The Hiring Momentum Dashboard I Wish Existed

Most job search tools answer: “what roles are open right now?”

I wanted a different answer:

“What are companies actually doing—accelerating, freezing, or quietly shifting—and what should I do about it this week?”

So I built a small tool for myself: a Hiring Trend Tracker that watches hiring activity across dozens of companies, then turns it into signals that help with:

• timing (when to apply vs when to network),
• momentum (booming vs freezing vs stable),
• durability (how long roles typically stay open),
• and context (news that explains spikes and slowdowns).

Why I stopped obsessing over individual roles

Job boards already do role search extremely well.

But they don’t tell you:

• whether a company is ramping up or cooling down,
• whether jobs close fast (48h urgency) or stay open for weeks (networking-first),
• whether this week is an “apply week” or a “relationship week,”
• and whether a headline actually correlates with real hiring movement.

That’s the gap this project tries to fill.

The Momentum Board: attention without missing anyone

Tracking 78+ companies is overwhelming if everything looks equally important.

So the dashboard is intentionally split into two sections:

1) This Week: Movers

Only companies with meaningful weekly signals get expanded:

• accelerating / volatile churn / freezing signals
• a short “why” statement
• a timing hint

2) All Others (collapsed but still present)

Everyone else is still visible—just collapsed by default. You can expand the Stable/Quiet groups anytime.

This keeps the dashboard usable daily without hiding companies.

Figure: Movers are expanded; everyone else stays visible but collapsed.

What “momentum” means (in human terms)

Momentum here is not a buzzword. It’s just:
what changed this week vs last week, and how consistently it’s changing.

A company might be:

• Booming: sustained adds, open roles trending up
• Freezing: removals dominate, open roles trending down
• Volatile: lots of adds/removes (churn), unclear direction
• Stable: low movement

And each label includes a simple explanation:

• “Net +X in 7d”
• “Removals spike”
• “High churn”
• “Open roles shifted sharply”

Job lifespan: the most practical signal I didn’t expect

One insight changed how I behave immediately:

How long jobs last at a company.

If most postings disappear quickly, the right move is speed. If postings linger, the right move is networking and targeting.

So for each company I compute:

• median days a role stays open
• percent of roles that close in <7 days
• age buckets (0–3 / 4–7 / 8–14 / 15–30 / 30+)

This turns “job search” into timing strategy.

Figure: Roles don’t last equally long across companies; durability changes your strategy.

Timing Intelligence: when to apply vs when to network

Some companies post new roles on predictable weekdays. Some remove roles in predictable bursts.

So the tracker surfaces:

• best weekday for posting
• best weekday for removals
• a confidence score (do we have enough history?)

The output is intentionally simple:

• “Apply within 48h”
• “Apply within 3–5 days”
• “Networking-first (new focus / freeze risk)”

News + hiring trends: only when it explains a signal

News is overwhelming when it’s a feed.

Instead, I only show it when:

• it aligns with a hiring spike,
• it explains removals/freezing behavior,
• or it coincides with a role-mix shift.

So the “news” section becomes: context, not noise.

Figure: News can predict hiring trends and explain hiring behavior.

If you want to try it

I’ve open-sourced the project here:

GitHub: Repo link

Setup instructions are already included in the repository.

Closing thought

A job search gets less stressful when you stop treating it like a lottery and start treating it like a market:

• watch momentum,
• understand timing,
• and move when signals are real.

That’s what I’m building for.