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- #195 - Is Your Resume Working?
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Welcome to Issue #195 of Jobseeking is Hard!
Today’s issue is brought to you by HubSpot! They put together a free guide with more than 200 ways people are using AI to create new income streams. Am I promising that downloading a PDF will turn AI into a money-printing machine? Absolutely not. But if you’ve been curious about practical ways people are trying to use these tools beyond rewriting emails and generating questionable LinkedIn posts, it may give you a few ideas worth exploring. If you’re a free subscriber and enjoy Jobseeking is Hard, it costs $0 to support the newsletter by clicking the ad and checking it out. Thanks!
Happy Wednesday!
One of the harder parts of a job search is figuring out whether the signs you’re seeing actually mean anything. A few recruiter messages, some profile views, maybe an initial conversation or two can make it feel like your resume is doing its job.
That’s what I want to talk about this week. Recruiter activity can be encouraging, but it doesn’t always tell you what you think it does.
I’ll also share the resume changes that have been helping Karpiak Consulting clients get interviews and offers during what has been a brutal summer hiring market.
One quick note: the Basic Resume Review Flash Sale is almost over, and it looks like availability won’t make it to August. There are only a few discounted spots left, so once those are gone, they’re gone. The review is normally $119 and is currently $99. It gives you an honest assessment of the five biggest issues that may be holding your resume back, explains why they matter from a recruiter’s perspective, and gives you practical recommendations you can use yourself.
This week we’re talking about:
Why recruiter outreach doesn’t always mean your resume is working
How people are still getting interviews and offers in a brutal summer hiring market
The best (worst?) job posting of the week
The meme of the week
And for Premium subscribers I’m:
Debunking LinkedIn advice about what your profile picture signals to recruiters
Answering a Premium subscriber’s question about what happens when a LinkedIn profile gets recruiter attention but the resume ends the conversation. I’ll explain how the two documents should work together and which differences create doubt.
Let’s get to it!
ATTENTION ISN’T TRACTION
One of the easiest ways to misread a job search is to treat recruiter outreach as proof that your resume is working. Someone finds you, sends a message, and says your background looks interesting, which naturally feels meaningful. Sometimes it is, but recruiter outreach can also mean your profile matched a few search terms, your title looked relevant, or the recruiter saw enough overlap to justify a quick conversation. None of that tells you whether your resume is positioning you accurately or whether the opportunity is a good fit.
Activity can look like progress even when it isn’t leading anywhere useful. A candidate may get several recruiter messages in a month and assume the resume is strong, even though the roles are too junior, too broad, outside the target function, or based on an inflated reading of the experience. The conversations happen, but they don’t move forward. The recruiter asks a few questions, realizes the match isn’t as clean as expected, and disappears.
In many cases, the problem started before the call. The resume created an expectation that the actual background couldn’t support. A strong resume should help the right people understand your level, function, scope, and likely next move. Curiosity by itself doesn’t do much. Jobseekers often judge resume performance by the easiest things to notice, including messages, profile views, and initial calls, because all of them create a sense that something is happening.
Resume performance becomes clearer when you look at the quality of the opportunities and what happens after the initial contact. Pay attention to whether recruiters are bringing you roles that actually match what you want, whether they understand your level without a long explanation, and whether those conversations are consistently reaching hiring managers.
A resume that’s doing its job usually creates consistency. The opportunities make sense, recruiters understand your level, and the conversations stay aligned as they move forward. You still won’t advance every time because hiring is inconsistent and timing matters, but you also shouldn’t regularly find yourself correcting basic assumptions about what you’ve done or what level you’re targeting. If you’re being ghosted after each first-round/screening conversation, something isn’t right.
Broad resumes create this problem all the time. Experienced candidates often include every function and area of responsibility because they want the resume to look impressive while keeping themselves open to as many roles as possible. That may increase the number of recruiters who see some possible use for the background, but it also makes the positioning less precise. The result is often more outreach and fewer serious opportunities.
Even if you’re getting profile views and initial recruiter conversations, it’s still worth going back to the resume itself. Those early signals only show that something caught their attention. Review whether the document is attracting the right roles, setting accurate expectations, and giving recruiters a clear reason to keep the process moving once they look more closely. Compare the opportunities and outreach you’re receiving against what you actually want, note where recruiters seem confused about your level or scope, and adjust the resume by changing what leads, removing experience that keeps sending the wrong signal, and making the target role more obvious in the summary and bullet order.
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
We’re almost into August, and this summer has been brutal for jobseekers. Hiring has been slow, applications are disappearing into a void, and plenty of qualified people are starting to wonder whether anything works anymore.
But people are still getting interviews. They’re still getting offers. And a lot of the clients I’ve worked with this summer started seeing better results after we changed how their experience was positioned.
That usually meant narrowing a resume that was trying to do too much, making ownership and scope easier to understand, adding context around accomplishments, and aligning the story more directly with the kinds of roles they actually wanted.
In other cases, it meant revisiting a resume that had worked in a better market but wasn’t holding up now.
I pulled together the advice that has been working most often for Karpiak Consulting clients this summer in a new guide on the website. You can use it to review your own resume, but if you’re reading it and realizing your resume may need more than a few edits, that’s exactly what our reviews, rewrites, and coaching services are built for.
The market is bad. Your resume still has to be better. This is where to start:
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!
MEME OF THE WEEK
This meme got more reactions on my Threads than anything else I posted this week.
Today’s issue is also brought to you by Wispr Flow! It’s a voice-to-text tool, turning whatever you say into cleaner, formatted writing inside the apps you already use. It also removes filler words, fixes obvious errors, and learns the names and phrases you use regularly, which is useful if your dictation usually looks like it was recorded during an emergency. If you’re a free subscriber and enjoy Jobseeking is Hard, it costs $0 to support the newsletter by clicking the ad and checking it out. Thanks!
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“A recruiter contacted me through LinkedIn about a Director-level role and said my background looked like a strong fit. After I sent my resume, they stopped responding. My LinkedIn is broader and more current than my resume, but the experience is the same. Should those two documents match exactly, and could the difference be why the conversation ended?”
Check out the Premium Section below for my answer! Not a Premium Subscriber? Upgrade here: www.JobseekingIsHard.com/upgrade
Why upgrade? For less than $0.63/day, you get:
Subscriber-Only Discounts: Get exclusive promo codes for Karpiak Consulting services, available only to Premium subscribers. Whether you're updating your resume, need a LinkedIn profile review, or want expert help tailoring your applications, these occasional discounts make expert support more accessible.
Extra Tips & Advice: Gain exclusive insights, strategies, and advice from a recruiter with over 20 years of experience in the field. Discover what hiring managers truly value and how to stand out at every step of your job search.
Access to Previous Issues: Explore a library of knowledge with all 100+ past issues of the newsletter. Each edition is packed with proven strategies, practical advice, and real-world jobseeking stories to give you an edge in today’s competitive job market. From resume tips to handling tough interview questions, you’ll find answers to every challenge.
Exclusive Q&A: Have questions about your job search? Premium subscribers can ask Adam directly! Questions will be featured in upcoming issues, with detailed answers tailored to real-world scenarios, ensuring you get the guidance you need.
Bonus Content: As part of your Premium subscription, you’ll receive 20 additional job search tips delivered to your inbox over the next 20 days. This includes advice on avoiding common mistakes and maximizing your job search strategy to land interviews faster.
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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- • Extra Tips & Advice: Gain exclusive insights, strategies, and advice from a recruiter with over 20 years of experience in the field. Discover what hiring managers truly value and how to stand out at every step of your job search.
- • Access to Previous Issues: Explore a library of knowledge with all 100+ past issues of the newsletter. Each edition is packed with proven strategies, practical advice, and real-world jobseeking stories to give you an edge in today’s competitive job market. From resume tips to handling tough interview questions, you’ll find answers to every challenge.
- • Exclusive Q&A: Have questions about your job search? Premium subscribers can ask Adam directly! Questions will be featured in upcoming issues, with detailed answers tailored to real-world scenarios, ensuring you get the guidance you need.
- • Bonus Content: As part of your Premium subscription, you’ll receive 20 additional job search tips delivered to your inbox over the next 20 days. This includes advice on avoiding common mistakes and maximizing your job search strategy to land interviews faster.
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