"I Never Hear Back When I Apply For Jobs"
It's not foolproof - but there's a few easy steps you can take to help your odds.
Hi all,
As I write this, recruiting season is ramping up for college students. Whether you’re looking for an internship or an entry-level job, one of the most common issues will be sending out resumes…and never hearing anything back.
To be clear, there is no magic bullet for fixing the problem. But that doesn’t mean you can’t take steps to improve your response rate. Today, I want to dive into what worked well for me back in college - the changes I made between my freshman year (when I only heard back from two companies) and my junior year (when I heard back from Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Two Sigma, Salesforce, and more) that helped me get my foot in the door at a lot of great companies.
I’ll dive more into that down below, along with a few great resources, a sneak peek of what I’m working on, and this week’s question.
- Kyle
Hearing Back From More Jobs
I’ll start by getting a disclaimer out of the way…Your success rate may be strongly correlated to your graduation year. All things being equal, I would expect juniors to hear back from more roles than sophomores, and I would expect sophomores to hear back from more roles than freshmen.
That being said, all of the following advice applies regardless of your year in college. Here’s what you need to know.
Look For Different Recruitment Channels
One of the simplest ways to stand out is to go where there’s fewer people.
If 90% of applicants are applying by sending their resume into the same online job listing, you’re stuck in a sea of thousands of resumes where you 1) hope someone bothers to look at your resume, and 2) that after looking at a few hundred other resumes, something about yours will suddenly make them exclaim, “this is exactly the type of candidate I’ve been looking for!” You might get lucky and have your resume plucked out from the others, but even if you’re qualified…it’s far from a given.
There are several ways to circumvent this process, but two of the biggest ones are referrals and recruiting events.
Whenever I talk about referrals, I always make a point of saying that I don’t refer strangers. There’s a few reasons for this (one of which being that it just feels a bit transactional), but the primary one is that I want referrals to be meaningful.
Referrals are useful because they let you avoid the main recruiting channel. Companies treat referrals as special because 1) there aren’t that many of them, and 2) in theory, someone who works for the company is vouching for the candidate’s legitimacy. When referrals are abused (to the extreme), it means that if everyone has a referral, it’s the same as no one having a referral.
Not having a referral isn’t the end of the world. In fact, I didn’t get a single referral during college. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ask for referrals, but it does mean that you can get noticed without one, and a great example of this is via recruiting events.
I’ve heard enough people say this to mention it here: “in-person recruiting events are a waste of time - you stand in line for half an hour, only to be told to apply online with everyone else.”
This is a fair point, and an example of recruiting events not working well. But generalizing that experience to all recruiting events closes the door to some great opportunities - especially when it comes to smaller events hosted by the company itself.
Back in college, we had something known as “Days in the Lobby” where a company would show up on campus and talk with students. We had these several times per week, and it was a totally different experience than going to a career fair - shorter lines, casual dress code, a more relaxed atmosphere…and in my experience, a lower chance of just being told to apply online. I secured the interview for my second internship from going to an in-person event (after applying to ~seven roles at that company online!) - a single 10 minute conversation got me the interview, compared to applying to every role I could find online with the exact same resume.
Make a Habit of Applying to Job Openings
One of my best habits as a sophomore/junior was applying to jobs on a daily basis. I learned my lesson as a freshman, when I didn’t apply for nearly enough roles and almost missed out on landing an internship.
This is the simplest item on the list, with the added bonus that you can do it anytime, anywhere - just set aside fifteen minutes every day to look on sites like Glassdoor, Indeed, and LinkedIn for positions that have been posted within the past 24 hours.
This has two advantages:
Doing this ensures that you don’t apply to positions after they’ve already been filled. A lot of positions that have been listed for weeks/months are no longer actively looking for candidates, which means there’s a decent chance that your resume won’t even be considered. By applying to roles as soon as they’re posted, this means you have a genuine chance of being considered for every position.
Building this habit means you’ll apply to far more positions than if you only check job sites every once in a while. Intuitively, applying to more jobs → more interviews → more offers. The “time-cost” of applying to jobs is relatively low, but the potential upside can be incredibly high.
Strong Resume
I’ve made several videos about this topic that I’d recommend checking out for examples and more detailed information, but a strong resume is a huge part of hearing back from companies - you can think of it as a professional representation of you, but on a piece of paper. Here’s a few things you absolutely should be doing:
There shouldn’t be a single typo or formatting error on your resume. Look over it yourself several times, and swap resumes with someone you trust to give you good feedback. Mistakes show a lack of attention to detail, which for most employers is going to be a red flag. You also want things to be easy-to-read and professional - unless you’re applying for roles that would expect a creative take on a resume, it’s probably best to stick with something standard.
Get experience on your resume. Showing your education and skills on your resume is great, but recruiters want to see your experience. This doesn’t even need to be an internship/job - personal projects are a great way to demonstrate initiative and show off how you’ve utilized your skills. If your experience is specifically oriented around the work you want to do, even better - but just having some experience will give you a boost compared to having no experience. Bonus points if you can link to the project itself, whether it’s an app on the App Store or a GitHub repo - not only does it prove that your project exists, but it also gives recruiters an opportunity to see an example of your work, which (if it’s good) can make a strong impression in your favor.
Only put things on your resume that add value, not space-fillers. It’s estimated that recruiters spend about 10 seconds scanning a resume, so the more fluff you add, the less time the recruiter spends reading the highlights. Recruiters and hiring managers aren’t impressed by a five page resume with everything you’ve ever done - if anything, they’ll probably just throw it in the trash, because they’re not going to bother reading it. It’s also worth pointing out that you can have multiple versions of your resume that showcase your different strengths - if you’re applying for a role that focuses on iOS development, you might highlight a different set of projects than for a role that relies heavily on C.
Things Worth Reading
How to pass a coding interview with me (Robert Heaton)
The Journey to Staff Engineer (Jordan Cutler)
From The Archive
In Case You Missed It
Sneak Peek
Here’s a few things I’m working on…coming soon!
(Video) Solving LeetCode Problems Using Brain****
(Post) Working Remote vs In-Person
This Week’s Question
I want to hear from you! Leave a comment on this story or email me at support@kylekeirstead.com with your thoughts/ideas.
What other things have you tried to hear back from more job applications? Did they work?