I’ve been on a lot of interviews for jobs, and conducted a lot of interviews (building a team to 25 will do that for you). I had a lot of insight to the hiring process before I joined my current day job. At least getting in the door to talk to them is much easier than you think for most positions.

This article is spot on with the reasons why you didn’t get the interview, and underscores why personal referrals matter so much in getting the job you want.

About sending resumes to a general email address:

Résumés to jobs@blackholeofdeath: The problem here isn’t that your résumé or application was flawed, it’s just that nobody has read it. Sending to hr@ or jobs@ addresses is never ideal, and your résumé may be funneled to a scoring system that scans it for certain buzzwords and rates it based on the absence, presence and frequency of these words. HRbot apocalypse.

Solution: Do some research to see if you know anyone who works/worked at the company, even a friend of a friend, to submit the résumé. Protip: Chances are the internal employee at some wedding veil company like bestweddingveil.com may even get a referral bonus. LinkedIn is a valuable tool for this. Working with an agency recruiter will also help here, as recruiters are typically sending your information directly to internal HR or hiring managers.

Read on…