What are the chances of landing an interview for a former military pilot with 30 years of real-life leadership experience, a brand new business degree from an acclaimed university, and the charisma and confidence to go along with it? Just about as good as they get, right?
In reality, this person applied to 300 jobs over a five-month period without one single response.
I was just as surprised as you probably are when I spoke with Rusty, a real Jobscan user from Denver, Colorado.
The Resume Black Hole
When Rusty came out of the military with decades of strong leadership experience in his wake, he decided to go back and finish his college degree, knowing the combination of strong experience and education would make him an impressive job candidate. After two and a half years, he graduated with a business degree in Information Management.
Rusty estimates he applied for about 300 jobs between July and December of 2019.
Rusty started applying for jobs soon after his graduation last July, thinking that his search would be a quick one. To his surprise, months ticked by with not one response for an interview. Rusty estimates he applied for about 300 jobs between July and December of 2019.
Finally, in December, feeling defeated, Rusty decided he needed to take a few weeks off from his full-time job search.
“One of the things I was disheartened by was the lack of actionable information when it came to the job search,” he said.
During his break from applications, Rusty connected with Hire Heroes USA in an effort to find some motivation to help him push forward. While getting tips for improving his job search and writing a military to civilian resume, a coach with Hired Heroes suggested Jobscan.
Choosing the Right Resume Keywords
Speaking of his original resume, Rusty explained, “I had my resume tweaked and read by no less than 25 people.”
I hear this often from job seekers who are confused as to why they haven’t been getting interviews. The reason: a well-written resume is not the same as an ATS-optimized resume.
“Jobscan gave me the opportunity to tailor the resume and still look like myself.”
In the modern-day job search, resume optimization is about framing work experience in a way that applicant tracking systems can best interpret it, specifically through the use of resume keywords.
Using Jobscan’s scan tool, Rusty was able to build a resume that targeted his impressive experience and education at the job while appealing to the ATS. “It gave me the opportunity to tailor the resume, and still look like myself, but tailor it so the systems were picking it up,” he said.
“Lo and behold, where probably 300 [resumes] went unanswered, I started getting immediate action,” he told me, adding that of the first eight resumes he submitted using Jobscan, he heard back about five right away.
Soon, he landed a job in Cybersecurity, merging his technical and leadership experience with his new degree.
Resume Quality over Quantity
Of course, the process of optimizing resumes for each and every job takes time. “It takes a while,” Rusty said. “I would say on average, by the time I used your tool and optimized the resume, it probably would take me roughly two hours to have something ready to submit.”
As job seekers, the instinct is often to apply for as many jobs as possible, thinking that will yield the best odds. But when the mindset is shifted to spending more time applying to the best fits, things begin to change in the right direction. After all, it just takes one well-optimized resume landing in the hands of the hiring manager to get you your dream job.
Whether you’re a veteran or not, Jobscan helps translate your experience to the job you want, resulting in more requests for interviews. Try Jobscan today.
