A couple of Fridays ago, a recruiter reached out to me about a contract role I’d applied for. On paper, I looked like a great fit, so we arranged a call for Monday afternoon.

By Monday, the client had changed their mind about what they were looking for and I’d gone from the perfect candidate to not relevant anymore.

Nothing about me had changed and perhaps in my earlier career, I would have taken this rejection personally and yet I didn’t. Because the job market has changed rapidly and this interaction sums up everything I’m learning along the way to getting my next role.

If you’ve been wondering why is it so hard to get a job right now, you might be playing by the old rules, which, let me tell you, no longer apply.

Companies want people who have fixed the exact problems they have

For most of our careers, transferable skills were the selling point. You’d got results in one industry or for one type of client, so you could do it for another. That was the pitch, and it worked.

Now companies want people who have fixed the exact problem they are trying to resolve. You either have the experience or you don’t and that means the pool of candidates gets smaller as they try to find the unicorn who can hit the ground running from day one.

And look, I get it. Having done senior leadership roles since 2022, I know the immense amount of pressure for businesses to deliver results. For some, they don’t have the time to onboard someone new who has to learn not only the way their business functions but also the tools and ins and outs of their industry.

Senior leaders need to be a player-coaches now

AI is impacting not only the size of the team but also what is expected from each person.

Earlier in my career, getting to Head or Director level meant focusing primarily on the business side of your function, with your team managing the day-to-day deliverables.

The clearest shift I’m seeing now is the rise of the player-coach. Someone who is strategic enough to lead, but still willing (and able) to roll their sleeves up and do the work.

I’ve seen this first-hand while interviewing. More than one company has told me the people they’d hired before were used to managing big teams but weren’t able to be hands-on. On paper, they’d been the right hire but in reality it didn’t work out.

Gone are the days where being senior meant moving away from the doing. Now the market wants both. I’m fortunate enough to have stayed close to the work even though I was in senior leadership but I know that many aren’t that lucky.

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Companies are waiting until they can compare you

It’s common to apply for a job and not hear back for months, if at all. A friend told me she’d got an automated rejection email last week for a job she applied for in June. I’m not surprised.

Multiple conversations with external recruiters and internal talent teams have confirmed that companies are cautious in making a decision because it has to be the right hire (back to those exact skills again).

To add further complication to this, job boards like LinkedIn have made it incredibly easy for candidates to mass apply. Another friend hiring for a junior executive to join her team ended up reposting the role four times before she’d even built a big enough pool to find the right candidates because the ones applying weren’t suitable for multiple reasons (needed sponsorship, not the right level etc).

So what feels like weeks of waiting to hear back from a company often ends up being them waiting for enough of the right candidates to enter the pool so they can compare you vs the others.

Ghosting is now just part of the process

As someone who has been in a long-term relationship since before dating apps became a thing, ghosting has been a big learning curve.

Understandably, if you are mass applying for jobs, don’t expect rejection letters from every single one. That’s a given. But what I wasn’t expecting was to not hear back when you’re in the middle of a process. Some interview processes are brutal too, sometimes up to 6 or 7 stages and even then, you may not hear anything back.

Personally, as an ex-recruiter, I can’t imagine leaving someone hanging without a response. Maybe I’m the only one that thinks it’s common courtesy to give candidates an update when you’ve promised them one. Or perhaps most businesses don’t understand how a frustrated, ghosted candidate will tell more people about their negative experience than someone who, even though they weren’t successful, still got feedback.

Being ghosted is less about you and more about them. Now I just see it as poor company culture and leave it at that.

Send this to the friend who’s been waiting to hear back about a first interview.

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Location, location, location

Six years removed from the pandemic and businesses are expecting people in the office. Most expecting 2-3 days attendance in the office, more if you’re a senior leader.

So is the job market bad right now? According to the various posts I’ve seen on LinkedIn this week, hiring has picked up significantly. But only within the M25. Great news for us Londoners, not so much for the rest of the country.

It’s not you, it’s the rules

Just like apps changed dating, AI has changed the way companies hire. And the old rules we’ve all been playing by never took that into account.

There’s no scenario for any of us to reference. For businesses that are hiring and for those of us looking, it’s a whole new way of learning.

Some companies are doing a really good job of it. They’re upfront and honest, and they actually give feedback. But for every company doing it well, there seem to be more that aren’t.

So it’s less about luck and more of a numbers game. Most of the time, you’re not even being rejected by a person, it’s the applicant tracking system (ATS).

Which is why you can’t take it personally. Because it’s not about you.

So, which of the old rules are you still playing by?

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About the author:

Hi, I’m Priyanka, the face behind Successful on Paper which is my attempt at a modern day version of Cosmo magazine, if it was written by Carrie Bradshaw. If you’ve done everything by the book and are still wondering why it isn’t enough, you might be the exact person I’m writing for and I’m so glad you found me. When I’m not cosplaying a magazine writer, I’m building a portfolio career using all the skills I learnt in my nearly decade long marketing career.

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Why Is It So Hard to Find a Job Right Now…