If you’re job searching, you should be getting 3 to 5 calls a week. Are you?

ILENE REIN | Executive Recruiter & Job Search Strategist | Pounding Pavement 101

Somewhere in your job search there’s a number nobody gave you.

It isn’t how many applications you sent or how many hours you put in. It’s the one a Recruiter would ask you for in the first minute.

I ask it near the start of almost every call. “How many calls did you get last week from a Recruiter or a hiring manager?”

Then I wait.

Most people look down. A senior program manager, six months in, told me seventy-five applications and five interviews. I told them what I tell everybody. That math doesn’t add up. And then they said the line I hear more than any other. “I’m six months in and I’m tired.”

I’ve had more than fifty of these calls in the past few months. Nobody had a number they were aiming for. Nobody had ever been told there was one.

There is. It’s three to five.

https://poundingpavement101.com/recruiter-review

Where the Number Comes From

A Recruiter looks at about five hundred resumes a day. Five seconds each, sometimes less. They’re looking for the shortest distance between two points to make placements. Once they find three good candidates in the first hundred, the search stops. That’s the job.

So when a resume is doing its job, Recruiters pull it out of that first hundred again and again, even though they have never met you. On your end, it shows up as the phone ringing. Three to five times a week. That’s the whole measurement. How many people called you?

The Number Nobody Tracks

Here’s what surprises me most. The same people who can tell me exactly how many jobs they applied to can’t tell me how many Recruiters called back.

They have the spreadsheet. The tabs. The folder of job descriptions. Every application logged with a date and a company. And the one column that would tell them whether any of it is working isn’t on the sheet.

Applications are the number you control, so it’s the one you count. Calls are the number the market controls, so it’s the one that tells you the truth.

Try it for one week. Don’t change anything else. Just write down every Recruiter and every hiring manager who reached out to you, not the ones you reached out to. Most people get to Friday with a blank page and a feeling they already had.

My clients track it inside the Job Search Command Center. I built it for them, and it turned out to be the thing they use daily, so I opened it to anyone job searching.

Every job you’re pursuing moves across one screen, from applied to Recruiter call to hiring manager to final round to offer. After a week, you can diagnose your progress and see where everything stops.

You can set yours up here: https://jobsearchcommandcenter.com/

What the Number Tells You

If you’re under three calls, it isn’t you. Two out of three people on my calls have no paycheck right now, and most of them have started to believe something is wrong with them.

A 57-year-old said to me last month. “I’m pretty qualified, and nobody cares. The phone doesn’t ring.”

It’s never the work you can do. It’s how you’re marketing yourself. Job searching is a marketing project, and you just happen to be the product. The hardest thing in the world to market is yourself, because you’re too close to it. Everybody is.

The typical person who books a call with me has sent over a hundred applications and heard back from zero to two. That isn’t the market. Ninety-eight percent of applications never reach a human eye, so the market was never going to fix it. That’s a resume that isn’t generating calls and a profile Recruiters aren’t finding. Your resume has one job. If it isn’t doing that job, we need to fix it.

What the Number Doesn’t Tell You

It doesn’t tell you what to change. I can’t tell you that from here either, and I won’t pretend to. Every job search I fix is a bunch of small things that add up to get a Recruiter to reach out and for you to land that job. Which small things depend on who you are and where you’re headed.

What I can tell you is what happens when the number moves.

A client of mine searched alone for nine months. Applied and heard nothing. Inside the Pounding Pavement 101 program, three offers in one week.

Another was a full year out of work. 64 years old. Hired in 5 weeks.

And a new graduate I worked with went a whole year after graduating without a job. In 4 weeks, they were hired.

You can watch videos of their stories here: https://www.poundingpavement101.com/testimonials

I will tell you that they didn’t get smarter. Their approach to the job market changed. Once the phone rings three to five times a week, you’re not job searching anymore. You’re choosing.

Your Number

Count last week. Recruiters and hiring managers who reached out to you.

If it’s 3 or more, the resume is working, and the problem is somewhere else. If it’s under 3, you’re doing what everyone else is doing, and it isn’t working for them either.

That’s what the Recruiter Review is for. Bring me your number. I’ll look at your profile before we talk and tell you why it’s the number it is.

Book your Recruiter Review and let’s find out what your number is really saying.

Click Here to Book your Recruiter Review Today

About Ilene Rein

Ilene Rein is on a mission to get people hired... and in record time! As an Executive Recruiter and Managing Partner at Marketing & Sales Resources, and Founder and Job Search Strategist at Pounding Pavement 101, Ilene has spent years on the inside of the hiring process, watching what actually gets candidates noticed and job offers.

After hearing countless stories of job seekers struggling for 9-12 months with endless applications and radio silence, Ilene created Pounding Pavement 101 – her Job Search Acceleration Program that teaches job seekers exactly how to market themselves with laser precision using insider recruiting secrets.

The Pounding Pavement 101 program results are incredible: Ilene's clients are getting hired 6x FASTER than job searching alone – landing dream jobs in just 3-8 weeks instead of months of frustration and saving thousands of dollars of lost income! Check out the detailed statistics.

Ilene is a sought-after speaker partnering with companies, educational institutions and organizations worldwide to provide this premium job searching expert guidance.

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