A Veteran Got 0 Responses from 300 Jobs. With Jobscan, He Got 5 out of 8
#veterans What are the chances of landing an interview for a former military pilot with 30 years of real-life leadership experience, a brand new business degree from an acclaimed university, and the charisma and confidence to go along with it? Just about as good as they get, right?
In reality, this person applied to 300 jobs over a five-month period without one single response.
I was just as surprised as you probably are when I spoke with Rusty, a real Jobscan user from Denver, Colorado.
The Resume Black Hole “One of the things I was disheartened by was the lack of actionable information when it came to the job search,” he said. Rusty connected with {Hire Heroes USA](https://www.hireheroesusa.org/?utm_source=mailchimp-free&utm_campaign=15d6cac506-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_03_23_09_05_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d2497515eb-15d6cac506-249831605) in an effort to find some motivation to help him push forward. While getting tips for improving his job search and writing a military to civilian resume, a coach with Hired Heroes suggested Jobscan.
When Rusty came out of the military with decades of strong leadership experience in his wake, he decided to go back and finish his college degree, knowing the combination of strong experience and education would make him an impressive job candidate. After two and a half years, he graduated with a business degree in Information Management.
Rusty estimates that he applied for 300 jobs between July and December 2019. He didn't get one response from those applications.
Choosing the Right Resume Keywords Using Jobscan’s scan tool, Rusty was able to build a resume that targeted his impressive experience and education at the job while appealing to the ATS. “It gave me the opportunity to tailor the resume, and still look like myself, but tailor it so the systems were picking it up,” he said.
“Lo and behold, where probably 300 [resumes] went unanswered, I started getting immediate action,” he told me, adding that of the first eight resumes he submitted using Jobscan, he heard back about five right away.
Soon, he landed a job in Cybersecurity, merging his technical and leadership experience with his new degree.
Resume Quality over Quantity Of course, the process of optimizing resumes for each and every job takes time. “It takes a while,” Rusty said. “I would say on average, by the time I used your tool and optimized the resume, it probably would take me roughly two hours to have something ready to submit.”
As job seekers, the instinct is often to apply for as many jobs as possible, thinking that will yield the best odds. But when the mindset is shifted to spending more time applying to the best fits, things begin to change in the right direction. After all, it just takes one well-optimized resume landing in the hands of the hiring manager to get you your dream job.