Reported notes on how applications are really read, written from the side of the table most advice never reaches. Where we use a figure, we say where it came from. Nothing is promised that cannot be kept.
A job description is assembled, not written. A template supplies the furniture, recruiting supplies the countable requirements, and somewhere around bullet six a hiring manager describes their actual Tuesday. Those two or three awkward lines are the job. Here is how to find them in ninety seconds.
Read the note →Nobody opens a role for no reason. Somebody left, the work outgrew the team, or they are trying something they have not done before — and each of those wants a visibly different candidate. A backfill wants safety. A new problem wants nerve. How to tell which one you are looking at before you write a word.
Read the note →The most repeated sentence in career advice tells you to lower a bar. It never tells you which of the forty tabs open in your browser deserve the next two hours. Why volume stopped working the moment it became free to everybody, and a stopping rule built from the first two parts of this series.
Read the note →Your application is read several times before a person sees it. Where a machine actually makes the call, how rarely anyone is told, and the short list of things a candidate can still control.
Read the note →A chatbot can only polish the words you already typed. Your resume was never suffering from bad verbs, it was suffering from missing substance. What changed, why smoother now works against you, and the questions to ask yourself before you let any tool near the page.
Read the note →A note a week, each on something we have actually seen decide an application. If you want to argue with one of them, or you think we got a number wrong, write to us and we will correct it in public.