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- #188 - You're Reading Job Descriptions Backwards
#188 - You're Reading Job Descriptions Backwards
They're business problems, not wish lists...
Adam Karpiak
June 03, 2026
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Hey There!
Welcome to Issue #188 of Jobseeking is Hard!
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Happy Wednesday!
One of the more common sources of frustration in the job search is that candidates and hiring teams are often focused on completely different things. Jobseekers naturally focus on qualifications and whether they meet the requirements listed in a job posting. Hiring teams are usually focused on whether someone appears capable of solving the problem that justified opening the role in the first place.
That disconnect creates a lot of confusion during the hiring process.
This week, I want to talk about why job descriptions are often descriptions of business problems and how interpreting them differently can change the way you position yourself.
I'll also share how one Comprehensive Resume Review client discovered that having another set of eyes on their resume was extremely helpful because recruiters weren't necessarily interpreting their experience the way they assumed they would.
This week we’re talking about:
How reading job descriptions differently can change your entire job search
Why recruiter interpretation influences resume effectiveness
The best (worst?) job posting of the week
And for Premium subscribers I’m:
Debunking LinkedIn advice that says candidates should respond to every recruiter message
Answering a Premium subscriber’s question about how to position a career that spans multiple functions and specialties. I’ll explain how to identify the story hiring teams are most likely to hire you for.
Let’s get to it!
YOU'RE READING JOB DESCRIPTIONS BACKWARDS
One of the most common mistakes I see during coaching calls happens before someone ever updates a resume, rewrites a LinkedIn profile, or submits an application.
It starts with how they're reading the job posting.
Most jobseekers approach a job description like a checklist. They scan the qualifications, compare them against their own experience, and start calculating fit. They look at years of experience, software requirements, certifications, industry exposure, and responsibilities. Then they try to determine whether they meet enough of the requirements to justify applying.
It's a reasonable approach, but it assumes the job posting exists primarily to describe the candidate the company wants.
Most of the time, that's not really what it's doing.
Companies don't create roles because they enjoy hiring people. They create roles because something needs attention. Revenue isn't growing the way they want. Projects are slipping. Customers are frustrated. Managers are overloaded. Teams are scaling faster than existing leadership structures can support. Technology has changed. Processes have broken. Someone left and created a gap that suddenly became impossible to ignore.
The job posting is simply the company's attempt to describe the type of person they believe can solve those problems.
Unfortunately, by the time that business need gets translated into a formal job description, the original problem reads like a wall of qualifications and responsibilities.
A company struggling with inconsistent customer onboarding doesn't write, "We need someone to fix our onboarding process." They write, "Seeking a customer success leader with implementation experience."
A company dealing with rapid growth and organizational growing pains doesn't write, "Our managers are overwhelmed and we're worried about retaining people." They write, "Looking for a people leader with change management expertise."
A company struggling to get alignment across departments doesn't write, "Nobody can agree on priorities." They write, "Must possess exceptional stakeholder management skills."
The qualifications are clues, and that distinction changes how you evaluate opportunities and how you position yourself for them.
One of the reasons job searches become so frustrating is that candidates spend most of their energy comparing themselves to the qualifications while hiring teams are focused on something else entirely. Hiring managers aren't usually trying to identify the most qualified person in an abstract sense. They're trying to identify the person they believe is most likely to solve the problem that justified opening the role in the first place.
That's why candidates with nearly identical backgrounds can experience very different outcomes. One candidate presents a collection of skills. The other presents evidence that they've solved similar problems before. One talks about stakeholder management. The other explains how they aligned competing priorities across multiple teams to move a stalled initiative forward. One talks about leadership. The other explains how they inherited an underperforming team and improved retention, productivity, or engagement.
The underlying experience may be exactly the same. The difference is that one candidate is describing qualifications while the other is describing solutions.
Once you start reading job descriptions through that lens, a lot of hiring behavior starts making more sense. You stop asking whether you meet every requirement and start asking whether you've solved similar problems. And you begin to realize that the strongest applications aren't focused around showing you “have skills.” They're built around demonstrating that you've already used those skills to address the kinds of challenges the employer is facing today.
Have a topic you want me to cover in an upcoming issue? Reply or email [email protected] and tell me what you want to know!
SHAMELESS PLUG
If your job search needs a little more help, Karpiak Consulting offers resume and LinkedIn services, as well as job search strategy coaching.
Who knows…maybe having another set of eyes on your resume will be extremely helpful like this client found 🤷♂️
So how did I help this Comprehensive Resume Review client improve their resume?
Interpretation.
The theme in this week's newsletter is that candidates often misunderstand what companies are actually telling them through job descriptions. They see qualifications. Hiring teams see problems. The same thing happens with resumes.
Most candidates read their resumes through the lens of everything they know about their careers. They know why projects mattered. They know why accomplishments were important. They know the context behind the work. But…recruiters don't.
This client’s challenge was that some of the most valuable parts of the background required interpretation from the reader. Leadership, ownership, coaching, growth, and strategy were all present, but there were places where the resume assumed the reader would automatically understand the significance of those experiences.
Focus on seeing the resume through the eyes of someone who has never met you before. Where was context missing? Where was impact understated? Where was the resume asking the reader to connect dots that should have already been connected?
That's often where the biggest improvements come from.
If you’re feeling like your resume isn’t telling your story the way it should and don’t know what context is missing based on your goals, our services can help.
Curious what the process has been like for other clients? Check out our testimonials here!
BEST (WORST?) JOB POST
OF THE WEEK
Here’s the job post that got the most people talking on my Instagram this week!
If you come across an irritating job posting, email it to the newsletter or DM me on Instagram and I’ll add it to the list to post!
Today's issue is also brought to you by Oyster! C’mon give it a click…it costs $0 and helps support your favorite job search newsletter 🙂
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"How do I figure out what story my resume should tell when my experience spans multiple areas?"
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Jobseekers, have a great rest of your week, and good luck with those applications!
-Adam
PS!! If you're enjoying the newsletter, let people know! Forward it, post it on social, tag me, whatever...the bigger the discussion, the better! The idea is to help as many people as possible!
About Adam- Recognized as a leading voice on hiring and workplace trends, Adam has been recruiting and providing career advice since 2003, developing high-trust relationships based on honesty with companies and jobseekers. A highly sought-after speaker, he has appeared in numerous outlets, including Bloomberg News, Business Insider, LinkedIn, and CNNMoney. You can find out more about Adam's resume and coaching services here.
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DEBUNKING CAREER CLICKBAIT
Technically this is the Career Clickbait section, but calling this clickbait feels a little unfair. Clickbait is usually trying to get your attention. This feels more like rage bait.
A recruiter recently posted that candidates should always respond to recruiter outreach because LinkedIn InMails cost recruiters money. According to the post, ignoring recruiter messages not only costs recruiters credits, but may also damage relationships that candidates might need later in their careers.
There are a few problems with this.
First, jobseekers are not responsible for managing recruiter budgets. Recruiters pay for sourcing tools because sourcing is part of recruiting. Sales teams pay for CRM software. Marketing teams pay for advertising. Recruiters pay for sourcing platforms. That's simply part of the cost of doing business.
Second, not every recruiter message deserves a response. Anyone who's spent time on LinkedIn has received outreach for jobs they're wildly unqualified for, dramatically overqualified for, located thousands of miles away, or completely unrelated to their background. Expecting candidates to respond to every unsolicited message because it might save someone a credit misunderstands how communication works.
The relationship argument is even weaker. A recruiter who damages a future relationship because someone didn't reply to a cold message probably wasn't much of a relationship to begin with. Professional relationships are built through meaningful interactions, not mandatory courtesy responses to unsolicited outreach.
Now, if a recruiter reaches out with a relevant opportunity and you know you're not interested, a quick response is certainly a nice thing to do. I've done it. Most professionals have. But there's a difference between professional courtesy and professional obligation. Jobseekers have enough things to worry about without feeling guilty about someone else's InMail credits.
Watch or read a questionable piece of career content? Send it along and I’d love to debunk it! [email protected]
"How do I figure out what story my resume should tell when my experience spans multiple areas?"
This is one of the most common positioning problems I see with experienced professionals, especially in technical fields. The first mistake people make is assuming they need to figure out exactly what they are.
Am I a systems engineer?
Am I an infrastructure engineer?
Am I a platform engineer?
Am I a cloud engineer?
Am I an architect?
Am I a technical leader?
The problem is that many successful careers don't fit neatly into a single category. The more experience someone accumulates, the more likely they are to work across multiple functions, technologies, teams, and business problems. That's especially true in technology, operations, consulting, and leadership roles where responsibilities naturally expand over time.
When candidates get stuck, they're usually trying to answer the wrong question. The goal isn't to discover the one perfect label that describes your entire career. The goal should be to figure out what hiring teams are most likely to hire you for. Those are very different concepts.
One of the things I see constantly during resume reviews is candidates trying to preserve every aspect of their professional identity at the same time. They want the resume to communicate the full complexity of what they've done because all of it feels important and all of it is true. Unfortunately, hiring teams aren't trying to understand your complete professional identity. They're trying to understand where you fit relative to the role they're filling.
That's why I often encourage candidates to stop asking, "What am I?" and start asking, "What is the strongest proof-of-concept story in my background for this role?”
For example, someone may have experience in infrastructure, cloud platforms, distributed systems, automation, software engineering, and technical leadership. All of those things may be true. But if the majority of their recent success came from building and operating large-scale infrastructure, that's probably the story that deserves the most attention. The other experiences still matter, but they become supporting evidence rather than competing narratives.
One of the easiest ways to figure this out is to look for patterns.
What kinds of roles generate interviews most consistently?
What problems have organizations repeatedly trusted you to solve?
What responsibilities keep showing up throughout your career regardless of title?
What would your former managers be most likely to hire you to do again?
Those questions usually reveal a clearer narrative than trying to identify the perfect professional label.
A lot of candidates assume their story should be built around technologies, certifications, job titles, or functional categories. More often, the strongest story comes from identifying the recurring problems you've spent your career solving. That's usually what hiring managers are trying to understand anyway.
I hope that helps! Good luck!
If you’re a Premium subscriber and have a question about your job search, email us at [email protected] and I’ll answer it in a future issue!
That's it for now, and send in those questions! Don't forget to put "Premium" in the subject line so I can stay organized!
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Have a good one!
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