Took a blindsided layoff in May, entire sales team was shot at once for no fault of our own. Landed new job today and here is what my search looked like. Prior: Sales for Security startup, Director and VP Level search. Also went downmarket to individual contributor roles which was a mistake in hindsight. Typically worked for SF based companies remote prior. Search was 125 days 67 applications 6 interviews 2 second interviews 2 3+ interviews Other interesting soft metrics: Applications to jobs I was way overqualified for was 6. Call backs, 1 that has still not yet progressed and likely will not. Don't under apply. Applications leveraging resume scanning to beat ATS, 4, call backs 2. (Not using resume scanning tools is a huge mistake) Other advice: Don't start your search until your head is in the game. Take 2 weeks minimum, you will make mistakes if you are not clear headed and articulate and can tell your story. I started too early and blew a couple of good applications. Be prepared, don't talk to an internal recruiter without knowing how to answer their shitty predictable questions. Glassdoor can be a great resource for predicting dumb questions. It is your job to sell yourself, don't expect anyone to figure out how great you are. Use external recruiters to the greatest extent possible. Focus on the jobs you want and not anything that pays. Success for me came from basically taking a job before I was offered it because I was passionate about it. If a cover letter seems like a drag, the job isn't for you. It is an incredibly competitive environment and you need to be an your A game. You will be surprised at who in your network will help, and who won't. This can hurt the most. Also, even people who want to help are slow to respond so don't jump to conclusions. Ask everyone for help. Applying to a large company without an internal referral is mission impossible. Otherwise, I felt like I did okay while also making a shit ton of mistakes. Sorry for formatting, on a phone after a few scotches!
mad props on the hustle! Out of curiosity, what resume scanning tool did you use to beat the ATS?
Jobscanner.io seems to be the leader, but they all do the same thing the same way from what I can tell. I used several. To give you an idea, a job description that I felt was "written for me" that perfectly encompassed my skills was around a 40% match for ATS. All of these tools will tell you that you need to be at 80% + to stand out and suggest you add a bunch of keywords to get the score up which can be a lot of work. It is also maddening in the sense that a human would interpret a resume as being a fit, but ATS needs exact keyword hits. Partner does not equal partnership for example. What I did was started adding a "skills" section on my resume that listed all of the keywords needed to get to 80%. I would not reccomend doing this unless you really are a strong candidate, but it seemed to work in the context of my small sample and the recruiters never called me out on it. If you are using this to cheat the system and proving not to be a strong candidate on paper you may piss them off. The whole process is insane, backwards and broken!