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Recruiters are overwhelmed with applications. Most resumes are difficult to read, and up to 98% of applicants are not right for the job, so it takes time to figure out if the applicant is worth an interview. Due to a variety of workplace complications related to COVID, The Great Resignation, and then the mass layoffs that started in December 2023, the hiring world is in chaos, with great and terrible stories on both sides of the hiring desk.

The hiring process feels longer than ever before because hiring is expensive, so companies want to hire good matches who will actually stay at the company for a while. With so many applicants, this takes time.

A gap in your employment is not necessarily a turn-off. Hiring teams understand that COVID caused a lot of employment issues from 2020-2022 and that there have been mass layoffs since 2023. If you demonstrate your unique impact and results clearly on your resume, then hiring teams won't care as much about the gap.

Not necessarily. Having a lot of connections (in-person and on LinkedIn) definitely helps, but many executives have landed fantastic positions through job boards like Indeed, ExecuNet, and Ladders. Your next great job can come from anywhere, and therefore your job search should be based on a multi-faceted approach. There is no one trick or path to landing a great job.

So, take as many paths as possible to employment: alert friends, talk to colleagues and friends on LinkedIn, search out executive recruiters, and review job boards (and set up job alerts).

There is no such things as an “ATS resume.” Scammers use this terms to scare people into buying a better from them. The scammers are suggesting that your resume needs work in order to “get through” the company’s hiring software and into the hands of people. But that’s not the way the ATS works.

ATS stands for Applicant Tracking System, and there are many companies that make them and there are many optional features within them. The ATS helps the recruiters and hiring teams manage applicants for one or more jobs.

The ATS may offer features that help the user find applicants based on specific search criteria. In that case, it’s a binary search; you’re either in or you’re out. Someone on the hiring team can command searches for keywords (sometimes using AI) or someone can use a search bar to manually search. Either way, if your resume doesn’t have the keywords the way that the hiring team searches, you’re out, even if you think that your resume is strong and you’re perfect for the job.

For some older ATS systems, graphics, cells, unstable templates, and ornate formatting can make it harder for the system to parse the information. This could also lead to your resume being relegated to the bottom of the applicant queue if the ATS provides a ranking feature and the user uses it.