Dear Cristin: I'm not getting job interviews...
Having a hard time getting interviews in your job search? Read on to hear my advice.
Hi Cristin,
I have been applying, and sadly, I'm not getting a lot of traction. I'll continue to send out applications and see what happens. If there's still no progress, maybe I need to tweak the resume. Honestly, I don't think getting a customer success job is rocket science, but I wonder why it's so hard to land an interview.
Any tips for what I can try next?
Regards,
Desperately Seeking (Customer) Success
Hi Desperately Seeking (Customer) Success,
First and foremost, congratulations for putting your resume out there in front of people! Not only do you have something ready to send, but you're actually sending it! And you're seeking help now – you're crushing it!
It's also a really competitive market out there, for customer success, for SaaS roles, and multiply that difficulty if searching for remote. So it's very normal to be having a tough time right now.
I have a question and two thoughts for you.
Question: How manys jobs have you applied to?
I ask because the number a person needs to apply to has greatly increased in The Great Resignation. Pre-Great Resignation, we would test with 25. Now it's 50, and that's only true if you're applying for the same role type / similar company type. If you're generalizing a bit, you will need to do more than 50.
So if you haven't done 50 applications yet, don't count your resume out.
Thought #1: When in doubt, head back to the job postings and make sure you're meeting what they're asking for and you're using their language.
This is a common problem – you're meeting a portion of the job duty asks and expecting the reader to understand you've got the rest of the experience. Fill in the gaps for them, and use their language, not yours, to describe that experience.
Thought #2: Try to avoid applying for anything over 100 applicants. I don't think it's a good use of time. If you're not a perfect match for the posting – and pivoters (career changers) usually aren't – you're not going to stand out from the perfect match candidates. And if there's 1K applicants to a posting, it's likely there will be dozens of perfect matches.
You can also turn on the "under 10 applicants" option on LinkedIn job search and focus on low applicant positions.
Thank you for reaching out and best of luck!
My best,
Cristin
P.S. If you have your own question for me, go to this link to submit yours.