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Hey There!

Welcome to Issue #205 of Jobseeking is Hard!

Today's issue is brought to you by Coveron! Jobseeking means putting a lot of your personal information out there. You apply to one job and suddenly your phone won’t stop ringing about your car’s expiring warranty and you’re subscribed to 47 newsletters you definitely don’t remember signing up for. Coveron helps monitor and protect your identity and finances from fraud and suspicious activity. Check them out and get an extra 20% off if you’re one of the first 100 users.

Happy Wednesday!

Having the right experience doesn’t always mean a recruiter will weigh it the way you expect. When that experience happened matters, especially when recruiters have plenty of candidates who are doing similar work right now.

That’s what I want to talk about this week. I’ll explain recency bias, why recruiters tend to feel more comfortable with recent examples of relevant experience, and what you can do when the strongest proof that you can do the job is further back in your career.

I’ll also share how a Comprehensive Resume Review helped a recruiter who had been laid off for almost a year rethink how she was presenting her experience.

This week we’re talking about:

• One reason recruiters filter out qualified candidates

• How a recruiter landed a job after being laid off for a year…and why she says getting resume help “did the trick”

• The best (worst?) job posting of the week

• The meme of the week

And for Premium subscribers I’m:

• Debunking advice about negotiating beyond the posted salary range

• Answering a Premium subscriber’s question about getting back into management after spending the last few years as an individual contributor. I’ll explain how to target the right roles, prove your leadership skills are still current, and make that first move back into management easier to sell.

Let’s get to it!

HOW RECRUITERS WEIGH EXPERIENCE

One of the more frustrating parts of a job search is looking at a posting and knowing you’ve done the job before, only to get rejected anyway. You have the experience they’re asking for. Maybe you even have more of it than some of the people getting interviews. But recruiters aren’t only looking at whether you’ve done something…they’re also looking at when you did it.

It’s called recency bias.

Recency matters because recruiters are looking for current evidence that you can do the job they’re hiring for. If the strongest proof is in your current role or the one immediately before it, that’s pretty easy to evaluate. If I have to go back six or eight years to find the experience that makes you a fit, there are more questions. Have you kept those skills current? Why did you move away from that work? Why do you want to return to it now? Has the function changed since you last did it? Would you actually be happy doing it again?

You may have perfectly good answers to all of those questions. The problem is that the recruiter reviewing your resume doesn’t know them yet. And if they have plenty of applicants, they may not need to spend time finding out. Recruiters are generally trying to reduce risk and get to a manageable group of candidates. Someone doing the work today is simply easier to present than someone whose best example of doing it is buried three jobs back.

This is why two candidates can technically have the same required experience and still be evaluated very differently. Someone who managed a team for eight years but has been an individual contributor for the last four years may have more management experience than someone who became a manager two years ago. But for a management opening, the second candidate has the more recent use case. The recruiter doesn’t have to explain the career change or make a case that the first candidate still wants to manage. The resume already answers those questions.

I see versions of this all the time in coaching with people trying to return to an earlier part of their career. They worked in the industry before. They owned the function before. They used the technology before. They managed people before. From their perspective, it’s obvious that the experience counts because they know they can still do it. From the recruiter’s perspective, the years since then are also part of the story.

This is where your resume needs to do more than document your career in reverse chronological order. If your most relevant experience isn’t your most recent experience, you need to make that relevance easier to see. Your summary can establish the connection to the role before the recruiter starts reading your chronology. Your recent experience can emphasize the parts of your current work that still support the target job. And an older role that’s particularly important may deserve more detail than you’d normally give a position from that long ago.

This is also one of the situations where, gasp, a cover letter can actually be useful. I’m not talking about three paragraphs telling the company how excited you are about the opportunity and repeating things I can already see on your resume. If there’s a legitimate concern created by your career chronology, a short cover letter can give the recruiter context they otherwise don’t have. You’re not defending your experience. You’re explaining why experience that may look old on paper is still relevant to what you want to do next. If the chronology doesn’t tell that story clearly on its own, give the recruiter the context instead of hoping they figure it out.

You can’t make six-year-old experience recent, and you shouldn’t try to hide the fact that your career has moved in another direction since then. But you can recognize the questions your resume may create and give the recruiter better evidence to answer them.

When you’re deciding whether you’re qualified for a job, don’t just ask yourself whether you’ve done the work before. Look at your resume the way a recruiter will and ask what evidence you’re giving them that you can still do it now.

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 you’ll land a job after being laid off for a year like this client 🤷‍♂️

So how did I help this client?

Last December, someone purchased a Comprehensive Resume Review for me to give to a jobseeker who needed it. I ended up giving it to a recruiter who had been laid off for almost a year.

Yes, recruiters need resume help too. She actually told me that was one of her biggest regrets. Because she worked in recruiting, she assumed she knew enough about resumes that she didn’t need help. By the time she reached out, she’d been searching for a year.

She had recruited across multiple industries and clients, managed high-volume hiring, led junior recruiters, and had some legitimately strong results. But when I reviewed the resume, a lot of that context wasn’t actually on the resume. Her story was hidden. She listed clients and outcomes, but I wanted to know more about the scope of the work, what she actually did for each client, and what made those results impressive. I also recommended bringing back a summary so she could frame all that experience around the specific job she was targeting instead of leaving the recruiter to sort through it.

She rewrote it.

Last week, completely out of nowhere, I got a LinkedIn connection request from her with this message:

There’s a pretty good lesson here. She’s a recruiter. She reads resumes for a living. And she still benefited from having someone else look at hers and tell her what they were seeing. When you’ve been staring at your own career for years, it’s easy to assume the reader understands things that feel obvious to you.

If you’ve been searching for a while and can’t figure out why your resume isn’t getting the response you expect, that’s exactly what my Comprehensive Resume Review is for.

If you're not getting the response you expected from your resume and want help rebuilding it into something you can actually use going forward, 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!

just another normal day in the job search

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 GURU 2026! Look, if you’ve been staring at job postings all day, I get it. The word “guru” can be triggering. But GURU 2026 is actually a two-day virtual email marketing conference covering the latest trends, best practices, and tools. It’s November 12-13, and it’s 100% free to attend. Save your spot and become the rare kind of guru with actual training.

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PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER QUESTION

“I spent most of my career managing teams, but I’ve been an individual contributor for the last three years. I’m trying to get back into management and keep getting rejected for roles I know I’m qualified for. How should I approach the search?”

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.

AFFILIATES

NOTE: As an affiliate to these services, we will receive compensation if you purchase products or services through the links provided.

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