I hear this all the time: “I’m not landing any job interviews. What am I doing wrong?”
Before I address why candidates don’t land interviews, I have to first break down the interview process.
The 9 Stages of the Job Interview
Here’s the typical interview process:
- Step 1: You apply or get referred to a job using your resume.
- Step 2: You talk to a recruiter via phone to explain your skillset further and your job expectations.
- Step 3: At this stage, the team or recruiter reaches out to you to set up a formal team interview with you.
What happened behind the scenes: The recruiter talks to the hiring team, and they like what they see (your resume) and hear (notes about your experience from the recruiter. - Step 4-8: You have formal interviews with whoever the team deems important (hiring managers, other team members, VPs, etc.).
But wait…there’s more: Most companies have at least 3-4 rounds of formal team interviews. At this stage, you might also be asked to complete a project to showcase your professional skillset. There is no guarantee that you will make it to each round, and you can be knocked out at any time. - Step 9: This is the FINISH LINE! This is where you receive the offer and negotiate your salary. You can take the first offer or do more research and negotiate for a better offer!
Learn How to Identify Where You’re Getting Stuck!
Now that we got that out of the way, you can understand which part of the job hunting or job interview process you’re getting stuck at.
When people say they aren’t getting interviews, they are most likely talking about not getting to:
- Step 2: the phone screen with the recruiter.
- Step 3: the “congrats you’re moving on to the interviews with the team” message from the recruiter/hiring manager.
Based on the steps I’ve laid out above, where are you getting stuck?
- If it’s step 2, keep reading below!
- If it’s steps 3-8, you can learn how to tell better stories in your interviews here!
Fix These 5 Resume Problems & Get More Job Interviews
There are a few common problems that job seekers face when building their resumes, which unfortunately also contributes to them not landing job interviews.
How many of these resume red flags does your resume have? Fix them, and you could be on your way to landing that job interview!
Resume Red Flags
- 🚩 Red Flag: Your resume is lacking results!
This is the number one reason why most people don’t land job interviews. Many candidates only include job responsibilities, but they don’t include their IMPACT.
Solution: Focus more on the who, why, and how of your job. For example, who did you help, how exactly did you help, and what was the outcome? (learn how to turn any job responsibility into an impactful bullet point for your resume here.) - 🚩 Red Flag: Your resume has a bunch of fluff or the structure is off.
Solution: No matter how creative you decide to get with your resume (which btw, I think you totally should), you still need to at least include the resume basics. (brush up on your resume basics here.) - 🚩 Red Flag: You apply with your “master resume.”
You have 1 resume that lists out every job you’ve ever had (even the ones that don’t match the job that you’re applying for). It’s not a bad thing to have 1 master resume. However, it is bad to apply to every job with this resume.
Solution: Create an Industry or Job-specific resume (learn how to do this here). Every company/team wants to feel like they’re special, so create a resume that speaks to them! - 🚩 Red Flag: You don’t have enough of the “right” type of experience on your resume.
Solution: Sometimes you have everything you need and you just need to tweak how you present your experience so that recruiters can picture you in this new role. (see how to do that here).
Sometimes, you actually do need more experience, and that’s okay! Here’s how you can get experience. - 🚩 Red Flag: Your resume doesn’t include any industry tools, skills, or keywords.
This makes it extremely hard for recruiters and hiring managers to “take a chance” on you because they’re not even sure that you can do the job based on your resume.
Solution: Include more industry keywords, skills, tools, or language. (see how to do this here!)
And I know what some of you thinking: But, I got referred to the role, so obviously, my resume is not the problem.
That might be true, but even if you’re referred to a role and make it to Step 1, but you never meet the team or you get knocked out of the process after 1 interview, that means:
- Your resume didn’t make the cut AND
- Your interview storytelling skills need more work!
So now that you’ve made those corrections above, you’re ready for level 2: Getting the recruiter to slide into your LinkedIn DMs!
What’s Next: More Career Tips
