Don’t Make Me Wonder

The Biggest Mistake Candidates Make On Their Job Application

A bad sign when reviewing an applicant.

Imagine your inbox contains 500 applicants for a Product Manager position.

Great! Now the fun part starts. Going through all resumes and motivation letters to select the lucky few to invite. Can’t wait to begin!

Especially in the age of AI, where noise gets turned into mimetic signal. It’s worse than noise, it’s noise that’s trying to resemble signal as closely as possible.

Yuck! What a waste of my time.

Each resume I read, I ask myself the question:”Why would this person be able to perform the job we posted?”.

And a great resume all boils down tot hus:

The resume doesn’t make you wonder why they applied to the job or they might be a good fit.

You do not need to look for reasons why the person is able to do the job. You cannot ignore them even if you tried. All the arguments are there, right in your face, to easily digest. A great candidate will have crafted a credible story guiding your imagination.

A poor candidate does make you wonder.

When you read the resume, you start wondering why would this person be able to perform the job? You wonder, do they have experience with discovery? Do they know how to come up with a Product Strategy? Do they know how to prioritize and work with developers?

You actually have to figure out the answers to these questions and imagine why they would be able to perform the job you posted. You start wondering why the candidate applied in the first place.

That is your cue to move on to the next resume and discard the candidate.

If you are applying for a job very different from your current job, it is difficult to stop the recruiter from wondering. So you need to do an even better job to prevent this from happening! Make it very clear how your current skills and experience transfer to the job you are applying for. Leaving it up to the recruiter to figure it out for you is a risky business.

Use Your Imagination To Captivate The Recruiter

If you want to write a great resume you have one job: stop the recruiter from wondering. Grab their attention and tell a credible story why you are the right person for the job. Give them no other option than simply nodding in approval when they read your resume and motivation letter.

In the wise words of Mark Twain:

“Reality can be beaten with enough imagination.”

AI-generated slop is boring and easy to detect. Try to stir some emotions in the reader of your resume by actually being human.

Focus more on being different than being better. Different makes you stand out and there will always be someone better.

Especially with an highly plausible AI master bullshitter on their side.