Article

Ally Cole, brand manager for ELOC Global, speaks with Gary Edwards, President of ERS Antenna, about better understanding the interview process. Over the past 20+ years Gary has interviewed many applicants in his position as President and talked to many people who have gone through the interview process overall. Nowadays many people submit application after application online to companies they are interested in working at but don’t ever receive responses, at least not from human beings. Gary explains that there are a number of potential reasons for this. First, a person’s resume submitted online doesn’t go directly to a human being, it most likely gets put into a database first and only gets pulled out by an HR manager making a shortlist if the keywords in the HR manager are looking for match up with your resume. Next, there’s no telling when the process of an HR manager creating a shortlist will actually take place. Sometimes a company will create a job opening in hopes of winning a contract and the position doesn’t even actually exist yet. Other times a job is real but it is so low-priority that the interview phase keeps getting delayed. Lastly, of course there are situations where the interview phase takes place and a person is eventually hired but the people who don’t even make the shortlist have no idea that anything has happened. All of these scenarios and more contribute to that feeling of the “black hole” on the internet that eats job applications. A savvy job seeker in the internet age has to know how to stand out from other applications submitted online and avoid the “black hole.” Gary says that one key to being such a savvy job seeker is only applying for jobs where you know you are qualified because otherwise you will be wasting your time. Another key is the need to tweak your resume for each specific job you are applying for, instead of just having 1 resume that you use every time. This is where keywords come in to play and the importance of looking at the job announcement and inserting keywords into your resume that match, making it easier to get chosen out of the database by the HR manager. It may be frustrating to the job seeker to have to constantly tweak their resume but those are minutes truly well-spent due to how much it increases the odds of progressing in the hiring process. Ally notes that it can be helpful to job seekers to know about scenarios where jobs they applied for may not even exist so that when they’re not chosen they don’t take it personally.

Key Quotes

• A savvy job seeker in the internet age has to know how to stand out from other applications submitted online and avoid the “black hole.” Gary says that one key to being such a savvy job seeker is only applying for jobs where you know you are qualified because otherwise you will be wasting your time.
• It may be frustrating to the job seeker to have to constantly tweak their resume but those are minutes truly well-spent due to how much it increases the odds of progressing in the hiring process.