Ramit Sethi says mass-sending thousands of resumes doesn't work because most job seekers skip the hard part first. Start shallow: research specific companies and roles, validate the salary fits your needs, refine your resume and cover letter. Only then scale up your outreach.
One thing that drives me absolutely nuts is hearing someone or a news report about someone in their 20s saying, I did everything they told me to and I just can't find a job. I sent out 2,000 resumes in the last month and not one person has responded to me. Well, stop sending resumes out then. Obviously, you're doing something wrong. Here's the truth. We do what we know. Now, this person who sent out 2,000 resumes, I feel sorry for you and I know that the economy sucks, but if you're sending out your 2010th resume, is that really going to make a difference? Or is there perhaps something broken in your chain earlier in the process? Let me offer some suggestions. Your resume sucks. Your cover letter is not good. You're applying to all the wrong companies. You don't have the right language or messaging in any of your applications. All of those are things that could dramatically improve this person's application process. But instead, we do what we know now. It's really interesting to me that sometimes subtle changes can have a huge effect on the rest of our lives. I remember, for example, cutting an onion. First of all, I don't know how to cook worth a damn. I used to have this excuse that, oh, I'm so busy, I'm so busy. Well, there are times in my life where I have not been busy and I still didn't cook. So my mom is totally on my case to learn how to cook. And then when I finally told her, look, I'm just not going to cook, but I really want some home cooked food, you know what her answer was? You need a wife. I was like, man, I like the way you think, Mom. Anyway, she once I was at home and she said, can you cut this onion? So I'm sitting there cutting this onion and she looks at me and she's like, what are you doing? And I said, I'm cutting the onion. And she said, no, no, no, let me show you how to do it a better way. And she showed me how to properly cut an onion. And I was amazed because first of all, I would have never known how to cut an onion for my entire life had my mom not sat there and showed me. Now, the second thing that was amazing was, I'm going to have the residual results of that for the rest of my life. Just think about that. The same thing is true for us in our career search. So this person who sent out 2,000 resumes likely has no idea that he's simply playing the entirely wrong game. He has no idea. He thinks if I just try harder. If I just send another thousand resumes, that'll get him. And of course, that almost never works. So what can we learn about this? In Dream Job, we take this approach of testing shallow before digging deep. And let me give you an example. Many of us, when we start our job search, the first thing we do is we just create this random resume with our accomplishments, and then we just start sending them out. Oh, here, let me just send them out. Send them out. Let me go on all these websites. Send them out. And then we wait. Well, where are the job offers? I don't know. It doesn't work. Especially in a competitive economy where everyone else is doing the exact same thing. Why would you expect to get chosen? So I find it baffling that people jump to the resume part of a job search when that is almost one of the last things you need to do. Why do we do it? Because it's easy and it's what we know. Instead, there are about eight categories of things to do in total. And what we like to do in Dream Job is start shallow. So imagine it's category 1, 2, 3 4. 12 and 34 are pretty much research. So they're not as sexy as sending out 5,000 resumes, but they actually work. So what we like to do is start with 1, 2, 3, 4, do a bunch of research, tightly understand the loop. And when you get that down, when you really know, this is my dream job, I know that there's demand. I know that they can pay the salary that I want. I know that there are openings. Then you get to things like resume cover, letter, interviewing, negotiation. Now there's something else beyond just going shallow. Just notice that the person who did the resume, they went skipped 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, went directly into 6, and then went deep. They just started sending out thousands and thousands of resumes. That's not the way to go. They don't even know if that's the right approach, and they've gone deep. So what we like to do is start shallow. In other words, quickly figure out your research process, your resume process, and then once you've nailed it, once you've got validation, in other words, once you've sent out 10 resumes and you've gotten back three to four, five responses, then you can send out more and more and more. So start shallow before you dig deep. That's one of the approaches we explore in great detail in Dream Job.
