Thanks for writing this, this is a great post and I broadly agree with most of it!
If you get rejected without being invited to an interview, this is unfortunate but still valuable feedback. It basically means “You clearly aren’t there yet”. So you should probably build more skills for 6 months or so before applying again.
This feels false to me. I’ve done a lot of CV (aka resume) screening, and it is a super noisy process, and it’s easy to be overly credentialist and favour people with legible signalling. There’s probably also a fair amount of noise in how well you write your CV to make the crucial information prominent. (relevant work experience, relevant publications, degrees, relevant projects, anything else impressive you’ve done). Further, “6 months of upskilling” may not turn out anything super legible (though it’s great if it does, and this is worth aiming for!)
My MATS application has a 10 hour work task, and it’s like night and day looking at the difference between how much signal I get from that and from just the CV, and I accept a lot of candidates who look mediocre on paper (and vice versa).
If you’re getting desk rejected from jobs, I’d recommend asking a friend (ideally one with some experience in the relevant field/industry or who’s done hiring before) to look at your CV/application to some recent jobs and give feedback.
Thanks for writing this, this is a great post and I broadly agree with most of it!
This feels false to me. I’ve done a lot of CV (aka resume) screening, and it is a super noisy process, and it’s easy to be overly credentialist and favour people with legible signalling. There’s probably also a fair amount of noise in how well you write your CV to make the crucial information prominent. (relevant work experience, relevant publications, degrees, relevant projects, anything else impressive you’ve done). Further, “6 months of upskilling” may not turn out anything super legible (though it’s great if it does, and this is worth aiming for!)
My MATS application has a 10 hour work task, and it’s like night and day looking at the difference between how much signal I get from that and from just the CV, and I accept a lot of candidates who look mediocre on paper (and vice versa).
If you’re getting desk rejected from jobs, I’d recommend asking a friend (ideally one with some experience in the relevant field/industry or who’s done hiring before) to look at your CV/application to some recent jobs and give feedback.
Thx. updated:
”You might not be there yet” (though as Neel points out in the comments, CV screening can be a noisy process)
“You clearly aren’t there yet”Thanks!