How to Think Like a Hiring Manager

Your application isn’t about you. Your application is about helping a hiring manager quickly decide to move your application forward while simultaneously deleting one-hundred other resumes.

How can you help the hiring manager? Start by putting yourself in their shoes.

Hiring managers have priorities, incentives, fears, and time-constraints. When they first look at an application, they will take a few seconds to determine whether to hit delete or keep reading. Their initial decision depends upon a few questions, such as:

• Is this candidate looking to solve our problem or wanting us to solve theirs?
• Does this candidate’s history and skillset fit our need?
• Does some information appear to be omitted?
• Is the candidate forthcoming with high-quality references?
• How many of these resume claims would I need to investigate?
• Could advancing this candidate waste my time or backfire?
• Is this the kind of person I’d like to work with?

Most applicants fail to reflect on how quickly and directly their application addresses these concerns. This is the power of applying with empathy.

When you set yourself apart by identifying and solving hiring managers’ problems, you dramatically increase your interview chances. If problem-solving is in your nature, show it.