The Human Job Candidate

The Game Rejection is part of the game, unfortunately. Or, you could be applying to a ghost job , where a company isn't really hiring, but using the job listing as a front to show that "they're doing well".  There could be a computer reading your résumé/CV, that's full of qualifications that made you apply to the role, which doesn't see the right key words to push your résumé forward to the HR department's recruiter.  It could be a spam job listing on LinkedIn from H&R Block, for example, as one specific key word in your search brings up 28 pages of roles that don't even contain your key words from your search.  I promise you, that's a thing! What in my qualifications did not exactly align? Is there a perfect candidate? The elusive "we regret to inform you that we pursued another candidate for the role" is super vague, at best.  Yes, you read the bullet points.  Yes, they matched your qualifications.  Yes, you included a cover letter

Your Time and Efforts are Valuable Since November 2022, through the publication of this post, I had sent over 700 applications to a specific role type that catered to my résumé. While some applications received hits, a majority received rejections, or simple ghostings. While a few interview requests came in, and while I did take them, I had myself open to recruiters reaching out to see if I would align with a role they had in mind; some were internal and some were external recruiters. Meeting The Salary Expectations The first was from a company based in California, whose name I can't remember at the moment. The recruiter was internal, and seemed turned off when I gave her my salary range. During our "screening" call, she expressed frustration about the fact that she had to re-post the role several times, a few times with the salary, and a few times without. Needless to say, the times that she posted the role  with  the salary, she had very few—to almost no — applicants. S