Employers And ATSs Don't Want To Hear Your Career Story

Recruiters and hiring managers don't care about your career story.

Yet, this is what nearly all job seekers have been taught to communicate in your resumes and during interviews.

But why should a recruiter or hiring manager care about your career story?

A successful resume and interview are not about you ... it's not your story. Instead, a successful resume and interview is about the hiring manger and their current individual priority problems. You're the character in the story that helps them solve these problems.

ATSs don't screen because of your story. They screen out candidates who aren't qualified, less qualified (and many of the qualified candidates also), based on both published and hidden criteria. In most jobs, over 50% of the search criteria are not published in the job description.

A hiring manager isn't interviewing you because they want to hear your story. They want to see if you can meet their needs.

When you tell your career story, you're hoping that of all of the many things you've done in your career, the ones you choose to talk about, magically happen to meet that hiring manager's needs. The odds of this magically occurring are low, because you're talking about what's important to you, rather than what's important to the hiring manager.

Here are 3 reasons employers and ATSs don't care about your career story:

Your career story doesn't earn you interviews: Hiring managers have choices of many qualified candidates today. They have the ability to choose to interview candidates who demonstrate they understand and have already solved the hiring manager's most important current problems.

In 2024, employers expect 5-10 qualified candidates to apply for each interview spot they offer (so they expect 50-100 qualified candidates competing for 10 interview spots), plus all the unqualified ones. It may have been enough during times of candidate shortages (2015-2019 and the first half of 2022) to rely on qualifications and transferrable skills, but not in 2024, which features the exact opposite environment of job shortages.

Candidates who are qualified, or have transferrable skills appear average, at best, when competing against 50-100 other qualified candidates for 10 interview spots.

Hiring decisions aren't made because of your career story either: When hiring managers have many qualified candidates to choose from, they almost always choose a candidate they believe will help them improve team performance, a candidate they believe has the lowest risk, or the lowest cost option.

Hiring managers know that their career advancement, bonus, and annual raise depends on their team's performance. When they have many choices, hiring managers see the opportunity to hire someone that can raise their team performance, helping them to exceed goals - This will improve their income and career.

At the same time, hiring managers don't want to miss the unique opportunity to choose between so many qualified candidates to raise performance.??They recognize that hiring an underperforming employee, or paying too much for an average performing employee (so they'll have a smaller remaining budget to attract top performers), will hold back their team performance.?

What's important to you is rarely what an individual hiring manager needs: Your career story consists of things that are important to you, things you're proud of. To a hiring manager, these appear as cool projects and learning experiences.

But unless the things that are important to you also relate to meeting the individual hiring manager's goals, solving their problems, or helping them improve performance, why should they care about your career story? The chances of your story meeting an individual hiring manager's needs are low - You probably don't even understand their hiring needs, because most aren't in the published job description ... so you guess (with low odds you'll guess correctly).

Good thing there are more effective methods than telling your career story to get your resume/application through ATSs, get more interviews, advance in the hiring process, and turn interviews into offers.

Want me to show you?

During my next free Resume Webinar, I'll teach you resume/job search strategies to get you through/around the ATS more often, get more interviews, and find a great job faster. I'll show you how to get through and around Applicant Tracking System and human screening, so you can stop being blocked for jobs when you're qualified, and find your next job faster in 2024. While we're at it, I'll show you ways to double your interviews, whether you're currently employed, unemployed, age 40+, changing careers, or have other job search challenges.

Join me for my next free Resume Webinar (enroll at https://x.resumewebinar.com/Registration for no charge) and learn how to accelerate your job search, so you can find your next job faster in 2024.

--

#jobs #resume #career