You Are The Weakest, LinkedIn. Goodbye?

For those of you who have been fortunate enough to have secured a position in your chosen field within the last five years and change (a list regular readers are probably aware doesn’t include moi), show of hands, please?

How many of you will testify and swear on a stack of bibles that the reason you were chosen was because of your optimized resume?

Well, there’s apparently at least three “experts” online that seem to believe that, and wouldn’t you know it a couple of them took such interest in my sich that between them we exchanged 34 e-mails over the course of this past weekend aggressively attempting to educate me that THAT’S why I’m unable to even get an interview.

18 of them came from the account of someone claiming to be one Jessica Besch.  Well, she at least appears to be real.  She does have a LinkedIn profile and she’s been employed as a Talent Solutions Manager at a company called Randstad USA based out of the Washington-Baltimore area.  She’s been at that for about nine months after three years moving up the ranks at a Maryland branch of Enterprise Car Rental after graduating with a marketing degree from the esteemed Shippensburg State University in Pennsylvania.  OK, at least it’s not a village in Ghana or Nigeria (although the one time I drove near the campus after missing a turn-off on Route 81 it didn’t seem to have as much going on as those outposts).

randstad, as its corporate website attests and insists you format any reference to it in a manner similar to the poet e.e. cummings, is a Dutch multinational human resource consulting firm headquartered in Diemen, Netherlands. Along with Adecco, the company is one of the two largest staffing firms worldwide.  In other words, they’re an outsourcing company that handles all the details for finding candidates to fill vacancies at companies who are either too cash-strapped and/or lazy to actually have people on their staffs to deal with these sorts of issues.  And based upon my recent experiences and conversations with folks who actually do work in personnel and HR, they’ve apparently taken over a lot of the positions and responsibilities these folks have–or used to.

Ms. Besch invited me to connect with her on LinkedIn after I posted a reply to a plea for understanding and compassion from a prominent tech and media personality who was lamenting last week’s latest round of layoffs at Disney and Warner Brothers Discovery.  As I am want to do, I offered my thoughts and prayers, frustrated as ever that that’s literally all I can do, and I reminded anyone willing to read it of how long my own odyssey has been.  As of this writing, I have more than 1000 impressions.  That’s a hell of a lot more traction than any of these musings get of late, and exponentially more than some of the ones on our sister site receives, especially when yet another deep dive into a certain midwestern baseball team’s cheapness is the topic.

Jessica’s first communication was expectedly formulaic:

To get started, I’d love to learn a bit more about what you’re looking for. Could you share the following?

  • What job titles are you targeting?
  • Any specific industries or types of companies you prefer?
  • Do you have a location preference, or are you open to remote/hybrid roles?
  • What’s your current salary range, and what are you hoping to earn?
  • What kind of work environment or schedule works best for you?
  • Are there any other details you want me to keep in mind?

My answers were terse and definitive.  My closing statement, I believe, summed it up:

I’m interested in any role, anywhere, at any level.  Period.  Exclamation Point. I want and need to WORK.

With that impetus, Jessica replied within 18 minutes with these three detailed offerings.    I’ll chalk up her belief that I’d be suitable as an operations manager for an electrical company or an internal processes supervisor to a company emphasizing female empowerment to overconfidence rather than my kneejerk reaction that she probably didn’t fully grasp where I’ve worked and what I’ve done.  The first position at least was in my wheelhouse, and although it’s hardly located in the most desirable outpost it’s close enough to a couple of major cities that I could handle it.

So the next morning we exchanged a series of e-mails that indicated my interest and her confidence I would be ideal for the role.  And then–the other shoe dropped.

 Before we move forward, there’s one important step I want to be transparent about.  Even if your resume is recently updated or professionally written, it still needs to be strategically aligned with what recruiters and hiring systems are actually looking for. Up to 80% of resumes get filtered out by Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) before a human ever sees them so optimization is essential.  This isn’t just about formatting or grammar; it’s about making sure your resume speaks the language of the job and clears those filters. I’ll dedicate six focused hours to completely revamp your resume, customize it for the specific roles you’re targeting, and ensure it’s ATS-optimized using premium tools trusted by top career experts. I’ll also include a tailored cover letter and profile alignment so you’re positioned to move fast on active roles.  This is more than a resume edit. It’s a deep-dive into how we position your experience, highlight your strengths, and tailor your presentation to what this employer is looking for and I’ll personally handle it with the care and expertise it deserves. You’ve already taken the first step by showing interest. Now let’s make sure your resume doesn’t hold you back from getting shortlisted. This investment of time and strategy could make all the difference in turning your interest into an offer. Are you ready to proceed? I’m prepared to get started as soon as I hear back.

She promptly supplied with an e-mail contact for her “colleague”– a “specialist” with extensive experience who was eager to provide me with the services she insisted I needed to beat the dreaded ATS.  That began a series of a dozen more where I confessed my reality to her–I literally have zero funds for any sort of resume consulting.  Amandaa Soomers, dedicated consultant and apparently dedicated mom, held firm and resolute.  The best this professional could offer after several reality checks was to discount her usual rate of $350-$500 to $100-$200.  To her credit, she came back to me twice, including the next morning, trying to close me.

My terse reply:  I cannot offer you what I do not have.

I’m fairly certain if you’ve read this far a number of year are cursing me to your computers.  How much self-pity and victimization can anyone seriously pursuing a career inflict?  Tell you what.  Let’s compare bank accounts at the first of every month.  I strongly suspect for many of you Ms. Soomers’ request was a fraction of yours.  In my case, such a calculation would have resulted in an error message, because she wanted more than I had to my name.

Now if this were the end of this pursuit it probably wouldn’t have been worthy of even my own thoughts, let alone yours.  But then I somehow got an e-mail from someone with an e-mail heading that suggsted AT&T Telecommunications in response to a job I saw advertised on LinkedIn at some point in the past–so long ago, I can’t honestly remember when.  Here’s how it started:

Hello Leigh,

Thank you for reaching out and expressing your interest in the Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) – Media & Entertainment. Your extensive experience is truly impressive, and your expertise aligns well with AT&T mission and team goals.

To help us move forward efficiently, could you please provide some additional information:

What is your current availability or notice period?

What are your salary expectations for this role?

Are you open to relocation or specific work hours?

Recognize those statements?  Formulaic?  Apparently they must be a client of randstad or Adecco.  We know how draining those dopey WBD media people have been on that company’s resources.

But then they re-posted the actual job opening.  Feel free to click on it for the sordid details, but the salary alone allowed me to forgive this mystery person for screwing up my name.  If George Costanza was willing to put his face in a bowl of hot and sour soup and blow for $50, can you imagine what I’d be willing to do for that kind of compensation?

But you might have also noticed that to this point there is still no name attached to “AT&T Telecommunications”.  And the follow-up was chillingly familiar:

Securing a role at AT&T Telecommunication begins with making a strong first impression, and your resume plays a critical role in that process. While it’s encouraging to see some initial traction, the absence of progress to formal interviews or offers may be linked to key resume elements that fall short during the shortlisting phase. From a hiring manager’s standpoint, resumes are assessed not only for experience and qualifications but also for relevance, clarity, and alignment with institutional standards. As a senior recruiter with extensive experience evaluating candidates for highly competitive roles, I’ve completed a preliminary review of your resume and identified several areas that may be undermining your candidacy, particularly when benchmarked against AT&T Telecommunication expectations. To position yourself more competitively, I strongly recommend a comprehensive resume refresh, conducted by a specialist with deep knowledge in crafting targeted applications for leading technology companies like AT&T Telecommunication. While I would have coordinated this introduction for you, due to my current schedule constraints, would you prefer that I share her contact details so you can connect directly?
I eventually was forwarded contact info from someone named “patio James” inviting me to connect to the e-mail  avagrace1085@gmail.com.    I did, and got back an error message.
Of course your schedule is constrained, “patio”.  You’re far too busy chasing schmucks like me with scams.
This is my growing problem with LinkedIn and why I get so bent out of shape when otherwise well-meaning people point out job opportunities they see that they think I’d be qualified for–people who actually know where I would prefer to live and what my actual experience and expertise is–can do no more than provide me a link.  Far more often than not, this is what happens.  Heck, a little more than a month ago I mused on a similar experience.  Were it not for its ability to connect with some of you who have these musings, I’d have already taken myself off the platform.  I’ve already dropped the premium membership.  Again, I can’t give anyone or anything what I don’t have.
I’ll allow that Jessica Besch is perhaps a real person.  I’m much more dubious about Amandaa Soomers since she doesn’t apparently have a LinkedIn page, and perhaps the AI keyboard stuck on those tricky vowels.  And if patio James is a real person, I’ll put my face in that bowl of hot and sour soup for free.
I actually don’t fault someone like her, or even “Amandaa”, for doing their jobs, since they actually have them.  I fault companies that can’t find the time or bandwidth to actually address real, qualified candidates personally.  I keep hearing that with remote and hybrid work that sometimes hundreds or even thousands of people apply for a single open position.
Guess what, snowflakes?  You at least have people on staff who are earning salaries.  I for one can plow through about 200 such forms in an afternoon.  I actually did that when I had an opening for a vice president on my team almost two decades ago and I alerted a few colleagues and competitors to alert their e-mail networks to apply if interested.  The barrage of responses I received supplemented the decent number my corporate HR folks–people I actually talked to and collaboared with–had provided me,  Some warranted more time than others, of course.  But if I could do that, even while I was multitasking with silly responsibilities like trying to position underperforming original series, G-d knows HR professionals without such conflict should be able to as well.
So again, show of hands.  Who got hired primarily because of their ATS-optimized resume as opposed to the actual experience and talent that was included on it?  Or, perhaps, as it has been shared with me, maybe it’s because you’re something other than a white straight male of a certain age who didn’t serve their country (mostly because I love it too much to saddle it with my inabilities to aim straight?)
Well, if you’re indeed in that position and you have any opening whatsoever, you know how to reach me.  There’s a direct contact e-mail for me on this site, and my phone number is apparently easy enough to find.  I get a lot of texts out of nowhere from sources that I’ve learned are about as real as Ava Grace.  I replied to them the exact same thing I shared with Jessica and even “Amandaa”.
Caveat venditor.
Until next time…

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