My Best Job Search Advice From September

I spent a good part of September sharing job search advice on LinkedIn, mostly based on things I've been seeing in recruiting and conversations with my resume and coaching clients. Some posts were about resumes. Others covered interviews, career changes, and why qualified people aren't getting the response they'd expect.

Since LinkedIn has a way of burying posts after a few days, I thought I'd pull together some of the advice I shared throughout the month. If you missed some of it, here you go.

Your Job Title Doesn't Tell Me How Senior You Are

I've reviewed plenty of resumes where someone has an impressive title, but I still can't figure out the actual scope of their job.

A Director at one company might manage a small team and a fairly narrow function. A Director somewhere else might oversee a major operation, manage a multimillion-dollar budget, and regularly advise the executive team. Same title, very different responsibilities.

This becomes a problem when you're applying for senior-level opportunities because the recruiter needs to understand how your experience compares to what the company is hiring for. And recruiters aren't going to know how your company operates. If you're pursuing Director, VP, or executive opportunities, your resume should explain the level at which you've actually been working, the kinds of decisions you've made, and how much influence you've had over the business.

A title might get someone's attention, but the details are what help them understand whether you're qualified.

Give Your Accomplishments Some Context

I see a lot of resume bullets that tell me something improved without explaining much about what the person actually did. They'll say things like "Increased revenue by 25%," "Improved operational efficiency," or "Successfully implemented a new system."

Great! But what was happening before you got involved?

Was the company losing customers? Was a process causing delays? Had the business been struggling to implement the system for years? And what did you actually do to change things?

The starting point matters because it helps someone understand how difficult the work was and why the result was important. A 25% improvement might be impressive, but if I don't understand what you were working with, what you changed, or how you influenced the outcome, I'm missing a big part of the story.

This is especially important for senior candidates. Companies want to know how you approach problems and make decisions because they're trying to determine whether you could produce similar results for them. Give the recruiter enough information to understand the impact without making them guess.

Your Resume Is a Marketing Document

This is something I've talked about for years, and I came back to it again in September. Your resume isn't your biography or your origin story. It's a marketing document that's supposed to show an employer how your experience can solve the problems they're hiring someone to address.

That's a difficult adjustment for experienced professionals because they've accumulated so much information over the years. Some of that experience is impressive. Some of it represents major accomplishments. Some of it probably took years of hard work. But how much of it matters to the company you're applying to?

If you're targeting a senior operations role, the recruiter probably cares a lot more about your operational leadership than an unrelated responsibility you had earlier in your career. That doesn't make the older experience unimportant. It means you have to decide how much attention it deserves on this particular resume.

I tell clients to look at the actual job posting and think about what the employer needs. Which parts of your background offer the strongest proof that you've already handled those responsibilities? Those are the things that should get the most attention.

A lot of people struggle with this because they're too close to their own careers. Everything feels relevant when you've personally spent years doing it. The recruiter is looking at your background for one specific reason, so help them find what matters.

Relevant Experience From 8 Years Ago Has a Different Problem

You can have 10 years of experience doing something and still lose out to someone who has 2 years of experience doing it right now. That's one of the frustrating parts of the job search. Recruiters tend to put more weight on recent experience. If your strongest proof that you can do a particular job comes from 6 or 8 years ago, they're probably going to have questions. Have you kept up with changes in the work? Why did you move away from it? Can you still operate at that level? Someone currently doing the job doesn't face quite the same hurdle.

If you're trying to return to an earlier part of your career, your resume needs to make a convincing connection between that older experience and the position you're pursuing today. Look at what you've done recently that supports the same capabilities. You may need to explain those connections in your summary or give the older role more detail than you ordinarily would.

Having done the job before matters. You still need to help the recruiter understand why that experience translates to what the employer needs now.

Getting Interviews but No Offers? Pay Attention to Your Answers

One thing that came up in coaching was people who were getting interviews, making it pretty far, and still not getting offers. That's a different problem from someone who can't get an interview in the first place.

I'm interested in what happens once the candidate is actually talking to the hiring team. Are the answers too short? Too generic? Are they describing what happened without explaining their role in making it happen?

One issue I see with experienced professionals is that they assume the interviewer understands the work because someone in their industry would. That's a mistake. The more senior you are, the more important it becomes to explain how you think, how you make decisions, and how you influence people.

If you're describing a successful project, I want to understand the problem you were trying to solve. What options did you consider? Why did you choose that approach? How did you get people on board? Those details help the interviewer understand how you operate.

An interview is an opportunity to provide proof of concept. You're trying to help the company understand why the things you've already accomplished matter to the problems they're trying to solve. If you're consistently reaching later rounds and not receiving offers, take a closer look at the examples you're choosing and how you're explaining them.

Your Career History May Be Raising Questions You're Not Answering

Another thing I discussed was how recruiters interpret career decisions. Maybe you've had several short-term jobs. Maybe you've moved into consulting. Maybe you took a less senior position after years in leadership. You know why those things happened, but someone reading your resume doesn't.

For example, consulting can mean a lot of different things. You might have a successful advisory practice, work on long-term client engagements, or have taken on contract assignments between permanent positions. Those are different situations, but a vague entry on your resume might make it difficult to tell which one applies.

And recruiters will sometimes fill in the blanks themselves. They might wonder whether you're genuinely interested in returning to a permanent role or whether you'd prefer to keep working for yourself.

The same thing happens when someone's career moves in a direction that isn't immediately obvious. Think about how your experience might look to someone seeing it for the first time. If something could reasonably create confusion, consider whether the resume provides enough information to explain it.

You don't need to tell your entire life story. You need to make sure the professional story you're presenting makes sense.

Sometimes the Resume Needs More Than Another Edit

One of the problems I hear about regularly is someone who's already rewritten their resume multiple times. They've changed the summary, adjusted the bullets, added keywords, removed content, tried a different format, and maybe run it through AI a few times. And they're still not getting the response they want.

When I work on a resume, one of the most important decisions is figuring out what actually belongs on the page. That's especially true when someone has a broad background or is changing direction. The resume may contain plenty of good information but still emphasize the wrong things for the jobs they're targeting.

The jobs someone is pursuing today may be very different from the ones they targeted a few years ago. Their experience has changed, and employers may be looking for different things. That's why I think it's important to periodically look at the entire resume in relation to your current goals.

What information are you including? Why does it matter? Does it actually support the positions you're pursuing?

The value comes from knowing what to add, what deserves more attention, and how to make the whole document tell a relevant, convincing story.

AI Doesn't Know Which Parts of Your Career Matter Most

I talked about AI-generated resumes in September, too. I see a lot of them now, and frankly, plenty are filled with generic language that makes everyone sound pretty much the same. Lots of polished phrases about leadership, collaboration, innovation, and delivering results, but very little information that helps me understand what the person actually accomplished. The bigger issue is what happens before the writing. If you give AI a 20-year career history and ask it to create a resume, how is it supposed to know which accomplishments are most relevant to the jobs you're pursuing?

It doesn't automatically understand how recruiters evaluate candidates for different types of positions. And it certainly doesn't know all the context behind your experience unless you've provided it. That context can be the difference between an ordinary-looking bullet and a really compelling accomplishment.

AI can be useful for cleaning up language once you know what you're trying to communicate. But deciding what belongs on the resume and why it matters requires a lot more thought than asking something to rewrite your work history.

One Last Thing

If there's one piece of advice I'd emphasize from everything I posted in September, it's to stop assuming the person reviewing your background understands what you understand.

They don't know your company, your responsibilities, the circumstances behind your career decisions, or what made your accomplishments difficult. And most recruiters haven't actually done the jobs they're recruiting for. They're working from the job posting, the information you've provided, and whatever experience they have evaluating similar candidates.

Make it easy for them to understand why you make sense for the job. And when you get into an interview, be prepared to explain the work in enough detail that the company can understand what you'd bring to their business.

That's what I've spent more than 20 years helping people do. If you'd like help with your own search, I offer resume and LinkedIn reviews, resume and LinkedIn rewrites, and career coaching.