u/Low_Telephone_6583

I was at my wit's end after job hunting for almost a year. I felt like I was just throwing applications into the void, especially for jobs I was a perfect fit for on paper. My CV was polished, the cover letter had all the right keywords, and I was following all the conventional advice. Nothing.

Finally, I asked a friend who works as a hiring manager at a startup to look over my documents. Honestly, her feedback was a bit hard to hear. She told me my cover letters were good, but they all ended with the same canned 'looking forward to hearing from you soon.' There was nothing that would catch the eye and make her pause.

She said that what really stands out is any sign that the person made an extra effort beyond just reading the job description. So I started adding one extra line, usually as a P.S. At the very end. Something like: 'P.S. I saw the recent article about your new feature launch, and it made me even more excited about the direction the company is heading.' The whole thing wouldn't take me more than 15 minutes of searching their blog or news section for each application.

I decided to A/B test this. For three weeks, I didn't change anything else. Before this change, my response rate was at most 10% in a good month. After adding the P.S., I sent out 25 applications in the following few weeks and got 11 calls for interviews. Honestly, I couldn't believe it.

A few recruiters even mentioned it on the first call, saying something like, 'Hi, thanks for mentioning that article, that was a great project.' I work in SaaS sales, so maybe this is more effective in my field, but I feel it's a small enough change that it's worth a try if you're constantly getting ghosted. I hope this helps someone.

Just to be clear, everyone on my team is trying to leave, but none of us wanted leadership to know that right now. We got a new manager about 7 months ago, and his work is really terrible, and that's basically what made all of us start looking for other opportunities.

One of our coworkers got another role, and during his exit interview, he told HR about the manager's poor performance, and also said that the rest of the team are applying for new jobs.

I personally haven't said anything to HR or to anyone at work about the fact that I'm looking for a job, so should I be worried that my coworker said this on his way out? Could there be retaliation from upper management or from my manager? And is this something I should be afraid of?

Could HR investigate or look into the manager's performance based on something said in an exit interview? I work at a large publicly traded company, if that makes a difference in how this kind of situation is handled. Thanks.