In July 2024, Magdalena Robinson was laid off from her job as a vice president of talent acquisition at a media agency. The news came as a shock - by all accounts she was doing well - but she saw a silver lining: Maybe it was finally time for a career break. She took the rest of the year off, soaking in the extra time with her husband and teenage daughter. Then she started applying for jobs in January.
I got laid off five months ago. Every morning I drink a pot of coffee while I write cover letters, tweak my résumé, and submit job applications into the abyss, knowing they will likely never be seen by human eyes-only crawled by the cold, lifeless algorithms of an artificial intelligence. I feel like General Zod from Superman, floating off into space trapped inside a two-dimensional phantom zone, screaming in silence about my job qualifications and core competencies.
Applicant tracking systems (ATS) are now the gatekeepers. They screen, score and sort resumes before a human ever reviews them, and most never make it through. With cold applications showing a success rate as low as 0.1% to 2%, and requiring roughly 32-200 applications for a single offer, the odds aren't in your favor unless you tailor your approach. Here's how to stop ghosting your own job search and start working with the algorithm instead of against it.