Spray And Pray Keeps Your Resume Away From Hiring Managers

A winning strategy is betting big on opportunities with the best odds, not the worst.

Most job seekers who want to find a job quickly ramp up the number of jobs they apply to ... what recruiters call "Spray?and?Pray" (applying online, increasing the volume, and hope you get lucky).

Spray?and?Pray?works poorly in the highly competitive job market we see today (70M+ candidates competing for 9.6M+ advertised jobs). It doesn't work in a competitive job market, because you keep doing more of what's not working ... but expecting that it will all of a sudden work, because you got lucky against many other qualified competitors. It's like expecting to win Lotto by buying hundreds of millions of lottery tickets.

As a career coach, I hear this all the time from job seekers who have received advice from career professionals to just send more resumes.

These candidates don't see that the odds of getting lucky are too low to do the same thing over and over, while hoping for different results. They don't see that applying to any job you think "I could do that" will generate fewer (and worse quality) interviews than a focused approach of investing more time in the opportunities where you have a strategic advantage.

Think about it this way ... when an employer has a high number of choices of who they can hire, why would they want to hire someone that applies to many jobs randomly? Instead, employers look for someone who is excited to work specifically for their own company.

That's one reason employers use Applicant Tracking Systems, making it easy for employers to screen out spray and pray candidates:

• ATSs match based on exact words and phrases, verbatim - They don't count common meanings or synonyms as a match.
• Employers get so many qualified applicants competing for jobs today, that they screen out resumes that are an 80% match or less (based on exact words and phrases).
• If you get through an ATS, a human reviewer can tell in less than 10 seconds if your resume is spray and pray, because nothing matches their search criteria.

While outplacement and most career coaches/authors teach?spray?and?pray?job search strategies, in reality, sending a high volume of resumes is a big disadvantage. When there are a high number of qualified applicants, the candidates who can display a deep subject matter expertise in solving specific problems nearly always win.

Additionally, sending your?resume?to your contacts, asking your friends if they know of any openings, or finding openings online and sending your?resume?directly to the hiring manager works poorly. Instead these underperforming networking strategies get your?resume?directed to the ATS that you've tried to avoid.

Why would you waste your time trying to "Spray?and?Pray" your efforts to get employer attention?

Instead, let me show you how to take advantage of the 2023 job market, so you can find a great job faster. I'll teach you these and other resume/job search strategies to make your search work so fast you can cut your job search in half. And that's even if you're unemployed, over 40, changing careers, or have other tough job search problems.

I help people solve the most difficult job search problems, including job search acceleration, getting past ATSs, ageism, remote positions, product/job function/career/industry/ geographic change, unemployment, "bouncy" recent career path, job search turnaround, seeking raise/promotion, industry in decline/consolidation, long term gaps, family leave, or other of the most challenging job search issues.

Join me for my next free Resume Webinar (enroll at https://x.resumewebinar.com/register for no charge) and learn how to accelerate your job search, so you can find your next job faster in 2023.

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