One candidate with all the qualifications gets passed up. Another, seemingly less qualified, candidate gets the job. Why does this happen?
While it may be true, as in the old poem, that "if you compare yourself with others, you will become vain and bitter," a certain amount of comparison is necessary to determine what went wrong with that "so-perfect resume" you spent days or even weeks polishing to a blinding sheen. You dedicated more time to that resume than you did to the pursuit of some potential lovers, remember? Carefully honing each word, each phrase, until you had a missive of near Jeffersonian quality.
You examined every word, making certain none were wasted. "Words gain power the more sparsely they are used." Remember that rule from your high school English Comp classes? "Make each word do the work of two." That was another guideline hammered into you, perhaps (if you're old enough) punctuated with a rap across the knuckles.
So what happened? Why did the "idiot" (and they're all idiots, compared to you) get the job over you? After all, you had the required experience, the education, the overall know-how to perform the job well. But they hired some idiot who couldn't possibly match you.
Maybe the idiot wasn't such an idiot after all. Maybe the person who got hired went to the trouble of having a professional write his/her resume. "But resume writers are all so expensive," you protest. First of all, professional writers' prices vary somewhat, so you may be pleasantly surprised to learn a professional's services aren't as far out of reach as you believed. And anyway, you're still pounding the pavement earning nothing, while that so-called "idiot" is getting paid for the job you wanted, the job you're sure you could do so much better.
Secondly, professional writers (the good ones, at any rate) know how to put together a resume that can get through the gauntlet of three readers that every resume must pass. "Three readers?" you ask. "Why can't I write well enough to pass three readers?"
Ah, but these three readers have three separate agendas, and only two of the readers are human beings.
The first reader will be an HR clerk, who may or may not know anything about the job your resume addresses. S/he has been instructed to sift out obviously bad resumes and skim the remainder for certain experience and other criteria as directed by the hiring manager. Out of the approximately 400 resumes that will come in for this one position, some 300 inappropriate ones will be eliminated in this step.
The second reader will be the machine, also known as ATS, Applicant Tracking System. Its function is to scan each resume for keywords, the industry-related language that has become so essential to success for a winning resume. The more keywords the machine finds, the better the chances the resume will have of reaching the third reader.
The final reader is the hiring manager, who will select the best 20-25 resumes as sorted by ATS. This individual's goal is to determine who is worth talking to. S/he will judge appearance (does the resume grab attention?), value to the company (does the resume portray you as responsive to the company's need?), and results you propose (do you demonstrate measurable challenges, actions, and results?). Before this person is finished reading your resume, you want him/her to be looking for your phone number.
So maybe that other "idiot" who got the job wasn't such an idiot after all.
