For a while there, my job hunt had exactly one move. Take my resume. Send it to everyone. Repeat until tired.
I called it “applying”. A more honest word would be “spamming.”
I’d fire off the same resume to twenty jobs in one night and feel like a machine. Look at me go. Twenty applications! Surely one of these sticks.
None of them stuck.
Turns out sending the same generic resume to every job is like using the exact same opening line on twenty first dates. Techincally you showed up. But you’re not really trying, and people can tell.
So I changed it up.
Now I actually read the job post. The whole thing, then I tweak my resume to fit what that job is asking for. If they want someone who can do a thing, and I’ve done the thing, I make sure it’s right there where they can see it. Wild concept, I know.
Same with cover letters. I used to think cover letters were a scam nobody read. And maybe some don’t get read. But now I write a real one for each job. I say why I want that job, at that company. Not just “a job, any job, please, I’m begging you.” It just takes way longer. I send way fewer.
Here’s the funny part.
I’m still getting passed up, Still getting the “we decided to move forward with another canidate” email. That part did not magically fix itself.
But something felt different. When I get a no now, at least I know I gave it a real shot. I’m not throwing darts in the dark and hoping one lands. I’m actually aiming. And a few of these have gotten further than anything I didn back in my spray-and-pray days.
Case in point. Recently I had one that actually went somewhere. Passed the first round. Then passed the second panel round, sitting across from a whole group of people deciding my fate at the same time. Nerve-wracking, sure. But I walked out feeling like I belonged in the room.
I still don’t know how it’ll land. Honestly, it could go either way. But “either-way” is a huge step up from “straight to the no pile.”
So yeah, fewer applications, more effort. And for the first time in a while, a real maybe.
Progress is weird. Sometimes it doesn’t look like a yes, it looks like a maybe. And right now, I’ll take it.