Welcome to My Brain

I think I’m on to something.

For the past 4 weeks, I’ve been applying to jobs. At first, it felt it was going nowhere.

Resume > Apply > Wait > Rejection > Repeat.

My resume was a meaty two pages, jammed with lots of bravado, two degrees, personal and professional achievements, awards, shopping lists of skills. There wasn’t much white space left. I was also listing myself as the current COO (Chief Operating Officer) of my company — which is true, I am. I’ve built and run everything operations for ten years.

Yet, it got me nowhere.

What annoyed me most was because of my dilettante-like career, my resume didn’t tell my story very well. I had clearly done a lot, had management experience, technical know-how…but there was no progression or growth over the years from looking at my resume.

Two weeks ago I decided to A/B test and begun retooling my resume. I stripped it down. Simplified it. Removed the stuff that I thought was impressive. (Maybe others wouldn’t care so much even if I did).

I began utilizing ChatGPT for ATS (Applicant Tracking System) optimization. I marveled at how sparse my resume got. Huge swaths of white on the page. Simple bullet points. Core skills. I knocked one of my degrees (History) off the resume altogether since it wouldn’t play any part in my job hunt. ATS optimization via AI made my resume lean, mean, and packing a punch. Best of all, my story emerged out of the simplicity. Suddenly, I could look at my resume and say “Oh, I see how I got from A to B to C.” A career trajectory appeared.

The last bit of secret sauce was changing my job title. I took it down from LinkedIn and put up a generic Operations Manager (which was still true, I am the Operations Manager for Digital Fix Consulting) but in it’s vagueness, allowed me to mould it to each individual resume. The trick for ATS is that when applying for a job, ATS wants you to already have that role somewhere else (it sounds so stupid and unfair, but if you think of it like a machine that grades applicants, wouldn’t someone who already has that job somewhere else be a better candidate than someone who doesn’t and needs to learn it?).

Suddenly, I started getting responses. I was booking job interviews. It was working.

Unfortunately, this is the age that we live in. With technology and automation, you have to optimize your single tool for job searching to be seen by robot eyes before they get to human ones.

The key was to not give up when the rejections piled up immediately. I’m bummed there were some good jobs I had a lot of interest in that I was rejected for because my ugly, bloated, probably confusing resume was submitted and puked out by ATS. It’s like approaching an extremely pretty girl while wearing clothes that don’t fit and then tripping and falling as you try to say “Hi.”

The last bit I’ll add is that even though I’m booking interviews, I’m still applying for jobs. I haven’t landed a job yet, so I’m hedging my bets. But I’m also taking as many interviews as I can get so I can practice those too. I want to hone my interview skills. In interviews my first question to the hiring manager is “what about my resume drew you in the most?” I want to do more research, get more feedback. Refine. Hone. Improve.

I’m becoming addicted to applying for jobs. I just hope I still land one.

August 26, 2025