actually want to work for (instead of panic-applying to everything)Most people job hunt like this:

1. Get stressed
2. Open LinkedIn
3. Apply to 47 jobs
4. Wonder why the universe hates them

I wanted something a little more… strategic. And a lot less humiliating.
I’m focused on companies that are either:

• building with AI, or
• using AI to solve real problems (not just “we’re disrupting the disruptors” nonsense)

So I went to Crunchbase, because if you want real startup and tech company data, it’s basically the Costco of company lists. Big carts. Bulk information. You leave with more than you intended.

For about $99/month, you can filter companies and download a dataset. Not opinions. Not rankings. Actual data.

I pulled close to 2,000 companies and filtered them down with criteria like:

• Keywords: AI, PropTech
• US-based
• CB Rank under 5000 (translation: there’s a real business here, not just a pitch deck and a dream)

Then I filtered out a bunch of junk. Because Crunchbase is like the ocean: beautiful, massive, and filled with things you don’t want to step on.

Now I had a real list. A list I’d actually be proud to work through.

Step 2:
Turn that spreadsheet into a job-finding robot (because I’m not clicking 1,700 websites)

Now the fun part:

What do you do with a spreadsheet full of 1,700 companies?

You do not open them one by one like you’re calling every number in the phone book asking if they’re hiring.

So I did what any sane person does in 2026 when faced with a painful task:

I asked ChatGPT. Then I asked Claude.
And both basically said:
“Yeah… you can automate this.”

The idea was simple:

• take the list of companies
• visit their career pages
• search for roles that match my criteria
• output everything into a new spreadsheet with hyperlinks

It sounded like magic.

There was just one issue:  I don’t write Python.

They didn’t teach Python in school back in the 1980s. They taught us things like cursive and “don’t trust strangers.” Great advice, but not super helpful for web scraping.

So I did what I always do when I don’t know something:

I asked Claude to explain it to me like I’m 15.

And it did.

So at 11:25 PM, I’m in my kitchen like some kind of budget James Bond, copying terminal commands and hoping I don’t accidentally launch a missile.  I hit enter… and my laptop starts politely pinging 1,700+ company websites while I go to sleep.

And when I woke up?

Boom.

A fresh spreadsheet delivered to my desktop like room service:

• company career page links
• job titles
• job links
• and over 2,000 roles to sift through

In one night, I basically created an intern who doesn’t sleep, doesn’t complain, and doesn’t ask for “just a quick call.”

Step 3:
The results… and the reality check
Now, before anyone thinks this was perfect: it wasn’t.

Automation is like ordering something off a menu photo. It’s usually good… but it’s never exactly what you pictured.

After trial and error, a few tweaks, and about five iterations, I got a pretty usable output. But there were caveats:

• Not everything was accurate
• Some roles weren’t relevant to me at all
• Some sites are built on heavy JavaScript platforms (Workday, Greenhouse, Lever, etc.) and they hide listings like they’re guarding national secrets

Still, even with the imperfections, this was the big win:

I had a way to index and track opportunities at scale.

Instead of “hunt and peck,” I had a searchable pipeline.

That’s the difference between playing defense and running the field.

Step 4:
Google Sheets becomes the command center

Once I had the output, I moved it into Google Sheets because for this kind of living, breathing tracker, Sheets just works better for me than Excel.

At baseline, I had about nine fields per company:

• Company name
• Company website
• Careers page URL (from the script)
• HQ city/state (from the script)
• Industry (from the script)
• Remote vs onsite (from the script)
• Company LinkedIn link (from the script)

But of course… I wanted more.

Because once you see what’s possible, you start thinking:  “Okay, if I can do that, why am I stopping here?”

So Claude pointed me toward “GPT for Sheets and Docs” and gave me prompts to enrich the data.

​Now I’ve added:

• CEO name
• CFO
• CRO
• VP of Sales
• a two-sentence company description
• 2024 revenue
• year founded

(It wouldn’t pull emails cleanly yet, which is probably for the best because the world doesn’t need me emailing 1,700 CEOs at 2 AM… yet.)

Then I added my own columns that turn this into an actual system:

• Remote / hybrid / in-person?
• Did I apply?
• Is there a position that fits me?
• Do my skills match?
• Notes / follow-ups / next step

Now it’s not just a spreadsheet.

It’s a machine.  It's a process.  It's a pipeline

And instead of job searching feeling like wandering around the internet with a flashlight and a prayer,

I’m running it just like a sales pipeline.

Bottom line
AI isn't “getting me a job.”

But it did remove the worst part of job searching: the repetitive digging, the endless clicking, the time sink that drains your energy before you even get to the part that matters.
Now I spend my time on what actually moves the needle:

• picking the right targets
• writing better outreach
• having smarter conversations
• moving faster than the next guy

And should I be telling people I’m doing this?

Yes.

Because this isn’t cheating.

This is what it looks like when you stop doing everything the hard way just because “that’s how everyone does it.”

The point isn’t that AI magically hands you a job. The point is that it turns job hunting from panic into process.

I’m building a system that finds targets, tracks opportunities, and keeps me moving.

The outreach part stays in the vault. LOL.