A follow-up to “When Silence Becomes the Answer”
My confidence didn’t first slip because I was ghosted.
It slipped during one week when I found ten to fifteen jobs that matched what I had to offer almost to the letter. My résumé reflected exactly what the job descriptions asked for, and in many cases I had more than they listed, the kind of extra experience that lets you think a step ahead of the work. I submitted my applications, and the rejections started arriving the next day, and then the day after that. Each one said the company had decided to move forward with other candidates.
I remember thinking: What is going on? How am I not a plausible candidate for a job when I meet every criterion?
The Résumé I Never Had to Rewrite
In my 20 years in HR, I never rewrote my résumé for each job. I kept a master version with everything on it, about eight pages, and a shorter version that I used to apply. I made sure it always had quantitative results, because numbers speak for themselves. That system worked for two decades.
After that week of rejections, I realized something in the market had changed. So I started rewriting my résumé for every role. Two résumés turned into about twenty, each tilted slightly to fit a specific job description. Tailoring alone started to feel like a full-time job.
What I was doing was writing for a system configured by someone else. I’ve spent years implementing ATS and HR systems, so I know that many companies now use automated and AI-assisted screening to review résumés before a person ever looks at them, and that every company configures its system differently. There is no single thing to write to. A recent Stanford study of one AI screening vendor found that people who applied to several employers using it were rejected from all of them more often than chance would predict. It studied a single vendor, so it doesn’t prove every system works this way. I can’t know what any system did with my applications. But that uncertainty made me ask a question I still don’t have a good answer to: how do you keep applying in a market like this?
I kept applying. I got a few interviews here and there. And I kept rewriting my résumé, again and again.
The Comparison Voice
The thought that I might be obsolete didn’t come from nowhere. It came from a comparison.
I once worked for years at a company alongside colleagues, some of whom started as associates. I looked at where they are now: vice presidents and senior vice presidents, still at that company. And I asked myself how they were able to build that and stay, while I wasn’t. How was it that all the knowledge I brought into that job didn’t help?
I don’t need their titles to know where I’ve been. And right now, a title isn’t what I’m after. I’m not looking for a manager role or any type of leadership role. My priority is income, so I can take care of the financial responsibilities that come with my family. If the opportunity to lead comes after I’ve landed somewhere, I’ll welcome it, but it isn’t what I’m chasing today.
Feeling Behind With a 4.0 GPA
I recently completed a master’s degree in IT, hoping to build on my years of systems implementation work. I finished with a 4.0 GPA. And I still felt behind.
The gap isn’t only knowledge. Many of my classmates came in with IT backgrounds and certifications that let them start applying right away. I came from HR and systems implementation. For me, those certifications mean paying for a course, in my experience, about $500 to $1,000, and then for the exam, between $150 and $500, and paying again if I miss it or don’t pass. A lot of the roles I’m looking at also ask for skills like Python and SQL, which I’m still building.
When you don’t have income, you can’t just go all in on training. You’re putting money into something that will benefit you, while risking a financial strain on your family. And even then, nothing guarantees it leads to the job.
The evidence says one thing: a 4.0 GPA and two decades of experience, and the voice says another.
What I Tell Myself Now
I haven’t found a solution, and I won’t pretend I have. What I have is a way of getting through each time the thought creeps back.
I lean on the people around me. My friends and family remind me that everything good in my life came on its due date, that it’s the plan of God and it comes in His time, and that I don’t need to despair, because He will put me in the right place at the right time. That helps me. But I’m also human, so the thought comes back, and they have to remind me again, or I have to remind myself again.
If faith isn’t part of your life, I think the idea still holds. Life gives us trials for a reason, and we have to go through them to learn something. Once we’ve learned it, the opportunity rises, and the door opens. Mine hasn’t opened yet. But I have to believe that this is how it works.
You’re Not the Only One
The silence I wrote about last time landed on top of all of this, which is part of why it hurt as much as it did. So here’s what I most want you to take from this.
Nobody talks about this part of a job search. Nobody tells you, “I went through that too. I had the same thoughts.” So when the doubt arrives, it feels like yours alone, as if something is wrong with you.
It isn’t. If you’re months into a search and wondering whether you’re good enough, whether you’ve been left behind, whether the people around you know something you don’t, those thoughts are more common than they feel. Other people have had them. Other people are having them right now, quietly, the same way you are.
I don’t have the answer. But I do know you’re not alone in the question.
Your Turn
Have you ever felt the comparison voice during a job search, or in your career in general? What helps you quiet it, even a little? Share it in the comments. Someone reading may need to hear that they’re not the only one.
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