As of June 2026, AI is gradually entering the hiring process, but not for a lot of companies, and not in all the same way. Some corporations like Target, Amazon, and Microsoft have implemented AI video and phone interviews for the first round of hiring, and they report experiencing a 70% no-show rate. Otherwise, according to extensive research done by Sam Wright at Huntr.co, including interviews with high-level hiring leaders, most recruiters and hiring teams still don’t trust AI functions, so they look at every resume that comes in. While you might see ads for systems that provide AI features, every company, division, department, team, and individual user decides which features to purchase…and then which features to actually use.

If you received a rejection notice in the middle of the night, that is not a function of AI. That is an ill-timed email that was sent by a person. Or you answered a questionnaire during the application and one of your answers triggered an automatic rejection.

There are no universal anythings in hiring.

There is no standard length for a resume. However, eye scans and recruiter surveys show that reader interest drops off dramatically after the second page. So up to two pages is fine.

If your resume template is solid, your title, summary, and skills section address the company’s needs, and your experience section proves your point with impact and results, then you don’t need more than two pages to prove why you are the best candidate.

A one page resume might indicate a more junior level, because college graduates are really the only candidates who are guided to limit their resume to one page due to their lack of experience.

If you have been in the workforce for a few years, and you’re trying to fit all of your experience on one page, ask yourself if you are omitting important proof of why you deserve the job so you can maintain the one page mandate.

If you reduce the type size to accommodate everything on to one page, that will make reading the resume more difficult. 9-point type is a strain on the eyes.

Many people claim that a one-page resume is preferable because their cousin’s best friend’s uncle used to hire people at his small company ten years ago. Or worse, because a peer suggested it. Save yourself wasted time and effort and get some professional help instead.

There is no preferred job board. In fact, you’ll probably see the same jobs listed in multiple places.

The key to a successful job search anywhere is how you search.

You’ll get better results on any job board when you search for skills and not job titles. Job titles vary wildly company to company, division to division, and even team to team within the same division. Chances are very slim that you will enter the title exactly as any company has it. Instead, a search for a specific skill like “Advanced Excel” or SaaS will give you more helpful results.

If your skill is a phrase, like Relationship Management, make sure to put the phrase in quotation marks: “relationship management”. By putting both words in quotes the search engines will look for all jobs that include the full phrase relationship management. If you put in relationship management without the quotes, the system looks for the word relationship or the word management, but not necessarily the two together. By putting the entire phrase in quotation marks and entering it as a skill, you’ll get better results.

Here are words that will not help you in your job search on any job board:

• Management

• Communication

• Leadership

These words are way too general, just like they are way too general on your resume (and LinkedIn). Using these words as skills in keyword searches will bring up millions of results, and that is not helpful.

You also want to add information like a specific state and company size to narrow down the search further.

Find out about specialty associations for your field. Pretty much every field has some kind of association, and they usually have some form of a job board. Even career coaches have about 5-6 online groups that we can connect with to find jobs. Do some research.

Do not pay for job board access unless it is a benefit of an association membership. There are fake job boards that require paid memberships, and then it turns out all the jobs don’t exist.

There are multiple paths to jobs. You’ll want to take advantage of as many paths as possible.

The basic starting point is the resume. This is because you’ll want to have your experience and expertise focused before having any networking conversations and before starting your search.

Then you’ll want to make sure that your LinkedIn profile is optimized with a strong headline, About section, and Experience section.
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When you connect with people they will look at your LinkedIn profile. Or when hiring teams do their search, your LinkedIn profile will show up in their search results. And then job opportunities come up.

Then you can tailor the top sections of your resume to apply to the job.

That is an excellent way to start the job search.

A few possible reasons:

1. Your resume doesn’t contain the skills and tools that match open jobs right now.

2. Recruiters are very busy with multiple company clients.

3. The job description changed and they’re figuring out if they should still speak with you.

4. The salary of the job changed and they’re wondering if they should still speak with you.

5. They have questions (or more questions) about your experience, your LinkedIn profile is unhelpful, and they’re figuring out if they should take the time to reach out to you.

6. Your resume looks like every other resume out there and they’re trying to figure out if they should talk to you.

7. The recruiter is not good at communication and dropped you.

You may have thought the job was perfect for you, but there are infinite reasons why you didn’t get it. You probably did not address the company’s needs with your resume by adjusting the title, summary, and skills sections. Maybe your experience didn’t meet their needs. Maybe there is internal chaos at the company. Maybe you didn’t demonstrate through impact and results why they should talk to you instead of someone else.

Ask for what you think you deserve. Be prepared to prove this number with your impact and results. You cannot use skills, experience, education, or passion to prove your point, because the hiring team will not listen to this. Be aware that your ask may not be within the amount budgeted for the position.

If you’re a specialist in a niche industry, you want to be particularly careful about the jobs that you apply to. And you want to make it clear in your resume experience section that you are an expert in your niche.

If you are using one resume to apply to all positions, you reduce your chances of an interview.

Control Your Career’s methods will help reduce ageism. All the impact that you show in your materials should outweigh any other issues, including age bias.

We show you how to transform your age from a self-perceived flaw or drawback to a superpower.

When you apply to a job online, your resume probably lands in the dashboard of an applicant tracking system (ATS). This software comes in many shapes and sizes and there are many companies that make them.

The basic idea of the ATS software is to help the recruiters and hiring teams manage job candidates for one or more open positions. The hiring team is receiving anywhere from five to thousands of resumes every day, and the ATS is like a digital filing cabinet, helping them track everyone.

The ATS might contain some helpful features. For example, the ATS user might search for the resumes that contain the skills and experience that they’re requiring for the job.

Are these systems helpful? Absolutely.

Are they flawed? Absolutely.

But, sometimes, looking at every single resume is just not doable.

So count on your resume going into a queue in the ATS dashboard before it is seen by a person. That’s just the way the world works now.

Unless you plan on paying a recruiter to reach out directly to hiring managers as companies, probably not. Most companies have protocols in place, so if you try to circumvent the process by going to the company’s website and reaching out to another contact, chances are that contact will simply send your resume to the person in charge of hiring. Therefore your resume will still land in the ATS.

Either format works, but some companies use legacy or cheaper ATS systems, and those systems have a harder time parsing (breaking up and identifying parts of) your resume in PDF format.

If you have ever uploaded your resume in PDF, and then you see the information in the resume rearranged and wrong in a template, that means the company’s system couldn’t parse your resume information from the PDF. In that case, a Word file would have been better, but you had no way of knowing that until after you uploaded the resume.

PDF format is great for emailing your resume to specific contacts at a company, because then the recipient sees your resume exactly as you intend. A PDF is like a photograph of your resume, so it will maintain formatting regardless of any computer system.

When you hear people refer to a hidden job market, they are not referring to something secret and elite. They are referring to non-public jobs. This is due to a variety of reasons.

Up to 80% of jobs are not advertised. Control Your Career provides access to those jobs.

It definitely helps to know someone at a company to get hired there. Personal recommendations and referrals are always good. However, you can also get a job applying online. Our clients land jobs via public job postings all the time.

The key to making your job search shorter and more successful is to consider as many paths as possible for the job search.

1. Network

2. Apply to online jobs

3. Talk to friends and family

4. Join associations

5. Hire Control Your Career

The more paths you take, the more chances that you will be presented with opportunities.