I used to create and edit resumés as a side hustle.
I learned soon after I started that it wasn’t the best business to run. Not because I was bad at it (my resumés were gorgeous and well-made), but because no one who could hire my clients ever got the resumés I made.
By the time I started that little business, resumé screening software had taken over the business world. And most job postings were getting anywhere from 200 to 1,000 applicants a piece. No one was seeing my clients’ resumés.
Someone would get those jobs, but it was unlikely to be the person I was helping.
If you read books like What Color Is Your Parachute? or 48 Days to the Work (and Life) You Love, you’ll learn that sending out resumés to companies only works about 4% of the time.
That means you’d have to apply for 25 jobs to get one response (just a response, not a hiring decision). And those are just basic statistics—you wouldn’t actually get a response 1 in 25 times. You might have to send out 100 applications and only get responses on the last 4.
So what to do?
I’ve been asked recently by numerous people if I could help them fix their resumés. And I’ve declined every time.
“I don’t do that anymore,” I say, “because it no longer works.”
What does work is simple: connection.
The old saying is, unfortunately, true: it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. And in the connection economy of the 21st Century, that really is the only thing that matters.
By connections, I don’t mean the hundreds of people you barely know on LinkedIn. People who are creating content to (maybe) entice the platform’s algorithm in the hopes that someone will see them and say, “Let’s hire Jane.”
I mean real people that you know: friends, family, coworkers. The barista who knows your name. The husband of the banker who handles your mortgage.
If you want a to get a job in the modern economy (and 88% of those available are never posted online), you have to talk to a lot of people.
Every job I’ve ever had, I got because I knew someone. Every. Single. One.
Half the time I wasn’t even looking. The other half, I asked for help. I told lots of people with whom I’d built relationships that I was looking.
Now, I also know that’s probably some of my privilege showing. But it’s the advice that I’ve given everyone who’s asked me over the last couple of years. And for those who have listened—and taken ACTION—it’s worked out.
Now, I’m no networking expert. Nor do I “network” in the slimy business sense.
I’ve just read a lot and built relationships with people.
In addition to the couple of books I recommended above, I’d also tell you to check out:
Both of these books have strategies on how to TALK to people in ways that will (eventually and without being sleazy) lead to jobs.
Resumés don’t work. Connections do.
But resumés are easier—a way to hide from the difficult, but effective, work of having meaningful conversations with real people.
Do the thing that works, not the thing that’s easy.
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