There are plenty of obstacles to success on the road of your job search. You have to write a dynamic cover letter with a personal story, create a resume that lists your most relevant experience and skills, and ace the interview. Even when things seem to go extraordinarily well, you may still fail to land that position. The following reasons could be why you performed your best and still lost out to someone else.
Look-a-Like Resumes
Your resume probably looks very similar to another candidate's. This makes it harder to stand out in a job search. You might match well against other people who went to a top business college, have the same 10 years of experience and know Microsoft Office backwards and forwards. Even your concrete, quantitative achievements can seem similar to someone else's.
Break away from the crowd by making your resume different. Create an infographic resume, or tout your own professional website. Less time-consuming things you can do include tailoring your resume to the position, talking about your highest-level qualifications in your cover letter and posting unique transferable skills within your document.
Robots
Although your resume looks fantastic and you included all the relevant experience, skills and education, perhaps you missed some keywords that an applicant tracking system is designed to scan. An ATS picks out relevant words from hundreds of resumes and then ranks the best ones based on the criteria set by the hiring manager. Like it or not, an ATS is a job search tool here to stay because it saves time versus human eyes examining a large pool of candidates.
Examine the job description as posted by the employer. Pick the most important keywords from the posting, and include those in your resume. Go so far as spelling terms the same way you see them in the description, such as "three years experience" versus "3 years experience" or "nonprofit" instead of "non-profit."
Too Little Time
Hiring managers rarely read your entire application materials. They only scan the most relevant things found in your documents. Sometimes, an employer doesn't even look at your cover letter because the job search process is so time-consuming.
A career summary section at the top of your resume gives a hiring manager a quick glance at your best qualifications, achievements and accomplishments. Fill out the additional information section of the online application with some nifty skills that get noticed.
Other Interviews Went Really Well
One of the most heart-wrenching obstacles to success is that someone else's interview went even better than yours. You did everything you could to enhance your job search and felt great about the interview. However, other people got to the same stage as you.
Just because the interview is over doesn't mean the position belongs to one particular person. Send thank you notes, both handwritten and through email, thanking the hiring manager for his time. If all other things are equal, a thank you note can win the day.
You gain a lot of experience through every phase of a job search, which is valuable tool if you fail to land the job of your dreams following multiple attempts. Every time that you come away with a new experience, you also learn to do better next time.
Photo courtesy of imagerymajestic at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Become a member to take advantage of more features, like commenting and voting.
Register or sign in today!