Apparently, Looking for a Job Is Now a Full Time Job

For almost 20 years, I was incredibly fortunate.

Finding my next job was never a major problem. If I remember correctly, whenever one chapter of my career was about to end, another opportunity was already waiting nearby, sometimes before I had even packed the emotional contents of my desk.

There was always a next step.

A new company.
A new challenge.
A new title.
A new reason to buy another notebook and promise myself I would finally keep it organized.

So when I suddenly found myself without an immediate “next,” I wasn’t prepared.

Not because I believed opportunities would always fall from the sky like career confetti. I had simply never experienced this side of the professional world, the part where you stop, look around, and realize that applying for a job has apparently become its own highly demanding occupation.

Except this occupation does not pay.

It does, however, require multiple résumés, several passwords, excellent detective skills, emotional resilience, and the ability to enter your employment history again immediately after uploading a document containing your entire employment history.

Naturally.

I Decided Not to Rush

My first instinct was to start looking immediately.

Open the laptop. Update the résumé. Apply everywhere. Refresh the inbox every seven minutes while pretending I wasn’t refreshing the inbox every seven minutes.

But I decided to do something unfamiliar instead.

I rested.

I didn’t immediately chase the next position. I gave myself permission to slow down and watch.

I wanted to understand what was happening in the job market, especially for experienced professionals in my field.

What are companies actually looking for?

What are candidates experiencing?

Why are highly qualified people submitting hundreds of applications and hearing nothing?

And exactly how many digital miles must a person run before someone notices that they already know how to do the job?

The more I observed, the more I realized that job hunting had changed.

Or perhaps it had changed years ago, and I was simply lucky enough not to notice.

Welcome to the Résumé Olympics

There was a time when I thought having a strong résumé meant clearly showing your experience, accomplishments, and the value you could bring to a company.

Apparently, that was adorable.

Now your résumé may need to be:

And after doing all of that, you may still receive a rejection email at 2:13 a.m., approximately nine minutes after applying.

Which is either extraordinary efficiency or the hiring manager is a vampire.

Then I learned about ATS matching, automated screening, and candidate scoring supported by AI.

Some companies use technology to organize, filter, rank, or help evaluate applications before a recruiter spends meaningful time reviewing them. The exact process varies, but the message candidates receive is clear:

Before a person understands your experience, you may first need to satisfy a system.

I understand why companies use these tools. One opening can attract hundreds, perhaps thousands, of applicants. Recruiters need a way to manage that volume.

But efficiency can become dangerous when it starts pretending to be judgment.

A system can identify whether a résumé contains certain words.

Can it tell whether someone is dependable?

Can it recognize the person who stays calm when a project is collapsing, a shipment is missing, the executive is asking questions, and somebody has just announced that the WiFi is “being weird”?

Can it measure humility? Curiosity? Adaptability? The willingness to learn?

The ability to work with difficult personalities without turning every meeting into a courtroom drama?

Those qualities rarely fit neatly inside a keyword field.

The Best Candidate May Not Have the Best Score

Someone can have every technical skill listed in a job description and still bring the wrong attitude into the workplace.

They may know everything, and make sure everyone else knows that they know everything.

Meanwhile, another candidate may meet 75% of the qualifications but possess something just as valuable: discipline, judgment, curiosity, kindness, and the ability to learn quickly without acting as though feedback is a personal attack.

Skills matter. Of course they do.

But skills can be developed. Experience can grow.

A person who is open, hardworking, accountable, and eager to learn can become exceptional.

A person who knows everything but refuses to collaborate can become a very expensive calendar problem.

Hiring should not be a choice between competence and character. Companies need both.

That is why I struggle with the idea of allowing a score to have too much influence over who gets seen.

A résumé is evidence of someone’s professional history. It is not a complete psychological scan of the person behind it.

It cannot tell you who will step up when things go wrong.

It cannot tell you who quietly helps the new employee.

It cannot tell you who takes ownership instead of preparing a presentation with 14 slides explaining why the problem belongs to another department.

Sometimes the best employee is not the person whose résumé performed the most impressive gymnastics.

Sometimes it is the person who was simply never given the interview.

Then There Is “Remote”

I would also like to discuss one of the great mysteries of modern job hunting:

What exactly does “remote” mean?

That final one already has a name.

It is called hybrid.

If an employee must live within 50 miles of the office, the role is not fully remote. It is geographically restricted remote, or perhaps “remote, but we would like to keep an eye on you.”

And that is perfectly acceptable if the requirement is explained honestly.

Some positions genuinely need regional access. There may be client meetings, equipment, events, time zone requirements, legal limitations, or regular collaboration that works better in person.

Just say that.

Call it hybrid.
Call it regionally remote.
Call it remote with quarterly travel.
Call it “You may work from home, but we are not emotionally ready to let go of the building.”

Just don’t make candidates conduct a small investigation to understand where they are expected to sit.

If the job can truly be performed remotely, let remote mean remote.

If the employee needs to attend an important meeting, planning session, or company gathering, fly them in when necessary. Companies already do this for clients, leadership meetings, conferences, and retreats.

Distance should not automatically eliminate strong talent when the actual work does not require daily proximity.

Otherwise, everyone wastes time.

Candidates apply for roles they cannot accept. Recruiters screen people who were never eligible. Hiring managers conduct conversations that could have been avoided with one honest sentence in the job description.

That isn’t flexibility. That is administrative cardio.

Job Hunting Now Requires a Marketing Department

Candidates are no longer simply applying for jobs.

They are building personal brands.

They are rewriting résumés for every role, optimizing LinkedIn profiles, creating portfolios, publishing thought leadership, collecting recommendations, networking, messaging recruiters, commenting strategically, learning new software, and trying to appear professionally visible without looking professionally desperate.

Apparently, looking for work now requires a content strategy.

Soon candidates will need a campaign calendar, a brand guide, and a launch event.

“Welcome to the global unveiling of my updated résumé. Refreshments will be served near the Skills section.”

There is value in presenting yourself well. I believe in being prepared, communicating your strengths clearly, and showing people what you can do.

But the process has become exhausting.

Not only because of the work involved, but because rejection often arrives without context, or no response arrives at all.

A candidate can spend hours preparing an application that disappears into digital silence.

Then three months later, the company reposts the job.

At that point, you don’t know whether they are still hiring, started over, forgot the posting was live, or are collecting résumés for a future civilization.

Maybe Resting Was the Right Decision

At first, not immediately securing another role felt uncomfortable.

I was used to movement. I was used to knowing what came next.

But stepping back gave me something I would not have gained by applying in a panic to every job containing the word “director.”

It gave me perspective.

I began to understand what candidates are being asked to endure.

I saw how much effort people invest just to be noticed.

I saw highly experienced professionals questioning their worth because a system, a recruiter, or a silent inbox had not responded.

And I realized that taking time to observe was not the same as giving up.

Rest is not professional failure.

Pausing does not erase 20 years of experience.

Not having the next job waiting does not mean the next job will never come.

Sometimes the pause is where you learn what you want next, and what you are no longer willing to accept.

I am still learning this new job market.

I am learning its systems, its strange vocabulary, its scoring, its filters, and its creative interpretation of the word “remote.”

But I am also reminding myself of something important:

I am not starting over.

I am moving forward with experience.

There is a difference.

My career is not reduced to whether a résumé contains the correct phrase in the correct order.

Neither is yours.

Technology can help organize candidates. It can support recruiters. It can make hiring faster.

But hiring should still leave enough room for human judgment.

Because companies are not hiring collections of keywords.

They are hiring people.

And people are always more complicated and more valuable than a score.