Stop Being Ghosted: Why Your Resume Is Failing the 1-in-12 Rule

This week, Jeff and I are diving into a frustrating reality for many job seekers: applying to dozens of roles and hearing absolutely NOTHING back. It is so easy to feel like you are the problem, but in reality, this is often a strategy problem. We want to help you move from being ghosted to getting the interview calls you deserve.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why a 1-in-12 interview ratio is actually a healthy goal
• The “Resume Problem” vs. the “You Problem”
• How to turn boring responsibilities into high-impact evidence stories
• Why you should never use Canva templates for your resume
• The trap of “Easy Apply” and mass applying indiscriminately
• Why meeting 70% of the job requirements is often enough to apply
• How to handle being passed over for an internal candidate

Listen in to help us, help you give yourself the best chance of landing your Next Job… NOW :)

Greg’s FREE Resume Template is available here: 

https://greglangstaff.com/resume-templates

Greg’s FREE Resume Writing Course is available here: 

https://youtu.be/z9oEbG1GhqM?si=qOCB3yLLnETzFEJY

Greg’s Resume WRITING Services can be found here: 

https://greglangstaff.com/must-hire-packages  

Greg’s Resume REVIEW Services can be found here: 

https://greglangstaff.com/resume-linkedin-reviews

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

If you've done everything on the job description, you're still not getting calls. It's a resume problem, not a you problem. Got it. So your resume needs to not just explain that you have done all those things, but provide stories that share evidence that you're good at those things. Like I don't want to see lead marketing campaigns. I want to see directed omni-channel social media campaigns on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, which generated a 45% increase in website traffic and a 12% increase in revenue. Like that is a good resume bullet point. That's who's getting these interviews and landing the jobs. Welcome to the podcast. I'm Greg Langstaff. I'm a certified resume strategist. I've written over 2,000 resumes, and I love helping people get new jobs.

SPEAKER_02 1:05

And I'm Jeff, and I have a lot of questions about job searching. Together, we're going to talk about everything you need to know about landing your next role.

SPEAKER_00 1:13

Yes, we are.

SPEAKER_02 1:14

Greg, today we're talking about low interview rates. So we're going to talk about why our applications might not be moving us forward in the interview process and what we can do to increase our chances to get interviews. Okay. There are many reasons that we've talked about on this podcast why you might not be getting an interview. There's internal candidates. Yep. Jobs aren't real. They're just ghosts and being left up for no reason. Yeah. You have missing qualifications listed on your, or you're not listing your qualifications. You have missing qualifications. What is a good ratio of application to interview that we should be targeting?

SPEAKER_00 1:57

I think, like from what I've seen, a superstar candidate will be getting an interview one every five to seven applications. That frequently. I mean, that's a superstar. Yeah. What the point that you should be looking at, or the ratio you should be looking at to decide if you are getting enough interviews, if there's nothing wrong with you, is there's nothing wrong with your resume, that's about one in twelve. If you're hitting lower than one in twelve, it's time to take a good look at your resume and maybe yourself.

SPEAKER_02 2:32

And when you say look at yourself, what do you mean?

SPEAKER_00 2:34

Uh, I mean, so like if you're it's your resume's fault that you're not getting interviews, that might mean you've laid it out poorly, you're not using a great template. Templates are available on our website, greglangstaff.com. Or more likely, you are not selling your experience properly. So, whereas other people who've done the same work as you might be bragging about their great accomplishments, the awards they've won, the revenue they've generated. You might just be listing your responsibilities, and that is like a huge resume flaw. The second piece is you might not be good enough. You it's true though. Like if we want to get better, if we want to advance our careers, we need to admit sometimes we're not good enough right now. It's not our keywords, it's not our resume, it's us, which means we might need to go back to school, we might need to take an online certificate, we might need to try harder at work so we have more accomplishments to brag about.

SPEAKER_02 3:33

So when you're saying this like a one in 12 ratio, that's for your everyday applicant, but those who are doing the work, right? Like one in 12 is someone who's tailoring their resume, they are using the correct keywords, they have a good template. And maybe doing a little bit of networking as well. And doing some networking. Like if you're doing the best you can and you're getting one out of every 12, you're okay.

unknown 4:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:00

Is that what you're saying? Like that you're on a good pace, you're not a superstar. When is the point again that you're saying let's revisit strategy? You need to take a deep look at yourself and maybe change everything.

SPEAKER_00 4:16

Well, like what we talk about is like we've talked about how many jobs should you apply to. And like, you know, a comfortable rate is like five to maybe 10 in a week. So if you're hitting like one in 10, 1 in 12 ratio, like you should be getting a few interviews every month.

SPEAKER_02 4:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:33

Like two, three, and that's about as much as the average person can handle.

SPEAKER_02 4:38

True.

SPEAKER_00 4:39

So, like, if you are below that, if you're if you're applying to 15, 20 jobs, you're not hearing back, like stop applying to jobs, change your strategy, change your resume, and maybe even think about improving on yourself as a professional.

SPEAKER_02 4:54

What would you what are the first things you would ask yourself if you're 0 for 20?

SPEAKER_00 5:01

I would take a look at the job descriptions I'm applying to. I would look closely at the requirements, and I would think, have I done all these things? And does my re resume demonstrate I'm good at these things? Because there's like three levels, right? There's you look at a job description, you think, I could do that. I could learn to do that. Well, guess what? Everyone thinks they could learn to do everything.

SPEAKER_02 5:24

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 5:24

I I've I watch sports on TV, I see the broadcasters, I'm like, I'm pretty, I'm pretty energetic. I know enough about sports, I could do that. I'm not gonna get hired to broadcast for the Raptors. Matt Devlin is way better than me.

SPEAKER_02 5:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:40

Right? And if he were to retire, there's other people who've already been doing that. And like that's a reality we need to face. It's like anytime you're thinking, I could do that, there's hundreds of people that already do that.

SPEAKER_02 5:52

And there's lots of people that are have been training for that role, understudying, maybe Matt Devlin, right? Like, there's people who've been stepping in, people who've been doing guest appearances, like they're next in line. Yeah. What makes you think that you're gonna bump that line?

SPEAKER_00 6:08

Yeah. So, like, if we're in the I could do that phase, you're applying to the wrong jobs. You're not ready. Now, if you are in the phase where you're seeing everything on the list and you're thinking, I've done all that stuff, that's one level below ready to get that job, but you're not there. Why not? Because, well, what's good news here is that that level is your resume is the problem. You're not the problem, your resume is the problem.

SPEAKER_02 6:35

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 6:35

If you've done everything on the job description, you're still not getting calls, it's a resume problem, not a you problem. Got it. So your resume needs to not just explain that you have done all those things, but provide stories that share evidence that you're good at those things. Like, I don't want to see lead marketing campaigns. I want to see directed omni-channel social media campaigns on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, which generated a 45% increase in website traffic and a 12% increase in revenue. Like that is a good resume bullet point. That's who's getting these interviews and landing the jobs.

SPEAKER_02 7:13

First of all, did you just do that on the top of your head?

SPEAKER_00 7:16

I think I've written over 100,000 resume bullet points. So, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:20

It's just all up there.

SPEAKER_00 7:22

No, that's a stretch. I think I've written about 60 to 70,000 resume bullet points.

SPEAKER_02 7:27

That's so many bullet points. But that was a fantastic way to frame it, right? Not lead marketing strategies. The detail that you just went into, and that on a line, it's not that long, but it was impressive. It's not a paragraph, it's just intentional word choices that align up. Anyway, this episode is not about bullet points. No, but like I love bullet points. You do love bullet points. But I think what you've been talking about here is sometimes it's not your fault, sometimes it is your fault.

SPEAKER_00 8:00

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 8:01

Let's do a little activity. I would love to play a game with you. All right. Pass me the game. Let's do it. So we're gonna play wavelength. That's the name of this game.

SPEAKER_00 8:11

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 8:11

Perfect. So we're gonna play wavelength and not your fault, your fault. Okay. Alright, so I'm gonna describe um kind of a reason why someone might not be getting a job. Okay. And you can guess whether that is not your fault, or that's entirely your fault.

SPEAKER_00 8:34

All right. And for those who are listening, wavelength is a kind of a board game type thing where we have a big wheel that's gonna reveal like a spectrum. Um, and on the right side is the not your fault, and on the left side is your fault, and I'm gonna place like the the red, what would you call that? Like uh dial mean where on the spectrum of not your fault to your fault that I believe this thing is based on what Jeff has said.

SPEAKER_02 9:03

So, yeah, that's the goal is for Greg to accurately guess within the same wavelength uh and score it as closely as possible to where I think it is on the spectrum.

SPEAKER_00 9:13

Yes. And audio listeners, if you're feeling lost, check us out on YouTube. Next job now podcast on YouTube. All right, you ready? Let's do this. I won't look. I won't look.

SPEAKER_02 9:23

Not your fault, your fault. Okay. Can I look? Uh yeah, you can look. Uh the internal candidate got the job.

SPEAKER_00 9:37

That is, oh yeah, I guess I'll place this. So not your fault is on the right towards me. Or sorry. Your not your fault is on the left towards you. Internal candidate getting the job, really, very rarely your fault. I'm gonna put it almost almost all the way to the not your fault side. Alright. Actually, I'm gonna go even further. Okay. Alright. Uh reveal.

SPEAKER_02 10:02

Two points! Hey, okay. I really assume that that that's such a leading reason that that's likely not your fault. So I just assume that that was kind of the maximum.

SPEAKER_00 10:12

Yeah, I mean that that's correct. Like, not an internal candidate getting the job over you, they may have just been forced to do interviews for like out of corporate policy or union policy, but like they usually had that job open for that person, or at very least, they were afraid to hire someone they didn't know because you never know if that person's gonna be a jerk or lazy or whatever. And people tend to like prefer to hire the person they know. So if you get beat by an internal candidate, that don't feel too bad. Don't feel too bad. Don't feel bad at all.

SPEAKER_02 10:46

All right, round two. Okay. Your resume made it to the hiring manager. You passed the ATS, you had all your your bullet points, um, but they decided to go in a different direction.

SPEAKER_01 11:03

Hmm.

SPEAKER_00 11:04

I'm gonna say, I'm gonna bring this over to the right. That's mostly your fault. Mostly your fault. Yeah, and and like if your resume is good as you're describing and you're a good fit for the role, I'm gonna go a little less. So it sounds like in this scenario, we've sold ourselves pretty well, but you can always do better. You can always be bragging more, you can always be more specific with your accomplishments. But in this scenario, the reason why I'm not putting it entirely as your fault is that sometimes just like a couple people who are better than you at this thing applied to the job. So you just got beat. Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:43

Reveal?

SPEAKER_00 11:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:45

Oh, we're getting points. That's two. Okay. All right. Yeah, I was like, you did okay. But you can do better. You're right.

SPEAKER_01 11:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:56

Yeah. Do better. All right. Let's try this again. No, here we go. All right. Um, your template looked nice. Uh, definitely didn't pass ATS, um, but your bullet points were solid, but no one really read your resume. You didn't make it to the hiring manager, but your resume looks good.

SPEAKER_00 12:26

I'm gonna say that's largely your fault. Like the first thing we should do when we're building our resume is select an ATS optimized, nice professional template. It's a very easy problem to solve, so it is your fault.

SPEAKER_02 12:41

It's your fault. Three. All right, let's do one more. All right. All right. All right. You designed your template using Canva.

SPEAKER_01 13:00

Hey! There you go.

SPEAKER_00 13:03

I believe you're supposed to make sure it's fully on one side. But yeah. Maximum your fault. No Canva templates.

SPEAKER_02 13:12

No Canva templates.

SPEAKER_00 13:14

Why? Why? They're just typically not ATS compliant. They're made with text boxes, and an ATS is not always reading text boxes in the right order. So and sometimes it'll miss it completely.

SPEAKER_02 13:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:26

And also the Canva templates usually have weird graphics or want a picture of you, none of which are good.

SPEAKER_02 13:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:34

Yeah. Good wavelength. Thanks for setting that up.

SPEAKER_02 13:37

Thanks for playing. I wanted to talk about the fact that I feel like there's two types of candidates, and I'm interested to hear your opinion. So I believe there's two types of candidates. There's group A, and those are the people who are just applying to everything. They uh average like 400 jobs a month, they are easy applied, they are going through everything, and they're not trying very hard. And then you have group B who is tailoring the resume. They have an ATS compliant uh template, they are networking, they're doing professional development, they have connections, they have references, but they're just not getting anything. So, first I want to talk about group A, those who are applying everywhere. Mass applying, easy apply. You have talked about this several times that this is not a good strategy. I feel like this must be coming from frustration and not strategy. They can't be thinking this works. Right?

SPEAKER_01 14:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:44

So, like, you've made it clear that this is not an effective approach. So, what do you think is going on with those who are still doing this?

SPEAKER_00 14:53

I understand why people would think job applications are a numbers game. Theoretically, the more jobs you apply to, the more chances you have. But what's happening is that those people are so fixated on getting that number nice and high that they're applying to jobs they have no business applying to. And they're not taking the time to make sure their resume is speaking to the jobs that they're applying to as well. So if you want to apply to 200 jobs this week, you are just gonna click easy apply as fast as you can, because that's like 200, that's like 30 jobs a day. That takes a long time to do properly. So if you're clicking easy apply, you're applying indiscriminately to jobs that you maybe you have 10% of what they're looking for, or you're five years short of the amount of experience you want. And what's happening is like those folks are kind of fooling themselves into thinking they're being productive and making progress, but they're not.

SPEAKER_02 15:54

So let's talk about that second group. Let's talk about those who feel like they're doing everything but not getting the results. What would you say to them?

SPEAKER_00 16:05

I would say have a few people look at your resume. And I'm not talking about Chat GPT because it's always gonna come up with some random thing how you could do worse or better, whatever it is. Like, have some people in the industry look at it, have a professional look at it. If like I do resume review services as well. I've seen so many people who think they have a great resume, you know too, yeah. They say, Nothing's wrong with my resume. I apply to so many jobs, and we look at it, and the resume is terrible. Like, yeah, and through no fault of their own, like school doesn't teach this.

SPEAKER_02 16:40

No.

SPEAKER_00 16:41

And so if you haven't sought out education in like how to make your resume good, it's just gonna be bad, and you'll have no idea.

SPEAKER_02 16:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:48

Because if your teacher taught you in high school 25 years ago, or your parents showed you how to do it, or even like university career centers are still fairly behind on this. I know because I'm getting hired to go train university career advisors on how to write resumes, and they are behind.

SPEAKER_02 17:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:08

So, like, you have to kind of seek out that information yourself. If you just want for like a point of reference, go through my TikTok, my Instagram, whatever it is. I have a lot of resume demonstrations on there. What a good one looks like. Compare yours to that because it's probably a resume problem.

SPEAKER_02 17:28

Do you think that we're being too selective? We want hybrid, we want bigger salary expectations because inflation's going up so fast. We uh, you know, or or is the market setting these wild expectations that seven years experience minimum, 10 years is too much, so you have to have that perfect eight or nine years of experience. Like, what's what's the problem here?

SPEAKER_00 17:54

I you know what? That's an interesting question because the market, the market demands, like we it much has been made of the market demands being wild in the job search, but realistically, these companies are getting the person they want. And if they're not, they are lowering their expectations. Which is why I always say if you have even 70% of the requirements they're asking for, it's worth applying because they might never see someone who has all the requirements they're asking for. So just apply if you're interested, but temper your expectations if you are that person that only meets half the requirements or has only three years when they want five years. That's all it is.

SPEAKER_02 18:36

So at the end of the day, is there someone we can blame about not getting interviews?

SPEAKER_00 18:41

The only person you can blame that will help whatsoever is blaming yourself. Because you can fix the problems with you, but you cannot fix the problems with the market, with the employer. So, yeah, for productivity purposes, it's best to blame yourself.

SPEAKER_02 18:59

All right. Well, I think it's time that we move on to our unusual interview questions where we ask each other questions that we hope you don't get asked in an interview. And you have a question, I can see it on your face, you are excited to ask it. Go, Greg.

SPEAKER_00 19:15

Jeff.

SPEAKER_02 19:15

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 19:16

How many words do you know?

SPEAKER_02 19:19

You know what? My dog knows 70 words. I counted recently. Uh went through a list. I've been doing well at Wordle.

SPEAKER_00 19:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 19:27

So it makes me think I know more words than I thought.

SPEAKER_00 19:30

You're pretty good with the five-letter words.

SPEAKER_02 19:31

Great with a five-letter word. I think I cap out it like a seven-letter word. Like I don't think I could. If Wordle expanded to seven letters, I would fail every time. The limit does not exist. I don't know. In English?

SPEAKER_00 19:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:43

Oh. I want to say a thousand.

SPEAKER_00 19:46

You know more than a thousand words. Do I? You must know a hundred thousand words.

SPEAKER_02 19:51

I don't know if that's true. I don't think I I think I would cap out eventually. How many words? When you say, do you know your word? Like off the top of my head, do I know a word? Or if I saw it, I would go, I know that word.

SPEAKER_00 20:04

Yeah, I'm not asking you to list every word from memory.

SPEAKER_02 20:07

Right.

SPEAKER_00 20:08

But I do want a rough estimate of how many words you know.

SPEAKER_02 20:12

Like I would say I know 50% of the English dictionary for sure.

SPEAKER_00 20:16

That's low.

SPEAKER_02 20:17

I I'm not a big reader. Yeah, but you're a big talker. I use the same ones. Look back at this podcast. It's the same.

SPEAKER_00 20:27

All right.

SPEAKER_02 20:29

All right.

SPEAKER_00 20:30

I think you know more words than you think.

SPEAKER_02 20:31

Thanks, Greg. All right, Greg. Can you please describe your perfect chair?

SPEAKER_00 20:37

Um, my perfect chair is super couch.

SPEAKER_02 20:41

Super couch.

SPEAKER_00 20:42

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 20:42

I know what super couch is because of our friendship.

SPEAKER_00 20:46

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 20:46

Please describe what super couch is. What are the qualities of super couch?

SPEAKER_00 20:50

Super couch is an enormous couch that takes up about half of my basement. We're in the other half right now. And it uh it's L-shaped, it is very deep, it is very pillowy. It's for laying in. It's not for sitting on. You lay in Super Couch. We've comfortably fit seven people on it without anyone touching, but you are like liable to get quite cozy on Super Couch because it's so comfortable. I think we could probably fit 10 to 12 people on Super Couch.

SPEAKER_02 21:25

Amazing.

SPEAKER_00 21:26

Yeah, thanks for asking.

SPEAKER_02 21:27

Thanks so much for listening to this episode. If you enjoyed it, please like, subscribe, and send to a friend. We really want to make sure that we uh continue to grow our audience. So if you can leave us a rating, that would be absolutely amazing. We love doing these podcasts for you and we hope to keep going. Uh, don't forget to grab free resources off of Greg's website, greglangstaff.com. Join us next week where we are going to talk about templates and ATS rules.

SPEAKER_00 21:57

Mmm.

SPEAKER_02 21:58

All right. All right.

SPEAKER_00 21:59

See you there.

SPEAKER_02 22:00

Thanks.