The job hunt has a lot of mystery. You apply, don’t hear back, and are left to wonder why. Was it the application you sent? Your lack of experience? Did anyone even look at it? There’s rarely a way to know. Sometimes, people get a job from blasting out tons of generic resumes.

Sometimes, people spend a lot of time tailoring an app and don’t get a job. It’s easy to look at this and think, “Well I might as well just plod through doing the bare minimum because it seems like luck anyway.”

I empathize. But it’s definitely not luck. The job hunt is not a numbers game, where you spray and pray as many resumes as possible. Because on the other end of every application is a real human making tough decisions about who to interview. Your goal is to get that one real person’s attention. If you truly want to increase your luck, You can’t do it looking like everyone else!

Increase your luck by sending something different

If they have robots and ATS systems in between you and that person, then to win on your job hunt you need to enter through the side door and crash the party. Get in front of the human decision maker with something unique they won’t forget!

There are lots of mysteries and things you can’t control. But you CAN control whether you send the right person something that will get their attention or whether you blend in with the stack of 250 resumes.

If you do, you are 10x ing your probability of getting an interview and an offer. At least.

Do you want to leave everything to chance, or reduce the number of things left to chance to a minimum?

I’d say the latter, and to do so, take the time to make something special for each company and send it directly to the hiring manager. Do this 10 times and you will get better results faster than 100 resumes.

For months I was struggling to fit my non-traditional experiences into a resume and it simply didn’t work. With CareerHackers, I was able to go from pitch to interview to offer within 24 hours. It felt like magic.~GEORGE GARCIA