Why am I not Getting an Interview? Job Search Tips for When You Already Have a Great Resume

You have worked tirelessly on your resume. You've got all your accomplishments on there. You're tweaking it for every job application and possibly you've even invested in a resume writer to help you, but it's still not bringing interviews to the yard. Let's go ahead and fix that today to help you land more job interviews and stay to the end, because I will reveal a Hail Mary when all else fails. Strategy to get your application seen that is incredibly effective. Welcome to the Channel. If you're new here, welcome. So good to make your acquaintance. I'm Madeline Mann. I am a human resources leader and job search strategist who turns job seekers into job shoppers. You may recognize me from being a top job search instructor on Spotify and LinkedIn learning, or you could have seen me on ABC, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, and more. Subscribe so you can get more videos to elevate your career. The first thing we must address is, is your resume actually perfect? I know, I know you're convinced that it is, though. The thing is, the way we are taught to write resumes is quite outdated and doesn't perform well in today's job market. Even if you got your resume professionally done, they are often written with ineffective approaches that just focus on your top accomplishments from previous roles.

Hired a resume writer just because I was like, it's been a long time. I'll say you get what you pay for. They helped me out a little bit, but I realized after applying to maybe 15 things, nothing was happening.

That was Liz, one of my former clients, who was stunned when her $400 resume did absolutely nothing for helping her to land a job. The issue is that if you hire someone to write your resume without deeply understanding the psychology of which resumes work, which if you understood that psychology, you wouldn't have to hire someone, then you can't tell if that professionally written resume is great until it's too late. What is important for you to focus on is less about summarizing your experience and listing your previous accomplishments and instead viewing a resume as as a sales page that addresses exactly what the company is asking for. Liz was able to make these changes.

I ended up going from applying to 20 companies with no interviews to applying about 10. Got around seven or eight interviews and got an offer from three. The role that I ended up accepting was something one that from a value standpoint, I connected with, which was huge for me. So that was super exciting. I was able to move from a manager to a director level and then from the pay standpoint, I did get 25% increase in pay.

I'll link a free free resume workshop below so you can follow that system as well. Another illusion you may have about your resume is that you've used AI tools to help write it, thinking that that made it glorious. AI is a tremendous technology and I utilize it often, but you must first understand what makes a compelling resume. Then give AI specific inputs and prompts, very specific, and then continue to edit those responses to make it just right. And if you're not doing all that, then you should not even touch AI or ChatGPT. The reason being is that tools like ChatGPT provide an aggregate of all of the things online. That means that the output you're getting couldn't be more generic and outdated as most things on the Internet are. I urge you to be careful with these tools and not rely on them to give you any sort of advice or heavy handed edits. Have you ever used AI or ChatGPT in the job search? Say yes, I've used AI or no, I haven't used AI in the comments. Okay, so we've gotten past all of the massive issues that you may be facing without realizing it. Now let's get your gorgeous resume seen and cranking out interviews. The first issue is your resume currently isn't getting seen by recruiters and hiring managers. When I say this I hear a resounding I know I keep getting filtered out by the Applicant Tracking System or the ats. I have to say this is rarely the case. Sure, you may be rejected from knockout questions which you answer as part of the application, such as are you eligible to work in the United States? Yes or no. But the reason you're not landing interviews isn't because there's some robot with mysterious and sadistic taste in candidates that's weeding you out. I did a whole video on how at bses work and how to get them to work for you, which I will link in the comments. The best move though is to not deal with the Applicant Tracking System at all by avoiding applying. Online job postings are absolutely flooded with applications. It's unclear if a human will ever get to your resume before they fill the role for good. That is why you need to find alternate ways to get noticed. Yes, this does mean you need to talk to people. So many job seekers talk themselves out of doing this. The people at the company probably already get a lot of emails. I don't know anyone in the company. I don't know what to say. What if I embarrass myself? What if I come across as annoying or desperate. Quiet. Quiet these voices, my friend. The undisputed number one way to land jobs is through interactions, not applications. Write that down. You need to see an outreach and as taking an interest in other people and helping companies to fill their role faster because now they don't have to sift through that wild ATS to find a wonderful candidate who is fully qualified and genuinely interested in this role, which is you. Of course the way you meet these people is important and what you say and all of that. But even if you are given exactly what to say, you still still have to follow through and do it. Courage comes before confidence. Do it scared. The fact of the matter is that you don't need to know anyone to get someone to refer you into a role at a company. Heck, you don't even need to meet anyone in person in order to network effectively. You can skip conferences, job fairs, and throwing rocks at the company's office window if that drains your cup. I have countless examples of clients who didn't know anyone in their chosen industry and landed roles through networking, including Todd, who went from being a band teacher at a high school to a Scrum master in the technology industry, Matt who went from government to the private sector, and Leslie who went from working in education to customer success. I show you their faces because I want you to realize even if you're an underdog, you can do this too. These are all people who came to me thinking that the job search was impossible and then absolutely set it on fire and became job shoppers. I know you know you have so much to offer companies and now you need to break through the fear of reaching out to people networking and get your application seen. So please don't sleep on networking. And if you need more help on this, I will link a class on how to go job shopping below in the comments which discusses some strategies. It's also important to be sourced by companies. Companies hire recruiters and sourcers to find people online sales skilled in the roles that they're hiring for and then ask those people to interview with the company without ever having those people apply. I've strangely gotten pushback at times from people not believing me that this is one of the main ways that job seekers land their next roles. This is one of the top ways that my clients land their next job, such as Anna, Kyle and Gail.

It was a huge shift.

Like instead of having to apply, I had so many recruiters reach out to me and to this day I still get that because my LinkedIn still optimized. I Know what I want now?

For example, the LinkedIn.

Until I updated my job search, I mean updated.

I have a new job.

I was giving like 10, 15, like, reach outs, like every single month. Like, for the right position that I was looking for. Like, at the height of it, I was getting like, you know, five contacts a week, which, for an accountant that's older, that doesn't have a cpa, that's in Pittsburgh, which is not a hot job market, that's amazing. This is completely possible for you. There are a lot of different things you can do to get sourced and have companies coming to you with opportunities to get you started. I will link below a LinkedIn profile checklist so you can start showing up in more searches to get these opportunities. Now the final move, when all else fails, go above and beyond. This is the secret sauce that no one else is doing. I have hired thousands of people. I think maybe two people have done this out of everyone I've interviewed. You need to find ways to stand out in ways that other candidates aren't. What would make your application impossible to ignore? What if you found a creative way to show that you're a standout candidate? If you work in marketing, you could send an audit of the company's social media channels. If you work in customer support, you could contact their support team asking a question and log your key observations and insights. And if you're, say, an executive admin, you could send a sample workflow that you think would work great for the busy founder and CEO, including a couple of details you picked up on her from listening to some of the interviews that she did on podcasts. The possibilities are limitless, but it will require you to get a bit creative and not simply do what the company tells you to do. That passiveness is the job seeker way, not the job shopper. Okay, but hold up. Here is the important thing. You don't do all of this great work and then submit an application into the applicant tracking system. I mean, that is just where applications go to die. Have you learned nothing from this video? What will you learn? Your mission, should you choose to rock it, is to make sure a real person sees this masterpiece. Interactions over applications, my friend. You can do this. You are so incredible. You have so much to offer these companies that they would be lucky to have you. And I am here to help you each step of the way, at every level of your career. So be sure to like this video and subscribe to this channel. That support goes a long way. You've got this wi fi high five.