Why It's So Hard to Get a Job Right Now

You sent out 12 more applications this week, heard back from one, a no. You're doing everything that they tell you to do. Your resume is tight, your cover letter is personalized, you're showing up to every networking event that you can find, and your inbox is still quiet. But here's what nobody is telling you. The job market is rough right now. That's not in your head. But there are 3 things that you can do this week that actually move the needle, and every one of them is backed by real research. Not opinions, not advice from your uncle, actual studies. And then there's one thing underneath all three that matters the most and more than any of it, and that's the part I really want you to leave with. Tip 1: Get a referral, even a weak one. Jobvite is one of the largest companies in the country that tracks hiring data for big employers, and they looked at where hires actually come from. Here's what their numbers say: only 7% of job applicants come through a referral, but those referrals account for around 40% of the people who actually get hired. Read that again. 7% of applications, 40% of the hires. The math is brutal. If you're applying cold, you're competing for whatever silver of jobs is left after the referrals get them first. Quick thing, before I give you the move, if you wanna keep talking to me about any of this after the video ends, I've built something. It's a free way to ask me follow-up questions at any time you want. The link is in the description. So before you blast another application into the void, ask yourself one question. Do I know anyone at this company, or do I know anyone who knows anyone? It does not have to be your best friend. It can be a colleague from 3 years ago that you haven't talked to in years. It can be your old boss's old boss. It can be the person that you went to grad school with. One short message says, I'm interested in this role at your company. Would you be willing to put in a word for me? That message will outperform 50 cold applications. Tip 2, I wanna share 2 pieces of research with you. The first one is from LinkedIn. LinkedIn has the largest dataset on job search behavior in the world, hundreds of millions of people. And here's what they found. Men and women view the same number of jobs, but women only apply to 20% fewer of them, 16% less likely to even click apply after looking at the posting. So women are screening themselves out before anyone else gets a chance to. The second piece of information is from a researcher who published their findings in Harvard Business Review. They surveyed over 100 professionals and asked them why didn't they apply for the jobs they were interested in. Here's what they found out. The number one reason qualified people don't apply for jobs is not what you think. It's not confidence. It's that they think the list of qualifications is a list of requirements. It's not a list of requirements. It's a wish list. Apply even when you don't meet every requirement. Hiring managers know they're not getting every box checked. They're looking for someone who can do the work, not someone who already does the work perfectly. If you're at 60% of what they're asking for, apply to the job. The description is just a starting place, not a final exam. Tip 3, use the actual words from the job posting in your resume. Here's why this matters. Most companies, including almost every big employer, will run your resume through a software filter before a human ever sees it. Harvard Business School ran a study on this. They surveyed 2,250 executives across the United States, the UK, and Germany. Here's what they found. 88% of those executives said their own hiring systems filter out qualified candidates because the resumes don't match the job description closely enough. 88% of the hiring managers know this is happening. They told Harvard that the system is screening out people who could do the job and nobody's changing it. So here's the move. Before you submit your application, do this. Pull up the job posting next to your resume. Find the exact words and phrases that the company uses to describe what they want. Then use those exact words on your resume. If they say project management, you say project management. If they say cross-functional collaboration, you say cross-functional collaboration. Use the words they use because you're gaming the system, because the algorithm is the first reader and it doesn't paraphrase. Okay, those 3 tips will help. Use them. But here's the thing underneath all of them. Every one of those tips is really the same tip. Get a referral because the people already know your work will vouch for it. You don't have to start from zero. Apply at 60% because the wish list is not a verdict on whether or not you're worthy. Use their language because you're communicating with the system on your own terms. Every single one of them is asking you to stop showing up like you need permission to be in the room. Here's what's actually happening when the stregs on. The longer you go without an offer, the more you start to believe that no means something about you. You walk into the next interview already convinced that you have to earn the right to be there. You answer questions like you're auditioning for permission to exist. You shrink your salary number. You laugh at jokes that aren't even funny. You agree with things that you don't actually agree with. You're not interviewing, you're begging, and every interviewer in the world can feel the difference. Here's what I want you to hear: your worth as a person and as a professional did not go down when the job market got hard. The market changed. You didn't. Your skills didn't disappear. Your experience didn't reset. The thing you know how to do is still the thing you know how to do. Think about it like an avocado. Stay with me. When I was a kid, I hated avocados. I could not stand them, but people kept buying them because the value of an avocado was never about whether I liked it or not. The avocado didn't shrink because I said no. Thank you. You don't shrink because the market said no this month. Your value doesn't move based on someone else's appetite. So when you walk into the next conversation, the next interview, the next coffee chat, walk in like that. Not arrogant, not pretending the search isn't hard, but clear. Clear that you have something specific to offer. Clear that the right room is the one that actually wants what you bring. Not every room is your room. That's not rejection. That's information. If you're tired of second-guessing yourself in your job search, the best next step is the free quiz on my site. It'll show you how you tend to lead under pressure, which matters because the way you lead yourself through a job search is the same way you'll lead a team on the other side of it. The link is in the description. You lead well. Now lead as yourself. I'm Dr. Cara. Connect to yourself first and then elevate and expand for those you lead. Until we connect again.