As a recruiter, I’m always getting people asking me for advice about their job search. That’s fine with me. I enjoy being helpful. If they’ve gotten that far, the conversation usually commences with a discussion of phone interview questions. However, a majority of the time, they are really asking because they happen to have been trying for months and can’t get an interview.

Many people will begin asking me questions about what’s wrong with regards to their resume, given that they feel there must be some trouble with their resume or background that is keeping them from getting a call back from the company’s human resources department. Their conclusions are reasonable based upon everything they’ve heard. They have followed the standard wisdom by sending in resumes to email addresses as instructed on job postings, or they have submitted resumes through job boards. That’s the way the employers tell everyone it works.

The thing is, that resume submission just happens to be the lowest result yielding activity involved with job searching. That shocks many people who don’t work with hiring or staffing. I tell people that they are putting all of their effort straight into the activity that delivers the smallest amount of results, and it shocks them. So, I’ve got to supply them with some background and explain.

I generally skip bringing up certain technology factors that have an impact but aren’t the big story. For example, there are many automatic document scanning programs used that search countless submission looking for certain keywords. If the correct keywords don’t show within the resume, then not a single person ever sees it. However, you never know if the person in recruiting vetting the applications even knows the right keywords to enter into the search field. That can especially be true for very technical positions.

My explanation usually starts by speaking about my average experience with a job posting. When I create an advertisement for a position, regardless of how detailed the ad or strict the qualifications required, many hundreds of people apply during the first day. So, after an hour or so, there is a giant digital pile of paperwork for me to examine. Additionally, people are calling the office, other interview are going on, contracts are being negotiated, and other searches are happening all simultaneously. The bottom line is, that like most professionals, I am in a time crunch.

So, when it comes to that pile of resumes, the majority of people choose a point and begin. It may be the first submitted. It could possibly be the last in at the top of the email, or maybe it’s somewhere in the middle. Usually then, they just scan through the resumes until they find 3 to 5 solid candidates to interview. After that, the review process stops, and the phone interview process moves forward with those 3 to 5. All the additional applicant’s files collect dust and don’t get touched unless they can’t hire one of the ones previously identified.

Following a shocked period of silence ,as the other party processes that information, I then move forward to discuss better alternatives for job hunting. So, don’t believe that the reason why you aren’t getting interviews or phone calls is due to something lacking in the substance or form of your resume. Often, an ideal person for a position is simply lost in the realities of the time constraints of the human resource function.

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