Here’s a Mon­day morn­ing shout out to job seek­ers and a list to help you under­stand some com­mon rea­sons why your phone might not be ring­ing. It’s not an exhaus­tive list, just one to get you think­ing. You want me to think of everything?

No response after sub­mit­ting a resume or application:

• You are apply­ing to jobs you’re not qual­i­fied for.
• Your resume or appli­ca­tion has gram­mar errors that turned the recruiter off.
• You did not com­plete the appli­ca­tion appro­pri­ately or shoved a resume in it and wrote “see resume” on it.
• Your resume was not tar­geted to the posi­tion you are apply­ing for (you sent the same resume to apply for dif­fer­ent types of jobs).
• It looks like a “to do” list and there’s no story –> You look like a robot.
• You have a shoddy job his­tory with a cou­ple of months here and there and employ­ers are not will­ing to take a risk to train you and have you leave.

If you get calls and then do not get invited to inter­views it could be because:

• You did not sound inter­ested dur­ing the phone screen, were monot­one and totally lacked enthusiasm.
• You had poor speak­ing skills or lack of cor­rect grammar.
• You didn’t have much to say and the dead air was ago­niz­ing and the recruiter couldn’t bear the though of hav­ing to do it all over again in person.
• You said “I don’t know” a lot.
• You were pompous and or cocky or had some other poor atti­tude on the phone.
• You were neg­a­tive about your past employ­ers or about any­thing else.
• The Recruiter wanted to talk about your expe­ri­ence and skills and you wanted to talk about the money.
• It was 11:00am and your mom answered the phone and had to call you out of bed to take the call (I am not kidding).

You landed an inter­view but didn’t get a job offer or invi­ta­tion to a sec­ond interview:

• You were late or rush­ing in the door just on time.
• You were dressed inap­pro­pri­ately and did not con­vey a pro­fes­sional image (either too casual, sloppy, wrin­kled, thought you were going to a night­club, etc).
• You lacked groom­ing and/or hygiene.
• You couldn’t main­tain eye contact.
• You had no ques­tions that showed true interest.
• You acted dis­in­ter­ested or distracted.
• You were not polite and/or cour­te­ous or lacked in some other social skill.
• You had weak answers (or none at all).
• You ram­bled on painfully when asked a question.
• You couldn’t stick to the topic of the ques­tion, lacked focus and when asked about “A” you ended up talk­ing about “Z”.
• You acted inap­pro­pri­ately or weird.
• You per­formed poorly on the assess­ment testing.
• You conned the per­son who did the phone inter­view about your skills but couldn’t do it in person.
• You lied on your appli­ca­tion or resume and the back­ground check picked it up.

Now, go through the rea­sons I listed again and see if you can find an area in which you can improve upon. Self assess­ment isn’t easy but it is crit­i­cal to your success.

Feel free to chime in and list other things that can be job search stoppers…