# From signup to your first request
> The three steps between creating an account and getting your first job payload back, and what to do at each one.
Source: https://hyperjobs.io/help/first-request
Three things stand between you and a response: an account, a key, and a request.
This page covers the account part. The [quickstart](/docs/quickstart) covers the
request part in every language, and it's the page to have open once you have a
key.
[Sign up](/register) with an email and password, or with Google. There's no
credit card and no sales call — new accounts land on the **Free** plan with
500 requests per calendar month.
Use a real work address. Disposable-email domains are rejected at signup,
and password resets and receipts go to whatever you register.
Open the [dashboard](/dashboard) and create a key. It looks like `hj_live_`
followed by 48 hex characters.
The full key is shown **once**, at creation. Copy it into your secret store
before you close the dialog — we only keep a hash, so nobody can read it
back to you later. See [managing API keys](/help/api-keys).
Send the key as a bearer token:
```bash
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $HYPERJOBS_KEY" \
"https://api.hyperjobs.io/v1/jobs?limit=1"
```
A `200` with a `data` array means you're done. A `401` means the key is
missing, malformed, unknown, or revoked — the response doesn't say which.
The [quickstart](/docs/quickstart) has the same call in Node, Python, and Go,
plus what the response fields mean.
## If the first call fails
Check `/v1/health` first — it needs no key, so it separates a network problem
from an auth problem:
```bash
curl https://api.hyperjobs.io/v1/health
```
If that returns `{ "ok": true, … }` and your authenticated call still `401`s,
the key is the problem, not the connection. [Authentication](/docs/authentication)
covers the failure modes, including the one that catches most people: calling
from browser JavaScript, where the `Authorization` header triggers a CORS
preflight that fails.
## Two things that will save you an afternoon
Both are documented properly elsewhere, but they cause enough confusion to
repeat here:
- **Descriptions are omitted by default.** The `description` key is *absent*
unless you ask for it with `description_format=text` or `html`.
- **Comma-separated filters mean OR — except `skill`, which is AND.**
`?skill=python,aws` returns jobs tagged both; every other multi-value filter
matches any of its values. See [filtering](/docs/guides/filtering).
Validation is strict: an unknown parameter or a bad value returns a
[`400`](/docs/errors) that names the parameter, so a typo can't silently
masquerade as an empty result set.
## Next
The first request, in four languages.
Creating, naming, and revoking keys.
What the Free plan's 500 requests buy you.
When to move off Free, and what changes.