364 Licks

How many licks does it take to reach the center of a Tootsie Pop? That was the question asked in the popular television commercial from 1970. A more recent puzzling question has been, how many applications does it take to get a job interview & job offer? A professional friend of mine was recently laid off and has an excellent work history working at one of the top employers in our area. Generally, you’d expect her resume to get the attention of most any company she applied to. Unfortunately, that was not the case. Over a six-month period (196 days), she applied to approximately 100 jobs. That works out to be almost 1 application every other day. From this she was asked to interview only 5 times. That is a 5% response rate in the current market for someone highly qualified.

If you are perplexed on how it’s possible for 95 applications to be overlooked, consider this:

• There may be a shared email inbox that various people monitor for direct applications. This can be overlooked and will fill up with applicants. Depending on the person’s methodology for reading through email, they could be reading the most recent email first. In this instance, if there are 100 applicants after you applied, it may be days or weeks before your application is seen.
• The company may be short staffed or busy focusing on activities that are prioritized over screening applicants for job interviews.
• Some companies may have decided to invest in an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) and applications are now aggregated in a new software tool that may have a learning curve that no one has had time to figure out.
• Sometimes companies intentionally leave the job posting up even when there is not an opening.

Of the 5 interview requests, 2 of them originated from the company liking something they saw on her resume. That’s a 2% response! These 2 interviews did not result in a job offer. The other 3 interviews were because she knew someone who worked at those companies, and they recommended her to be interviewed. She ended up taking a job from one of these interviews.

Just like recruiting has changed, so has applying to jobs. Job seekers need to be more tactical and develop a simple strategy that focuses on using their personal/professional network. Ask someone you know at a company that you are interested in working at to introduce you to the hiring manager. Leverage past co-workers, managers, alumni, and family & friends. If there is an industry event or career fair that is convenient to attend, go and try to meet the key people in hiring roles or apply directly at the event. Job seekers need to be strategic and stand out from the crowd of applicants. How will you get to the center?

Are you still wondering how many licks it takes to get to the center? A group of engineering students from Purdue University reported that its licking machine, modeled after a human tongue, took an average of?364 licks?to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop. Twenty of the group's volunteers assumed the licking challenge-unassisted by machinery-and averaged 252 licks each to the center.