I recently took a week of PTO from my job and while I spent a lot of time relaxing and skiing, I spent a couple hours looking for what other opportunities were available on the job market. I applied to about 30 jobs in total, 20 of which were local and another 10 which were elsewhere in the country. In a week, I had 8 interviews lined up.
I have a pretty close-knit group of friends which I tend to play video/board games with regularly. Most of whom are looking for their first "big" job or are looking for better opportunities. When I told them I had lined up so many interviews after just one week, they asked for my advice on how I was able to have such a high success rate. After briefly talking to them, I realized I had taken my knowledge of statistics for granted again. This post is a quick run-down on my theories to increase your interview rate when applying for jobs.
Keep Yourself Together
Its not uncommon for people who are looking for jobs to be in a state of limbo and not effectively taking care of themselves. I look at job hunting as a serious job. In the work place, it is expected that you work a minimum of 40 hours a week, commonly from 8 am-5 pm. If you're jobless, why should it be any different? Wake up, follow your morning routine like you had a job, put on real clothes (not you stained sweats), and make sure you have started your job hunt activities no later than 8 am and expect to work through 5 pm.
If you have a part-time job, great! This is already helping you stay within a routine, but its also important that this is a part-time job (if possible). Ensure that you are not working more than 20 hours a week so that you can spend the other 20 hours actively applying to jobs. If you do this, you will also be better off, because guess what, other people are slackers:
That being said, it is also important to take care of your mental health. It's not surprising that depression is rampant within NEETs. While holding yourself to working standards will help with keeping a positive mental state, it's also important to take breaks. Now I am not talking about a two-hour break in the middle of a Monday when you are suppose to be working, I mean take weekends just like you would if you were working a salaried position (I recommend taking Friday and Saturday as your weekend! You'll see why soon!).
The Real Insider Secrets
Okay, now that the boring stuff is over with, lets focus on the interesting information. While I did not perform any of the analyses myself, below are a slew of statistics and tips which I have found to be fairly accurate from my own experience. I tend to follow these rules myself as much as is possible. A huge shout out to Talent.works for performing a lot of the below analysis!
Lets start with the not-so-big shocker to those who are looking for their first big job:
Congrats, the cards are already stacked against you! A dilemma right? How do you get a starting job when starting jobs require previous job experience? I recommend trying to do some consulting work or work part-time in the most relevant position possible to help acquire some additional work experience and, while doing so, apply those cool skills you picked up in school. I also highly recommend grabbing a few books specific for your desired job and start applying what you are learning there to your part-time gig. This will allow you to highlight those new skills on your resume.
SPEAKING OF RESUMES! People care way too much about resume styles and formatting. You know why? Two reasons: the average job opening attracts 250 applications per posting and because these people were also required to go through the same crap to get their job and now expect you to meet those same requirements. Your resume needs to be slick, easy to read, highlighting keywords, looking like everyone else's (but different!) so that the recruiter will spend more than 3 seconds looking at it, and then have some actually meaningful content for when they decide its worth spending fifteen seconds on it. Seriously, though, your resume is one in a huge sea, only two percent of applicants are called on average for first round recruiter interviews. look at this:
To help combat this and put you in the interviewed subsection, here are my pro tips:
The length of your resume really matters. It doesn't matter if you have twenty years' work experience. Better to have less detail and stay within optimal word counts than to increase the length of your resume.
List your work experience as your own. Even though you worked on a team and "helped" on the project, it doesn't help you get hired. If you worked on it and where primarily responsible, own it. The things you owned are the things you want to highlight. If you only put a little bit of work into it, but it was mostly someone else's work, don't put it down at all.
Use numbers and objective information to show the impact you made. Saying, "Improved site layout and increased interactions" is way less impressive than saying, "Improved site interactions by 37% by editing layout and validating using A/B testing using Adobe Target". While numbers are helpful, it is also very important to include the names of specific software, methodologies, and skills that are related to your desired job.
Include a Keyword section. More than 75% of talent managers use some form of recruiting software to help weed out a large percentage of the initial job applicants. The significantly larger majority of talent mangers reported cutting everything which does not fall into the top 10% as defined by the automation software. If your information is scraped and does not include the keywords, you will not even be looked at by a human. Also, don't assume that all the software being utilized is good; more than 47% of companies use software which is more than seven years old. Thus, keep your outputs to basic formats like .doc, docx, or .pdf.
Remove the Objective Section of your resume. The objective section (a paragraph placed near the top to explain who you are and what you do) does not provide the value in the current recruiting process that objective work experience and the keyword section does. No one is taking the time to read these sections for the most part and thus should be removed to include more important information. That is, unless you are a writer.... Liz.
Add color! While it's important to make your resume look like everyone else's, it's also important to highlight key factors on your page and add a little personality. Color has been shown to help lure peoples eyes to specific points on the page and also reduces boredom. That being said, you probably should avoid making your resume look like a peacock (unless you are a graphic designer and can pull that off). I like to think of color like the tie clip, it just adds a little something.
I have tried to follow the above to the best of my own ability. You can check out how I have created my resume here.
There is a Best Time to Apply?!
While having the perfect resume helps, it's also important to make sure that you are optimizing your submission times. People get tired throughout the day and priorities inevitably change throughout the week. As a result, it's important to submit your resumes when people are fresh and most attentive to those little details you added.
Let Friday and Saturday be your weekend. The below image clearly shows that applying on a Monday gives you a leg up on competition and that there is really no point to applying on a Friday and Saturday. Applying such that your resume is at the top of the list on the days recruiters are looking is just another way to increase the time they spend on you.
The Early Bird Gets The Worm. We all fade throughout the day... especially recruiters.
Apply within the first two days that a job is posted. Technically, applying within the first four days is recommended by Talent.work to increase your probability of getting an interview by 64%, but jumping on it even earlier has worked for me. Applying while the job is still at the top of everyone's mind will not only increase the odds that you are looked at, but it also reduces the probability that the company hasn't been fatigued by the position.
I also highly recommend applying directly on the company's website if at all possible, rather than through job boards. Use the job boards to identify jobs which have been posted most recently with skills and aspects you find desirable, but then go directly to the companies website and apply through their portal. This may not always be possible, as jobs are commonly hidden behind a recruiting firm that has been hired by the company. If this is the case, apply directly on the associated recruiting firms website.
Choosing which Jobs to Focus
Choosing the right jobs makes all the difference. Really read the job descriptions posted. If they are vague, they are probably not what you are looking for. If they sound too good to be true, they probably are. Most entry-level jobs are going to have a lot of painful busy work attached to them and you will hate it. However, that work mostly lasts for a couple of months until your manager thinks you have a decent understanding of the company. As result, jobs that look like they are overall good fits but then concern you after mentioning a few small sections of busy work (or something similar are) could likely be your best candidates.
Look for jobs within 2-3 years of your experience level. Naturally, you probably don't have 3+ years of experience like I mentioned at the top, but if you look for work that is with 2-3 years of experience, you increase your probability of getting an interview.
Don't have all the necessary skills listed on that 3 year stretch application? No problem.
Yes, it may actually be easier to get that job than you thought! The key is making sure your resume doesn't get lost to a computer due to lack of keywords and inappropriate length, using strong assertive language, and listing your jobs at the best times for recruiters.
Again, a huge thanks to Talent.works for doing a lot of the above research and creating the graphics! You have definitely made my life easier.