A while back I was putting out a lot of resumes that weren't getting much traction. A colleague of mine -- Diane -- took one look at what I was doing and showed me some of the mistakes I'd been making. Not obvious ones. Subtle ones. The kind that make a recruiter click away in three seconds.
With her help I got more selective, started getting real responses -- not just the polite "we've decided to go another direction" form letters. I even took down my Open to Work banner. Not because I stopped looking, but because I didn't feel like I had to take the first offer anymore.
The first thing that changed wasn't the resume. It was the LinkedIn profile. Turns out you don't need a recruiter reading your entire career history back to the days before half your skills had names. You need what's relevant. Clean. Focused. Easy to skim in thirty seconds and still know exactly what you bring to the table.
Between the LinkedIn cleanup and the individually tailored resumes and cover letters -- things started to move. Diane is now offering that same approach to anyone who's ready to stop guessing and start getting callbacks.