ApplyGhost

Inspiration

I spent 6 months job hunting last year. Hundreds of applications, the same forms over and over. Name, email, resume, cover letter, "how did you hear about us." Most never got a response. I realized I was spending more time applying than actually preparing for interviews. That's backwards.

I looked at existing tools but they all did the same thing: blast your resume to 500 jobs and hope something sticks. I'd end up with interviews for roles I didn't even want. I wanted something that was selective, something that would only apply to jobs that actually fit me.

What it does

ApplyGhost scans job boards, scores every listing against your profile (role fit, skills, work setup), and applies to the ones that match. A Chrome extension handles the actual forms, reading each question and filling it in based on your experience and preferences. Every application gets tracked in a Kanban pipeline so you always know where things stand.

How I built it

The stack is Next.js with a Turborepo monorepo setup. The Chrome extension interacts with job board forms in real time. Matching uses AI scoring to evaluate jobs against a user's profile across multiple dimensions. The whole thing deploys automatically on push.

Challenges I ran into

Job board forms are wildly inconsistent. Every company structures their application differently, asks different questions, uses different field types. Getting the extension to reliably handle all of that was the hardest part by far.

Another challenge was finding the right balance between automation and quality. It's tempting to just apply everywhere, but that defeats the purpose. Tuning the matching so it's selective enough to be useful but not so strict that it misses good opportunities took a lot of iteration.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Getting real users within the first week of launching. Four people signed up and started using it before I spent a single dollar on marketing. That told me the problem was real and the solution clicked. Also proud of how reliably the Chrome extension handles different job board formats. That was a beast to get right.

What I learned

The job application process is more broken than I thought. Talking to early users, everyone had the same frustration. People don't hate job hunting because of interviews. They hate the grind of applying. That validated the whole idea for me.

What's next for ApplyGhost

More job board integrations, smarter matching as I get more user data, and better follow-up automation (nudge emails, interview prep). The goal is to make job hunting something that runs in the background while you focus on what actually matters.

Built With

• hono
• nextjs
• postgresql