u/Empty_Improvement537

ok this is gonna be a weird post.

i'm not even searching rn, just helping a friend with hers and she said something like "well i don't know what other people's resumes look like" and i was like.. honestly me neither. like i've seen templates and the same 5 examples on every resume guide but i don't think i've ever actually seen a normal persons resume in the wild.

so i texted some people. just "hey can you send me ur current resume i'm curious, won't critique unless u want me to." got 6 back. range was like 2-8 yrs experience, mix of industries.

genuinely don't know what i expected but it wasn't this

one friend's was 4 pages. four. she's been working for 6 years. every internship from uni was still on there with like 4 bullets each. when i (carefully) asked she said "i don't want to cut anything in case it matters." i get that emotionally but jesus

another friend had no dates on jobs. like just "Marketing Coordinator, [Company]" with no years. asked why and he said someone on reddit told him to remove them to avoid age discrimination. he's 31. i did not have the heart

3 of them had objective statements. i thought those died like a decade ago?? "Seeking a challenging role" energy. one of them works in tech.

two had photos which whatever i know thats normal in some countries but one of them is in the US and just.. likes how she looks in it i guess

what kept getting me though was the bullets. like wildly different quality between people who all have similar experience levels. one friend's bullets were specific and you could see what she did. another friends bullets were literally "responsible for managing day to day operations" type stuff. and these two people make similar money at similar companies?? so its not like the bad-bullet version is being punished by the market exactly. or maybe it is and she just doesnt know

(i should say none of these people asked for feedback and i did not give any. felt weird enough just looking)

i don't really have a conclusion here. i think i assumed everyone was kind of doing the same thing and we were all comparing to the same templates but actually nobody knows what anyone elses resume looks like and the variation is huge. some of these would probably get callbacks no problem. some of them.. idk.

has anyone else ever actually seen what their friends are sending out? not advice, just like. have you seen them. what did you notice

Not going to pretend this is a normal experience. It probably isn't. But I think the lesson is useful even if you've never applied somewhere twice let alone three times.

First application (Year 1): Cold. Found the role on a job board, applied with a standard resume, no connection to anyone at the company. Got an automated rejection.Never heard from a human.

Second application (Year 2): I had made a LinkedIn connection with someone who worked there we'd interacted a few times on posts, nothing deep. She noticed I'd applied and said she'd put in a word. Got a first-round interview. Didn't progress past it. The feedback was that I didn't show enough understanding of their specific business model and how I'd apply my experience to their context.

Third application (14 months later): Different this time. I had spent months genuinely engaging with the company following their content, commenting with actual thoughts (not just "great post"), reading their public writing, understanding their product properly. When I applied I knew what problems they were trying to solve. My cover letter was specific about it. My interview answers were grounded in their actual situation, not generic examples. Got the offer after four rounds.

The difference between the second and third attempt wasn't my experience that had grown but not dramatically. The difference was that I had stopped trying to get a job there and started genuinely being interested in them. That sounds like a soft thing but it comes through concretely: in the cover letter, in interview answers, in the questions I asked at the end of every round.

Genuine interest in a company is one of the things that's genuinely hard to fake and genuinely hard to beat.

Have you ever gotten into a company on a later attempt? What changed the second or third time?