(highlight:: Everything I’ve been describing so far assumes that the person submitting the resume is what I call “tracked” - they are an individual that went to high school-then-university and then got into relevant-to-the-new-potential-position work and maintained it right up until the date of their application.
This particular golden child thus can submit a resume that is parsable by even the dimmest of bulbs as being clearly relevant to the job. If the job is piano-polishing, there’s no confusion that they are anything but a piano-polisher, and every entry makes that clear.
But say you are trying to change your career trajectory a little (or, god forbid, a lot) - what are your chances of squeaking by HR now? I have like 15 years of poverty experience that says “basically none”; like, I know it’s possible, I know people have done it. But going the conventional route with a weird resume is automatically in the “send out hundreds or thousands of applications, hope you get lucky” realm of things.
Again, this isn’t supposed to be me calling out hiring managers and bosses everywhere - I’m not sure they have a choice. But that doesn’t change the fact that limiting yourself to resume-first hiring processes is about the worst deal you could possibly take - the fact that it feels normal doesn’t mean it’s good.)
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(highlight:: Everything I’ve been describing so far assumes that the person submitting the resume is what I call “tracked” - they are an individual that went to high school-then-university and then got into relevant-to-the-new-potential-position work and maintained it right up until the date of their application.
This particular golden child thus can submit a resume that is parsable by even the dimmest of bulbs as being clearly relevant to the job. If the job is piano-polishing, there’s no confusion that they are anything but a piano-polisher, and every entry makes that clear.
But say you are trying to change your career trajectory a little (or, god forbid, a lot) - what are your chances of squeaking by HR now? I have like 15 years of poverty experience that says “basically none”; like, I know it’s possible, I know people have done it. But going the conventional route with a weird resume is automatically in the “send out hundreds or thousands of applications, hope you get lucky” realm of things.
Again, this isn’t supposed to be me calling out hiring managers and bosses everywhere - I’m not sure they have a choice. But that doesn’t change the fact that limiting yourself to resume-first hiring processes is about the worst deal you could possibly take - the fact that it feels normal doesn’t mean it’s good.)
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(highlight:: There’s a reason people sometimes get very serious about networking; for the most part, that’s how good jobs are found. And in defense of the employers of the world, it generally takes very little to shake them out of their funk - a word from a person they trust is often enough, as is some small amount of novelty in approach. It’s not like they love Indeed-style hiring; as far as I know, they hate it too. But they lack options.
I think the main takeaway here is just how shocked I am to remember how bad hiring as a whole is on the applicant side. Every part of how we do it is geared to give companies an advantage at often significant costs to applicants; there’s no place in the “conventional” path to getting a job that indicates anything close to an even power dynamic. It’s in your best interest (and mine, at the moment) to do anything you can do to get around it.)
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