Substandard Resume

Often the explanation for why you’re not hearing back from hiring managers and recruiters is the simplest: an unpolished resume. Your resume is your first opportunity to make an impression on potential employers and must convey a lot of information in its one or two pages. A stand-out resume is a powerful marketing tool—telling employers who you are, what you do, and how you add value to organizations that you’re part of. Simply put, a wow-worthy resume will have employers excited to invite you in for an interview.

Even if your resume hits all the right notes, showcasing your relevant skills and experience, small mistakes or poor formatting can result in an employer passing you over for another candidate. In addition to being a marketing tool, a resume is also a demonstration of your skills—typos, grammatical errors, and strange formatting speak volumes about your attention to detail and professionalism. A CareerBuilder survey found that 61% of employers will automatically dismiss a candidate for submitting a resume with a typo.

If you’re unsure how to write a resume that will win you interviews, the certified resume writers of SoCalResumes can help. A recent study found that hiring managers perceive candidates with professionally written resumes as more polished and more capable, and estimated their salary worth as 7% more.

Social Media Scrub

In this increasingly digital world, your digital profile plays an oversized role in whether you’re invited to an interview or offered a job. Recent research found that 70% of employers use social networking sites to research candidates during the hiring process, and 57% of those employers have eliminated a candidate as a result of content they discovered.

The best resume writers advise their clients to perform a social media scrub—auditing their social media accounts for inappropriate photos and negative status updates. Similarly, it’s recommended that job seekers use a professional-looking image for your profile photo.

Properly executed social media can work in a candidate’s favor: 43% of employers say they have seen something in posted content that made them hire someone.

Plodding Hiring Process

Sometimes the reason you haven’t heard back from a hiring manager or recruiter is outside of your control. At a business level, any number of snags can lead to a slowdown of the hiring process; for example, budget changes, hiring freezes, restructuring, or more pressing projects can all conspire to drag out the hiring of a candidate. Even simple things like a decision maker going on vacation can cause the hiring process to lag longer than expected.

If you haven’t heard back from a hiring manager, it’s acceptable to follow up with a simple email expressing your excitement for the position, enthusiasm for the company, and asking if they require any additional information from you. If it feels like a company is ignoring you or not valuing your time, it’s worth noting that the candidate experience often mirrors the employee experience.

Waiting on Another Candidate

The hiring process isn’t as linear as many job hunters imagine it to be. For example, a company might have an internal candidate in mind, but company policy requires them to keep the position open for a specific amount of time or interview a certain number of outside candidates. Similarly, the employer may have offered the job to another candidate and is waiting for an answer before closing the position—keeping you in limbo as a safety net in case their first choice falls through.

There is no shame in coming in second; sometimes it’s simply the result of an employer getting a lot of great candidates. In fact, making it that far along in the interview process is an indication that your resume and interview skills are sharp. Again, however, keep in mind that the way an employer treats you as a candidate will likely mirror how they’ll treat you as an employee.

Not Networking

Experts estimate that 70% to 85% of jobs are filled through networking. Developing a robust professional network not only helps float your resume to the top of a hiring manager’s pile, but they’re much more likely to respond to someone connected to the person sitting just a few cubes down from them. Similarly, your network can keep you in the loop of occurrences—like the hiring manager’s vacation or a shake-up of the HR department—that may slow down the hiring process.

The Takeaway

The most important thing to remember about the hiring process is that your job hunt isn’t over until you have an offer. Waiting to hear back from potential employers is often time consuming, but use that time wisely to keep polishing your resume, perfecting your digital profile, and building your network. If all’s quiet on the hiring front, consider contacting a resume writing service such as SoCalResumes to learn how they can give your job search a boost.