u/Fresh-Blackberry-394

I want to say upfront that this one is personal for a lot of people and I mean everything with a lot of respect for anyone going through it.

I’ve been in the career space for a long time now. Used to be a recruiter yes I know, I know lol. Left that behind and now I spend my days working with job seekers and writing their resumes. So what I’m about to say doesn’t come from something I read. It comes from real conversations with real people going through this right now.

Everyone talks about the financial side of unemployment. Nobody really talks about what it does to you when your whole circle is still employed and you’re the only one who isn’t. That’s a very specific kind of lonely and almost nobody talks about it. That’s what this post is really about.

1.Every social plan suddenly has a price tag you’re doing the math on in a way you never had to before. And you start quietly declining things without explaining why.

2.People stop asking how the search is going. Not because they stopped caring. Because they genuinely don’t know what to say anymore.

3.You start telling people you’ve been busy because the truth is something you’re not ready to hand to everyone.

4.Someone in the group complains about their job and you sit there and nod and say nothing.

5.You have a rehearsed answer for when people ask what you’ve been up to. You give it every time because the real one is too heavy for casual conversation.

6.The friendships that ran on work routines the lunch plans, the after work drinks start fading quietly. Nobody really acknowledges it.

7.You watch someone in your circle get promoted, buy a house, go on a trip and you like the post and close your phone and sit with something you don’t quite have a name for.

8.You start dreading “so what have you been up to lately” more than almost anything else. Not because you have nothing to say. Because everything you want to say feels like too much.

9.At some point you just stop telling people you’re still looking. Not because things are going well. Because saying it one more time takes something out of you.

10. The loneliest part isn’t being alone. It’s being surrounded by people who have no idea what you’re actually going through.

If any of this felt familiar just know you are not the only one going through this. This is honestly one of the least talked about parts of unemployment and one of the hardest to carry because nobody around you can see it. It’s completely invisible and most people in your circle have no idea it’s even happening.

Be patient with yourself and with them. The people around you aren’t trying to make it harder they just don’t have the language for what you’re going through. And honestly sometimes neither do you. That’s okay.This part doesn’t last forever. The circle will feel normal again when things start to shift. Just keep going.

I want to preface this by saying this might be one of the more sensitive things I’ve posted so just a small disclaimer everything I say comes from a place of genuine respect for anyone going through this.I’ve been in the career space for a long time now.

Used to be a recruiter yes I know, I know lol. Left that and now I spend my days working with job seekers, writing their resumes and helping people through some of the hardest moments of their professional lives. So what I’m about to say isn’t from an article I read. It’s from what I actually hear and see constantly from real people going through this in real time.

Most content about layoffs talks about what to do next. Polish your resume, reach out to your network, stay positive. But nobody really talks about what it actually does to you on the inside. Especially when it happens after you’ve given a company twenty years of your life. That’s what this post is really about.

1.The first few days feel like a holiday. Then at some point that changes and you can’t quite pinpoint the moment it did.

2.You keep waking up at the same time you used to leave for work. And you lie there not knowing what to do with the next hour.

3.People ask how you’re doing and you say fine. Because explaining the real answer takes more out of you than you have right now.

4.Your sense of time just falls apart. Days start bleeding into each other in a way that nobody warned you about.

5.You find yourself explaining the layoff to people who didn’t even ask making sure they know it was restructuring, not performance. As if you need them to understand it wasn’t your fault.

6.The colleagues you spent more time with than your own family go quiet a lot faster than you expected.

7.You realise somewhere along the way your entire identity got tied to that place. And without it you don’t quite know how to answer when someone asks what you do.

8.You open your resume for the first time in years and barely recognise it. And that moment hits harder than you thought it would.

9.Your partner or family tries to be supportive. But there’s a version of the worry they’re carrying that never quite makes it into words.

10. Twenty years of showing up, delivering, being reliable. And it ended in a conversation that lasted less than fifteen minutes.

If you’re reading this and any of it felt a little too familiar just know you are not alone. More people are living this exact experience than you’d ever guess and most of them are dealing with it just as quietly as you are.Don’t stay stuck longer than you have to. Update your LinkedIn. Look at your resume and if you haven’t touched it in years please get a professional opinion on it, it makes more of a difference than most people realise. Ask for help. Lean on your network. Do the things that feel uncomfortable because that’s honestly where the movement starts.

This is a dark period but it’s not a permanent one. It won’t always feel this way. Just keep going.

One of my clients asked me recently what advice would you give someone who’s been in the same industry for a long time and hasn’t touched their resume in years, where do you even start. So I figured let me just write a post about it. A little background I used to be a recruiter, left that, and have been in the career space for a long time now. Found a real passion in it. This is what I’d tell anyone in that situation.

1.The first thing a hiring manager sees isn’t your experience it’s whether the document looks like it was written by someone who takes themselves seriously. The visual impression comes before anyone reads a single word.

2.You’ve spent years describing your job to people who already know what it means. Now you have to describe it to a complete stranger in ten seconds. Those are two very different things and most people don’t realise that until it’s already too late.

3.The results you’re most proud of are probably buried at the bottom of a bullet point somewhere. Nobody is finding them there.

4.Staying at one company for a long time is not a red flag. The way most people present it on a resume is.

5.Every word in your summary needs to earn its place. If it could apply to anyone else in your industry just delete it.

6.Most people who’ve been somewhere for years end up with a skills section that reads like a job description. That’s not a skills section. That’s a list of things your employer needed from you. Those are two different things.

7.The role you’re most proud of and the role that will actually get you the next job aren’t always the same one. Knowing which story to lead with changes everything.

8.A resume that tries to show everything ends up showing nothing. Editing is the hardest part and also the most important.

9.The people who struggle most with this are the ones who haven’t talked about themselves to a stranger in so long they’ve forgotten how. That’s a skill that needs to be rebuilt and it doesn’t happen in one afternoon.

10. The goal isn’t a resume that covers everything you’ve done. It’s a resume that makes the right person stop scrolling immediately.

11. Get someone to read it who has actually hired people before. Don’t rely on AI it doesn’t know your background or what makes you different. And don’t ask someone who has never hired anyone in their life. If you don’t have that person in your network a professional is always worth it. A good resume is your entry point treat it like one.

If any of this resonates you’re probably already in that moment and you already know it. The experience is there it’s always there after years of putting in the work. The hard part is getting it on paper in a way that actually does it justice. Take your time with it, get the right eyes on it and don’t underestimate how much a proper resume can change things. You’ve put the years in. Make sure the document shows that.

Thanks for reading

Getting passed over for a promotion is one thing. Watching it go to someone you trained, someone you’ve been quietly carrying, someone who honestly doesn’t understand the role the way you do that’s a completely different feeling. And the worst part isn’t even the promotion. It’s having to sit across from that person every single day and act like you’re absolutely fine with it.

I used to be a recruiter and now I work with job seekers every day. This one comes up more than almost anything else. And nobody really talks about what it actually does to you.

1. You found out through someone else and had to act like you already knew.

2. You wrote the handover notes, trained them on the role, and were still answering their questions weeks later.

3. You went home that day and didn’t tell anyone straight away because you didn’t know how to talk about it without sounding bitter.

4. You started questioning whether the problem was you. That thought stayed a lot longer than it should have.

5. You stopped putting your hand up for things after that. Not out of spite. Something just quietly switched off.

6. The people around you knew it should have been you. Nobody said a word. Somehow that made it worse.

7. You’re now doing parts of their job without the title or the pay and everyone around you acts like that’s just how it is.

8. You’ve sat in meetings supporting decisions made by someone who couldn’t have made them without you.

9. You opened your resume that night. Then closed it. Then opened it again about three weeks later.

10. You’re still delivering. Still professional. Still showing up every day. And every day you do that you’re making it easier for them to never fix it.

If any of this resonates just know you’re not alone and you’re not being dramatic. What you felt in that moment was real and the people I see going through this are almost always the ones who deserved it most. Being passed over doesn’t mean you weren’t ready. It usually just means the wrong people were making the decision. It won’t always feel this way.

Thanks for reading

Staying at a job for years feels like the responsible thing to do until the day you realise the job stopped growing with you a long time ago and you were the last one to know. And by the time that hits you, you’ve already handed over the best years of your career. The hardest part isn’t leaving. It’s sitting with how long you stayed after you knew.

PSA this is not a post telling anyone to quit their job. Please don’t read this tonight and hand in your notice tomorrow and blame me lol. The job market is genuinely brutal right now and the smartest thing most people can do is look while they’re still employed. This is just about naming something a lot of people are carrying quietly and never really talk about.

1.You’ve had the same title for four years. Every time you brought it up something came up. Eventually you just stopped bringing it up.

2.You trained someone younger than you, watched them get promoted above you, and told everyone you were genuinely happy for them.

3.You know exactly what you’d say in an exit interview. You’ve been rehearsing it in your head for about two years now.

4.Someone asked you recently where you see yourself in five years and you realised you actually hadn’t thought about that in a really long time.

5.You’ve done the math on what you’re losing every month by staying. You come back to that number more than you’d like to admit.

6.You have a resignation letter saved somewhere. You’ve never sent it.

7.You bring your best ideas to that job every single day. At some point you just quietly accepted that the credit was never really going to land with you.

8.The people who joined after you are now earning more than you. You found out by accident.

9.You used to have goals in this job. Now you just have habits.

10. You’re good at your job. Everyone around you knows it. And somehow that’s become the exact reason they’ll never pay you what you’re worth.

If any of this hit close to home just know you’re not the only one. I see this every single week and honestly it’s almost always the same type of person. The ones who held everything together, never complained, kept showing up, and made themselves indispensable. You didn’t end up here because you weren’t good enough. You ended up here because you were good enough and they knew it and got very comfortable with that. It won’t always feel this way.

Thanks for reading

Ten years at one company feels like an achievement until the day you try to leave and realise the world outside has no idea who you are. Or the day you are forced to leave.

1. The way you describe your work makes perfect sense inside that building and means almost nothing to anyone outside it.

2. Your entire professional network is in one place and you don’t realise that’s a problem until the day you actually need to leave.

3. You’ve quietly taken on more and more over the years but the title never changed so on paper it looks like nothing happened.

4. The skills are real and the experience is genuine but it’s so tied to how that specific company works that pulling it out and making it land somewhere else feels almost impossible.

5. You’ve been out of the job market long enough that you genuinely don’t know what you’re worth anymore and most people in this situation are significantly underselling themselves.

6. You’ve been solving the same organisation’s problems for so long that you’ve stopped seeing those abilities as transferable skills. They are. You just can’t see it anymore.

7. The person sitting across from you in the interview has no idea what your company does, how it’s structured or why your role mattered and you’ve never had to explain it to a stranger before.

8. Inside that company your reputation walked into every room before you did. Outside it you’re starting from zero and nobody tells you how disorienting that actually feels.

9. The version of you that could walk into a room and sell yourself confidently got quietly buried under a decade of just getting on with the work.

10. You left a version of yourself at the door on your first day and spent ten years becoming exactly who that company needed. Now you have to figure out who you are when it’s not for them.

This isn’t about regret. It’s just about knowing what you’re actually up against so you can deal with it honestly instead of wondering what’s wrong with you.

Thanks for reading.

I’ve sat on both sides of this. As a recruiter I’ve watched it happen to candidates in real time and honestly it was never comfortable from that side either. Now I work with job seekers every day and almost every single one of them has been through this exact moment at least once.

The interview shifts and you can feel it before anyone says anything. And you still have 30, 40 minutes left to sit through.This one is for everyone who knows exactly what that feels like.

1. You start counting how many minutes are left and working out how to get through them.

2. You keep replaying the last thing you said trying to figure out exactly which answer killed it.

3. You stop trying to impress them and switch into a completely different kind of polite the kind that’s just about getting out of the room with your dignity.

4. You think about everyone you told about this interview and the conversation you’re going to have to have with them later.

5. You start mentally writing the follow up email in your head even though somewhere you
   already know it won’t change anything.

6. You wonder if they can tell that you know.

7. You start thinking about the next application before you’ve even left the building.

8. You think about how long it took to even get this interview and the fact that you’re back to zero.

9. You go on autopilot still answering questions, still nodding, but you’re barely there anymore.

10. You decide to finish strong anyway. Not because you think it’ll change the outcome. Just because that’s all you have left.

The job market puts you through things nobody talks about and this is one of them. It’s not a reflection of who you are or what you’re capable of. It’s just a really hard process and some days are harder than others.
Thanks for reading.

PSA this post isn’t about ageism. Just something I feel like I need to say and I say it with a lot of respect.I used to be a recruiter yes I know, I know left that and now I write resumes every day. A lot of the people who come to me are in their 30s, 40s, 50s. They’ve spent years building something real. They’re good at what they do. The people around them know it. And then at some point the job search just stops working the way it used to and nobody tells them why.That’s what this post is really about.

1. The job description was written for someone ten years younger and half your salary expectations.

2. The interview panel has nobody your age on it and you feel it the moment you walk in.

3. You get told you’re overqualified so many times you start wondering if being good at your job is actually working against you.

4. Your salary history is now a liability what you were earning tells them what you’ll expect and they’ve already decided that number doesn’t work before you’ve even had a conversation about it.

5. The questions feel subtly different less about what you can do and more about whether you’d be comfortable reporting to someone younger, adapting to new ways of working, fitting into a team that doesn’t look like you. Nobody says it out loud but it’s there.

6. You can feel something is off but you can never quite prove it and nobody will ever confirm it.

7. The things that actually make you valuable your perspective, your track record, your ability to see a problem coming before it becomes a crisis don’t show up in a job description and don’t get assessed in an interview. So it’s like they don’t exist.

If you’re going through any of this right now just know you’re not the only one. More people are in this exact situation than you’d think and most of them are dealing with it just as quietly as you are. The job market is genuinely brutal right now and everything on this list on top of that is a lot to carry. Just keep your head up and keep going. It won’t always feel this way.

Thanks for reading.

This topic might be a sensitive one just a small disclaimer, I’m not trying to offend anyone at all.

I feel like I’m probably one of the better people to speak on this just because of how long I’ve been in the career space. I used to be a recruiter for several years ( I know , I worked with the enemy lol ), left that, and now I work with job seekers every single day writing resumes and helping people through this. So everything I’m saying comes from what I actually see and hear constantly.I’m just very passionate about the job market and the people going through it and if you follow my account you probably already know I don’t post the same five resume tips everyone else posts. I try to talk about the things that aren’t really spoken about enough. This is one of those things.

1. The way your partner looks at you starts to change and you notice it long before they say a word.

2. Friends stop including you in plans and it’s never said out loud but you both know why.

3. The people closest to you start offering advice you never asked for and somewhere along the way that starts to feel less like support and more like they’ve quietly stopped believing you’ll figure it out.

4. You start telling the people you love that things are going fine when they aren’t and after a while the lie becomes easier than the truth.

5. There’s a specific moment when you realise the people around you have started losing faith in you before you’ve lost it in yourself and nothing about that moment is easy.

6. Someone asks what you do and you don’t know what to say anymore so you change the subject.

7. You stop bringing up the job search at home not because things are going well but because you can’t face the look on their face when they hear it isn’t.

8. The person you were when you had a job and the person you are now feel like two different people and you’re not sure how to get back to the first one.

9. Everyone assumes getting a job fixes everything but the confidence that left during the search doesn’t just return when the offer arrives.

10. At some point the people around you stop seeing you as someone going through something hard and start seeing you as a someone that needs to be fixed.

If you’re going through any of this right now just know you’re not the only one. More people are in this exact situation than you’d think and most of them are dealing with it just as quietly as you are. The job market is genuinely brutal right now and everything on this list on top of that is a lot to carry. Just keep your head up and keep going. It won’t always feel this way.

Thanks for reading

You’re good at your job. Everyone around you knows it. So why does your resume make you look average. This is the most common thing I see when people come to me for help.

1. The people who are best at their jobs are usually the worst at talking about them.

When you’ve been doing something for years it stops feeling like a skill it just feels like Tuesday. So you write it down like it’s nothing and move on without realising that the thing that feels obvious to you is the exact thing someone else has been trying to hire for months.

2. They describe what the role involved instead of what they actually did.

Responsible for. Assisted with. Supported the team. That’s not a resume that’s a job description. Anyone who held that title could have written it and that’s exactly the problem. Nothing on the page tells me why it had to be you.

3. They write their resume like their manager already knows them.

Every job they’ve ever gotten came through someone who vouched for them so they’ve never had to make a case for themselves to a stranger. The resume reads like an inside joke nobody else is in on.

4. They cut the most impressive thing they ever did because it felt like too much.

So the one line that would have made a hiring manager stop and go back to the top never made it onto the page trimmed out of habit, out of modesty, out of not wanting to seem like they were exaggerating. And the person reading it never knows what they missed.

5. They got given more and more responsibility but the title never changed.

So the resume shows the same role for four years and looks like nothing happened when what actually happened is they quietly became the most relied on person in the building. The growth was real, it just never got a name.

6. They were the person everyone went to and it never once showed up in their job description.

The one people called when something broke, when a client was unhappy, when nobody else knew what to do. That was their actual job. None of it is on the resume because nobody ever told them it was worth writing down.

7. The thing that made them exceptional at their last job means nothing to anyone else.

They were so deep in how that company worked, that team operated, that specific problem got solved that pulling it out and making it land for a stranger feels impossible. So they write something vague that sounds like everyone else and wonder why nothing moves.

8. Their best work left no evidence.

They fixed it before it became a crisis. They caught it before anyone noticed it was wrong. They held something together that would have fallen apart without them and because nothing broke there’s nothing to point to. The best thing they ever did is completely invisible on paper.

9. They talked themselves out of every achievement before they wrote it down.

They know how much was luck. They know how much was the team. They know how much was just being in the right place. So they sand everything down until it sounds like nothing and hand a hiring manager the most modest possible version of a career that deserved far more credit than it got.

10. They were the glue and there is no line on a resume for that.

The person the whole team leaned on. The one who made things work when they shouldn’t have. The one whose absence would have quietly broken everything. That kind of value doesn’t fit in a bullet point and most people who have it spend years watching less capable people get further on paper because at least they knew how to make themselves sound like something.

Being good at your job and being good on paper are two completely different skills

Thanks for reading

You’re good at your job. Everyone around you knows it. So why does your resume make you look average. This is the most common thing I see when people come to me for help.

1. The people who are best at their jobs are usually the worst at talking about them.

When you’ve been doing something for years it stops feeling like a skill it just feels like Tuesday. So you write it down like it’s nothing and move on without realising that the thing that feels obvious to you is the exact thing someone else has been trying to hire for months.

2. They describe what the role involved instead of what they actually did.

Responsible for. Assisted with. Supported the team. That’s not a resume that’s a job description. Anyone who held that title could have written it and that’s exactly the problem. Nothing on the page tells me why it had to be you.

3. They write their resume like their manager already knows them.

Every job they’ve ever gotten came through someone who vouched for them so they’ve never had to make a case for themselves to a stranger. The resume reads like an inside joke nobody else is in on.

4. They cut the most impressive thing they ever did because it felt like too much.

So the one line that would have made a hiring manager stop and go back to the top never made it onto the page trimmed out of habit, out of modesty, out of not wanting to seem like they were exaggerating. And the person reading it never knows what they missed.

5. They got given more and more responsibility but the title never changed.

So the resume shows the same role for four years and looks like nothing happened when what actually happened is they quietly became the most relied on person in the building. The growth was real, it just never got a name.

6. They were the person everyone went to and it never once showed up in their job description.

The one people called when something broke, when a client was unhappy, when nobody else knew what to do. That was their actual job. None of it is on the resume because nobody ever told them it was worth writing down.

7. The thing that made them exceptional at their last job means nothing to anyone else.

They were so deep in how that company worked, that team operated, that specific problem got solved that pulling it out and making it land for a stranger feels impossible. So they write something vague that sounds like everyone else and wonder why nothing moves.

8. Their best work left no evidence.

They fixed it before it became a crisis. They caught it before anyone noticed it was wrong. They held something together that would have fallen apart without them and because nothing broke there’s nothing to point to. The best thing they ever did is completely invisible on paper.

9. They talked themselves out of every achievement before they wrote it down.

They know how much was luck. They know how much was the team. They know how much was just being in the right place. So they sand everything down until it sounds like nothing and hand a hiring manager the most modest possible version of a career that deserved far more credit than it got.

10. They were the glue and there is no line on a resume for that.

The person the whole team leaned on. The one who made things work when they shouldn’t have. The one whose absence would have quietly broken everything. That kind of value doesn’t fit in a bullet point and most people who have it spend years watching less capable people get further on paper because at least they knew how to make themselves sound like something.

Being good at your job and being good on paper are two completely different skills

Thanks for reading

Friendly reminder that you aren’t always the problem. After years of recruiting and now working with job seekers every day these are things I’ve watched happen over and over again share this with anyone who needs to hear it right now.

1. The role was already filled internally before it went live.

The internal candidate had already been told they were getting it before the listing even went up your application was never going anywhere and nobody thought to tell you that.

2. The hiring manager left mid process.

You did everything right, got through the stages, were genuinely in the running then the person who was pushing for you internally left and the whole thing reset like you never existed.

3. The budget got frozen after you applied.

The role was real when it went live then something shifted and the headcount disappeared quietly the listing stayed up, you kept waiting and the job was already gone.

4. You were the backup candidate the whole time.

They needed a safety net in case their first choice fell through that was you. The first choice said yes and you never got the call. Weeks of your time for a process that was never really open.

5. Someone got referred internally the same day the role went live.

Before you even found the listing there was already a name circulating inside with a face, a vouch and a head start that no application was ever going to catch up to.

6. ATS filtered you out before any human saw your name.

Nobody looked at your experience and decided no software did, based on keywords and formatting. The person who would have hired you never knew you applied.

7. The recruiter wanted you but the hiring manager killed it in a five minute conversation.

You passed every stage, the recruiter was pushing for you then there was a conversation behind closed doors you were never part of and the whole thing changed. You never found out it happened.

8. The role changed completely after you applied.

You were right for the job that was posted by the time you were interviewing the scope had shifted, the team had changed and what they needed was completely different. Nobody updated the listing or told anyone.

9. It came down to you and one other person and they basically had to pick one.

You were genuinely one of the best they saw the gap between you and the other person was so small it barely counted as a reason. You didn’t lose because you weren’t good enough, you lost because there could only be one.

10. The interviewer had made up their mind in the first five minutes.

Not from your answers or your experience something in those first few minutes landed a certain way and the rest of the conversation was just going through the motions. Nobody in hiring likes to admit how often this happens.

The market is terrible and a lot of what’s working against you is completely out of your hands but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing you can do.Your resume, how you come across in interviews, the way you present yourself those things are yours to control. Make sure they’re not the reason you’re being overlooked on top of everything else.

Thanks for reading.

I spent years recruiting and now I write resumes every day. I’ve watched this from both sides and the pattern with the people who actually got the job was never about their experience or their resume it was something they did before any of that even came into it.

They made themselves known before the role existed.

Not in a cringey way just a comment on something the hiring manager put out or an email about something the company published. Something small that meant when their resume landed it wasn’t a stranger’s name on a document. Someone in that building already knew who they were and that changes everything about how an application gets received.

How to do it: Find the person who would be hiring you before a role opens, engage with something they’ve actually written, then message them directly short, no big ask, just tell them what you do and that you’d value ten minutes. Do that with a few companies you actually want and you’re already ahead before anything goes live.

They knew what the job was actually about.

Not what the description said what was broken in that team, what the last person got wrong, what the hiring manager actually needed fixed. They walked in with that already figured out and it came through in everything, how they wrote their application, how they talked in the room. You can’t fake that and hiring managers feel it straight away.

How to do it: Before you apply look at who just left that team on LinkedIn and think about what gap they left. Read what the company has been saying publicly, then build your whole application around being the answer to that specific thing.

They treated one application like it was the only one.

Everyone else was firing the same resume at forty companies and refreshing their inbox these people picked a role and actually went deep on it. Knew the company, knew the team, understood the problems. It came through in every line and you can tell within seconds when someone has actually thought about your company versus someone who just swapped the name at the top.

How to do it: Apply to fewer things and go deep on each one application actually built for a role beats ten that aren’t every single time.

They had someone inside who knew their name.

Not always a formal referral sometimes just someone who could say “yeah I know them” when the name came up in a meeting. That one line in a conversation is worth more than anything on a resume because it turns you from a document into a person before the hiring manager has even spoken to you.

How to do it: Before you apply check if you know anyone at that company even loosely, message them and tell them you’re looking at a role there and would love their take on it you’re not asking them to vouch for you and half the time that conversation goes somewhere by itself.

They had a resume that actually held up.

All of the above gets you noticed but the resume still has to do its job when it lands the people who got hired weren’t just well connected, their resume made someone stop and keep reading. Everything else got them in front of the right person and the resume did the rest.

Either way the job market is absolut shit right now you can do everything here and still spend months looking. These are just things that might help speed it up a little. Keyword might it doesn’t gurantee anything

I spent years recruiting. I was in those rooms. I heard what was actually said after the interviews. None of it was in the job description and none of it was what people genuinely think.

The job was decided before it went up half the time.

The hiring manager already had a name in their head. Someone they’d grabbed a coffee with months ago or emailed out of nowhere. By the time the listing went live that person was already it. Everyone else who applied was just the process being followed.

How to avoid it: Don’t wait for a job to appear. Find the person who would be hiring you and message them before there’s anything open. Tell them what you do and ask for ten minutes. It feels strange. It works.

The person who was easiest to deal with got moved forward.

Recruiters are juggling a lot. The person who got back same day, came prepared, didn’t need three follow ups they got remembered. The one who took days to reply didn’t. Didn’t matter how good they were on paper.

How to avoid it: Get back to people the same day. Every time. Follow up after every stage. It sounds too simple to matter and it genuinely isn’t.

The new hire was almost always the fix to whatever went wrong with the last person.

Hiring managers would tell me quietly what the problem was with whoever just left. Then they’d hire the opposite of that. Nothing in the job posting told you any of this. There was no way to know from the outside. But it shaped every single hire.

How to avoid it: Look up who just left that team. Think about what they probably got wrong. Then show in your application that you’re the answer to that specific thing.

The person who actually said something real about the company got remembered.

Everyone else sent the same letter to forty places with the company name swapped out. The ones who made the hiring manager feel like they’d actually been thought about those were the ones who got called.

How to avoid it: One line about why this place specifically. Not what’s on their about page. Something that shows you actually paid attention. That’s it. That’s the whole thing.

The person already doing the job somewhere smaller got it nearly every time.

Running something small beats assisting something big every time. The scope was smaller but the ownership was real and it came through in how they talked about their work and how their resume read.

How to avoid it: Write about what you ran not what you were part of. What you built, what you fixed, what wouldn’t have happened without you. That’s the version of your experience that actually lands.

I run a resume writing business now and I see the other side of this every day. The people who get it who understand what’s actually driving these decisions are the ones who stop being invisible.The process isn’t as fair as it looks. But at least now you know what you’re up against.

Thanks for reading.

I spent years recruiting and now I write resumes every day. I’ve watched this from both sides and the pattern with the people who actually got the job was never about their experience or their resume it was something
they did before any of that even came into it.

They made themselves known before the role existed.

Not in a cringey way just a comment on something the hiring manager put out or an email about something the company published. Something small that meant when their resume landed it wasn’t a stranger’s name on a document. Someone in that building already knew who they were and that changes everything about how an application gets received.

How to do it: Find the person who would be hiring you before a role opens, engage with something they’ve actually written, then message them directly short, no big ask, just tell them what you do and that you’d value ten minutes. Do that with a few companies you actually want and you’re already ahead before anything goes live.

They knew what the job was actually about.

Not what the description said what was broken in that team, what the last person got wrong, what the hiring manager actually needed fixed. They walked in with that already figured out and it came through in everything, how they wrote their application, how they talked in the room. You can’t fake that and hiring managers feel it straight away.

How to do it: Before you apply look at who just left that team on LinkedIn and think about what gap they left. Read what the company has been saying publicly, then build your whole application around being the answer to that specific thing.

They treated one application like it was the only one.

Everyone else was firing the same resume at forty companies and refreshing their inbox these people picked a role and actually went deep on it. Knew the company, knew the team, understood the problems. It came through in every line and you can tell within seconds when someone has actually thought about your company versus someone who just swapped the name at the top.

How to do it: Apply to fewer things and go deep on each one application actually built for a role beats ten that aren’t every single time.

They had someone inside who knew their name.

Not always a formal referral sometimes just someone who could say “yeah I know them” when the name came up in a meeting. That one line in a conversation is worth more than anything on a resume because it turns you from a document into a person before the hiring manager has even spoken to you.

How to do it: Before you apply check if you know anyone at that company even loosely, message them and tell them you’re looking at a role there and would love their take on it you’re not asking them to vouch for you and half the time that conversation goes somewhere by itself.

They had a resume that actually held up.

All of the above gets you noticed but the resume still has to do its job when it lands the people who got hired weren’t just well connected, their resume made someone stop and keep reading. Everything else got them in front of the right person and the resume did the rest.

Either way the job market is absolut shit right now you can do everything here and still spend months looking. These are just things that might help speed it up a little.

I write resumes every day. Before that I was a recruiter. And the thing I keep seeing on resumes from people who have been working for more than ten years is always the same.Jobs that stopped being relevant years ago still sitting there. Not because the person is padding things out. Because taking them off feels wrong. Like erasing part of your history.You’re not hiding anything. You’re editing. There’s a difference.

What that old job is actually doing

Every line on a resume is either pulling the reader toward the experience that matters or away from it. There’s no middle ground.

A job from 2009 that has nothing to do with where you’re going now isn’t harmless. It’s making a recruiter scroll past something irrelevant before they get to something that matters. In fifteen seconds that costs more than people realise.The resume isn’t a record of everywhere you’ve ever worked. It’s an argument for why you’re right for this role right now.

What I watched happen

I pulled up a resume once with eleven jobs going back to 1997. The person was applying for a mid level marketing role and their three most recent jobs were completely relevant.But by the time I’d scrolled past a customer service role from 2003 and a retail position from 2001 the story had already lost me. The document was making an argument the person wasn’t trying to make before I’d even reached the experience that would have told me otherwise.

We moved forward with someone else. The person with eleven jobs was probably more experienced. Their resume just never gave anyone the chance to find out.

The jobs doing the most damage

Early career roles in unrelated fields when you’re now a decade into a professional career. They add noise the reader has to get through before reaching the work that actually matters.Short stints with nothing to do with where you’re going now. They raise questions without answering them and unanswered questions at the screening stage almost always go the wrong way.

Any job that describes a version of you that no longer exists professionally. It served a purpose then. It’s working against you now.

The gap worry
Most people keep old jobs on because they’re scared of what removing them will look like.

It almost never looks as bad as people think. A resume that starts in 2013 doesn’t make a recruiter wonder what happened before 2013. They’re focused on whether the last five to seven years is relevant to what they need. The gap feels real to you because you know what you left out. The reader doesn’t.

If removing jobs creates a confusing jump one plain line of context is enough. Not a full bullet. Just enough to make the timeline make sense.

What to keep and what to cut

Keep anything from the last ten years that’s directly relevant. Keep anything older if it genuinely adds weight to the story you’re telling now.Cut anything that makes the resume longer without making it stronger. Cut anything where the honest answer is that it has no bearing on what you’re applying for today.

Thanks for reading

I know I’m a resume writer so I have an obvious reason to be against this. I’m going to be as non biases as I can because the conversation around this topic is almost always one sided and that doesn’t help anyone at all .

The case for AI resumes

If you’re a recent grad, early in your career or can’t afford a resume writer right now AI is a legitimate option. A well prompted AI resume beats a blank page every time.Feed it your actual experience, the job description you’re targeting and tell it to write in plain language. You’ll get a workable structure that covers the basics. For someone who has never written a professional resume before that’s genuinely useful.It’s also consistent. It won’t miss sections or leave things half finished. For people who struggle with knowing what to include that structure helps.

Where it falls short

AI doesn’t know what made you specifically good at your job. It knows what job descriptions in your field tend to say. So the bullets describe the role existing rather than you doing something real inside it.

The bigger issue right now is that everyone is using the same tools with the same prompts and getting the same output. Spearheaded. Leveraged. Drove cross functional alignment. Those phrases are on more resumes now than at any point in the last ten years. Recruiters feel it before they can name it. Everything starts to blur together.The resumes that stand out aren’t technically better written. They just sound like a genuine person.

The honest case for resume writers

A good one asks questions that make you think about your work differently. They push back when something is vague. They rewrite until it sounds like you specifically not like anyone else who held your job title

The difference between a resume that gets ignored and one that gets callbacks is almost always specificity. What you personally owned. What changed because you were there. That comes from a real conversation not a prompt.

I’ve worked with people who had been applying for months with nothing back. We rebuilt around what they’d actually done rather than what the role generally involved. The results changed. Not really because the experience changed. Because the document finally said something real.

The honest case against resume writers

Some resume writers and I won’t pretend otherwise are charging for resumes written entirely by AI. The client thinks they’re getting human expertise. They’re getting the same output they could have generated themselves in ten minutes with an invoice attached.

There are no standards in this industry. Someone charges £50 Someone else charges £500. (Btw if anyone’s charging unemployed people 500£ for a resume JAIL) The output often looks identical because both are running the same tools. Generic bullets. Safe language. Nothing specific to the person.If you pay for a resume writer and what comes back reads like AI you didn’t get what you paid for. And it’s happening more than anyone in my industry wants to admit.
Request a refund !

AI is a useful starting point. A good resume writer is a useful finishing point. A bad resume writer is just AI with an invoice.

If you use AI go back through every line and ask whether it sounds like you or like everyone else applying for the same role. If you’re paying someone ask honestly whether what came back could have come from a prompt.
The resume that works sounds like a specific person who knew what they were good at and said it plainly. However you get there.

Either way whatever you choose they are pros and cons as long as you get the role you want no one will question how you got it .

Thanks for reading.

I write resumes every day. Before that I was a recruiter. I’ve watched this from both sides and I can tell you exactly where people go wrong with this. Yes tailor it. But not the way everyone tells you to.

What people actually do when they tailor

They rewrite the summary. Swap out a few words at the top. Maybe change the opening line. Then send the exact same bullets to every single application.The summary is the part nobody reads first. A recruiter opens the resume and goes straight to the most recent job. The bullets are what get evaluated and the summary gets skimmed at best. So people are spending the most time on the part that changes nothing and leaving the part that actually gets read completely untouched.

I saw this constantly on the recruiter side. Generic bullets that could have been written by anyone in that industry with no connection to the specific problem the role was trying to solve. The tailoring had happened in the wrong place and it showed every time.

What actually needs to change

I remember sitting in a debrief where a hiring manager went through a shortlist and kept saying the same thing about the people who didn’t make it. They all look the same. Same experience. Same language. Nothing that tells me why they want this one specifically. The candidates who stood out had bullets that mapped directly to what the job description was actually asking for. Not by copying the language but by showing they’d done the same work the role needed and being specific about it.

I worked with someone recently who’d been applying for three months with nothing back. Same resume every time. We changed three bullets in their most recent role not the experience, just how it was framed to speak directly to the type of roles they were going for. Three callbacks the following week. Same person. Same background. Three bullets.

That’s what tailoring actually is. Not the summary. The first two bullets of the most recent role. The ones a recruiter hits in the first ten seconds.

What doesn’t need to change

Everything else. Work history beyond the most recent role. Education. Formatting. None of it needs touching for every application.

People think tailoring means a full rewrite every time and that’s why it feels impossible to keep up with. It doesn’t. It means two things. The first two bullets of the most recent role and making sure the language matches the job description wherever that’s accurate. Thirty minutes at most. Not a new resume from scratch.

The summary is the last thing that changes anything. The first two bullets of your most recent role are the first thing that does. If those don’t speak directly to what the role is asking for the rest of the resume is working harder than it needs to.

Thanks for reading.

I write resumes every day. Before that I was a recruiter. I’ve sat on both sides of this so I can tell you exactly what happens when you put a number down.Don’t do it.

What actually happens when you fill that field in

Candidates assume a hiring manager looks at the number and decides if it’s reasonable. That’s not really what happens.There’s a threshold set in the ATS by whoever posted the role. Sometimes HR. Sometimes a hiring manager filling in a form between meetings. Sometimes an admin who copied it from the previous listing without checking if it was still accurate. The system doesn’t make a judgement. It just filters.

I pulled an audit report once and found a candidate flagged as out of range. Strong background. Relevant experience. Exactly who we’d been trying to find for six weeks. Their number was £6k above the threshold. On a role paying £55k. They never found out. Got a rejection email and probably went home wondering what was wrong with their resume.

The number you put down is never just a number

The range in a job description is almost never fixed. It’s a starting position not a ceiling. I sat in on budget conversations where a hiring manager would say the range is £45k to £55k and then immediately say but if someone exceptional comes through we can probably stretch to £60k. That flexibility never made it into the job description. It lived in a conversation candidates were never part of. So when someone puts £58k and the listed range stops at £55k they get filtered out. The hiring manager who would have stretched the budget never finds out they existed.

You’re locking yourself into a negotiation you didn’t know you were already having.

What happens when you leave it blank

I watched someone handle this perfectly once and I still think about it. Final interview. Hiring manager asked directly what are you looking for salary wise. The candidate said I’m more focused on finding the right role than a specific number what does the budget look like for this position.

The hiring manager told them. It was higher than what the candidate had been planning to ask for. They accepted. Walked away £9k better off than if they’d filled in that field on the application two weeks earlier.

No luck involved.Just knowing that whoever speaks first in a salary conversation usually loses. I’ve hired a lot of people. That candidate is one of maybe three I still think about when this comes up. Not because they were the most qualified. Because they understood something most people don’t.

What to say when they ask in the interview

Turn it around every time. I’d love to understand what you have budgeted before I give you a number I want to make sure we’re in the same ballpark.

Most hiring managers will tell you. And if they won’t that tells you something about how they operate. Companies that are opaque about salary in interviews tend to stay that way once you’re in the door.

Get into the room first. Let them decide they want you. Then have the conversation from a position of strength rather than a number you wrote down before anyone knew who you were.

The salary field exists to help the company filter faster. Not to help you get a fair offer. Leave it blank as long as you can. The conversation is always better than the form.

Salary is just one part of a process most candidates are navigating blind. It’s rarely the only thing working against them.

Thanks for reading

I write resumes every day. Before that I was a recruiter. Cover letters are not a waste of time. But the way most people write them is.

What actually happens to cover letters on the recruiter side

When I was recruiting with 150 applications to get through I didn’t read every cover letter. The resume gets opened first and if that doesn’t land in fifteen seconds the cover letter never gets touched.

When a resume did make me stop the cover letter was what confirmed it. The candidates who made the shortlist almost always had one that said something specific why this role at this company. Not a template. Not three paragraphs about being passionate.

I remember one that opened with a single line about a problem the company had been dealing with publicly and why the candidate was directly relevant. No preamble. Straight into it. I read the whole thing and went back to the resume with different eyes

The cover letter nobody reads

I am a results driven professional with a passion for excellence.” I have read that sentence thousands of times and it registers as nothing. It tells me the person didn’t think about this application specifically. Same letter. Different company name at the top.It doesn’t hurt you. But it doesn’t help you either. In a competitive process that matters.

When it actually matters

Not every role needs one. High volume ATS processes don’t bother.But for roles where you’re not the obvious candidate on paper. Where you’re changing industries. Where you genuinely want this specific role. That’s when it does real work. It’s the place to say the thing the resume can’t why you, why them, why now.

What one that works actually looks like

Short. Specific Written like a person. One line about why this role at this company. One or two lines about what you bring that’s directly relevant. One line about what you’re looking for.

Half a page. No corporate language. No summarising the resume they’ve already read. Just something that makes the recruiter think this one actually thought about this.

The order most people get wrong

Most people write the cover letter last when they’re already exhausted. So it ends up rushed and generic.

The people whose cover letters actually land write it first. Before the resume. It forces you to get clear on why you want this specific role and that clarity feeds into how everything else gets tailored. Most people have the order completely backwards and it shows.

In short a cover letter won’t save a bad resume and a bad cover letter won’t sink a good one. The resume is always the foundation. But a specific cover letter on top of a strong resume is the difference between a maybe and a yes. Generic ones are just bad

Thanks for reading.