The day I realized I was writing resumes for robots not humans

I spent six months sending out 40+ applications and got exactly 2 callbacks. Then a recruiter friend asked to see my resume and she laughed at me. She said all those keywords I stuffed in there made it read like a cereal box back panel. She made me rewrite it like I was talking to a person at a networking event. Now I'm getting interviews but has anyone else had to unlearn all that "optimization" nonsense?

3 comments

3 Comments

annajenkins15h ago

And that's exactly what @jessej23 is talking about, the whole thing has turned into this weird two-headed monster where you have to pass the robot test first before a human even gets to read it. My neighbor works for a car dealership and he told me their whole hiring process is the same way now, they have software that filters out applications based on specific words and it's not just resumes either. It's like at the grocery store too, everything is optimized for the barcode scanner but the actual food quality gets worse, we're just building systems to feed other systems instead of people. So yeah I get what your recruiter friend was saying but you kind of have to play both games at once or you'll never get in the door.

jessej2315h ago

My cousin did recruiting for Amazon for four years and she told me the exact opposite thing. She said the first scan is all automated, and if you don't hit the right keywords from the job description, no human ever sees it. She helped me rewrite my resume with the exact phrases from the postings and my callback rate went from maybe 1 in 30 to like 1 in 8. I'm not saying write like a robot, but ignoring the system completely feels like shooting yourself in the foot.

aaronsullivan14h ago

Did you try making two versions? I had a similar situation a few years back and what finally worked for me was keeping a simple clean resume for when I could talk to someone directly, and a separate keyword-heavy one for online applications.