Why You Are Not Getting Interviews

Work out which stage is failing

There are only three places an application can die, and the symptoms are different for each.

• Targeting. You are applying for roles you do not match closely enough, so no version of your CV would have worked.
• Screening. Your CV is not being read properly by the software that sorts applications, so a person never sees it.
• The human read. Somebody is opening your CV and deciding against you.

A rough way to tell them apart. If you hear absolutely nothing from anywhere, not even automated rejections, look at your targeting and your formatting. If you get acknowledgements and later rejections but never an interview, a person is reading you and saying no, which means the content is the problem rather than the file.

The nine most common causes

Roughly in order of how often they turn out to be the real problem.

1. Applying for roles you do not closely match

This is the big one, by a distance. Ten applications to roles you closely match will do more for you than fifty to roles you half-match. Sending the fifty feels like progress because it fills an evening, but it rarely turns into anything.

2. The top of the CV says nothing

No profile at all, or a profile made of adjectives that would fit anybody. The reader gets five seconds of your document before deciding, and if those five seconds are filled with "hard-working team player", you have spent them badly. There is a full guide to fixing the profile.

3. Duties where results should be

A CV that lists what you were responsible for reads like a job description. Nothing on it distinguishes you from anyone else who held the same title.

4. It does not use the words in the advert

Recruiters search their database using the language of the job spec. If the advert says "stakeholder management" and your CV says "dealing with people across the business", you will not come up in the search, no matter how well you did it.

5. Formatting that breaks the screening software

Columns, tables, text boxes, headers and graphics all cause CVs to come out of the parser as fragments. The ATS formatting guide has the full list and a test you can run yourself.

6. The same CV sent to everything

One generic CV is fast to send and easy to reject. Ten minutes of tailoring per application beats another twenty applications.

7. A history the reader cannot follow

Unexplained gaps, overlapping dates, job titles nobody outside your last employer would recognise, or a run of short stints with no context. Each one is a small question, and a reader with sixty CVs to get through does not stop to answer questions.

8. Too long, or too dense

Four pages, or two pages with no white space and an eight point font. Both get skimmed rather than read, and skimming favours whoever made it easy.

9. Small errors

Typos, inconsistent date formats, a mobile number missing a digit, an email address you no longer check. None of these is fatal on its own. All of them remove the benefit of the doubt.

A ten minute diagnostic

Four checks you can run on your own CV this evening.

1. The six second test. Hand your CV to somebody for six seconds, take it back, and ask them what job they think you are going for. If they cannot say, or they get it wrong, the top of your CV is not working.
2. The plain text test. Select all, copy, and paste into a plain text editor. If the order scrambles or whole sections vanish, that is close to what the screening software receives.
3. The advert overlap test. Print a job advert you were rejected for. Highlight every requirement. Then tick the ones your CV evidences in the top half of page one. Anything unticked is either missing or buried.
4. The number count. Count how many of your bullet points contain a number of any kind. Under a third is low, and it usually means you are describing duties.

When it is not your CV

Sometimes the CV is fine and something else is going on. It is worth knowing this, because rewriting a working CV over and over is its own kind of trap.

• You are getting interviews and not offers. Then the CV has done its job, and the work is in interview preparation instead.
• The role attracts hundreds of applicants. Public sector competitions and well-known employers can draw enormous volumes, and good candidates get missed.
• The role was already filled. Some vacancies are advertised after an internal candidate has been lined up, because the process requires it.
• You applied late. For high volume roles, applications in the first few days get read most carefully. Two weeks in, the shortlist often exists already.
• Nobody replied to anybody. Silence after an application is normal and rude and says nothing about you specifically.

What to change first

If you only do three things, do them in this order. Each one takes less time than the applications you would otherwise send.

1. Rewrite the profile so somebody reading it for five seconds knows what job you want and why you can do it.
2. Rewrite the top three bullets of your current or most recent role so they describe results with numbers attached.
3. Cut your application list in half and tailor what is left. A shorter list of closely matched roles will do more than a long one.

Then give it two weeks before judging whether it worked. Hiring moves slowly enough that a week of silence tells you nothing.