Be prepared for a longer, more intense and less personal application process
than before.
You may be asked to sit for additional interviews, including conversations over
the phone, via video and with a wider range of interviewers.
If you're gearing up for a job search but haven't pulled out your resume much
in some significant ways in the last 10 years, both in terms of what the experience
is like for candidates and which strategies are effective and which have fallen
out of favor.
Here are eight of the biggest changes you should be prepared for if your job hunting
skills are rusty.
1. Hiring often takes longer than it used to. If you're used to companies
placing an ad, interviewing candidates and making a hire all in the space of,
say, a month, you might be in for a shock. Companies increasingly are taking
months to hire. Some companies still move quickly, but don't be surprised if
you hear back from companies months after you initially applied, or if weeks
go by before you hear back after an interview.
2. You may be asked to interview more times than in the past. Many
employers are adding additional steps to their hiring process – phone interviews
before meeting in person, multiple interview rounds with a wider range of
interviewers, including peers and managers several levels up, requests for
3. Nearly all applications must be submitted online now. If the last time
you job hunted, you were still looking through job ads in the newspaper and
mailing in your resume on thick bond paper, know that times have changed.
Today the vast majority of jobs will direct you to apply online, often refusing to
accept paper resumes at all. This can be more efficient (and will certainly save
you on postage), but it can also mean wrestling with ornery electronic systems
that aren't designed with candidates' ease in mind.
4. You might be asked to disclose an uncomfortable amount of information
to get your application reviewed. Online applications regularly require applicants
often refusing to accept applications that don't include this information. And this
is all before you've ever had a chance to talk to a human.
5. At the same time that the process has become more intense, it's also
become less personal. With companies asking candidates to invest so much
time and energy in longer, more involved processes, candidates are often treated
surprisingly impersonally. You may interview with a company, possibly even several
times, and then never hear back from them with a final decision. It's increasingly
common for companies to not bother sending out rejections, or even to respond to
direct requests from candidates for an update on where the hiring process stands.
6. You might be asked to do an initial screening by video. Some companies
are asking candidates who make an initial cut to answer prerecorded questions by
for candidates since it means investing time in an "interview" without being able to
ask their own questions or get a feel for the job or company culture.
7. Resume conventions have changed. Don't just pull out your old resume from
10 years ago, update it with your last job and assume it's good to go. Modern resumes
have jettisoned the old-fashioned objective at the top of the page, the formerly
ubiquitous "references available upon request" statement at the bottom and the rigid
rule confining you to one page. You're still limited to one page if you're a recent
graduate, but otherwise two pages are fine.
8. The old advice about following up on your job application to show
persistence no longer applies. If you remember being told to call to check on
your application after submitting it or to stop by a company and ask to talk to the
hiring manager in person, remove those strategies from your modern job-hunting
And stopping by in person risks signaling
that you're out of touch with how modern offices work.
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