Fresher needs advice on cold emailing

Hey folks! I'm a grad, finishing up my school. I have started to apply to jobs and revamped my CV for the positions I'm targetting instead of spray and pray. However, I need an advice from you guys regarding cold emails.

The process I'm currently following is 1. I find a fresh job posting (<7 days) 2. I research about relevant folks at the company and cold email them. 3. I then apply to the job after waiting 2 days for their reply.

The challenge I've faced in this process is many entry level jobs tend to close their posting within 7 days and then my timeline fails.

Can you guys please advice me on optimising this?