The Job Search System Is Broken.

And It’s Costing Good People Real Opportunities.

By Kate Mayeski

Transparency Note: This article is based on patterns I’m hearing in real conversations with job seekers, business owners, and professionals navigating today’s hiring market. Client details have been generalized for privacy. I’m also referencing a recent conversation between Simon Sinek and Dr. Eliza Filby on work, uncertainty, AI, and the erosion of mentorship in the workplace.

Quick read: Both sides are frustrated — and the problem isn't the people, it's what's happening in the middle.

Your resume passed ATS.

So why is nobody calling?

That question keeps coming up in different forms on my discovery calls. Someone walks me through everything they have tried: the applications, the resume edits, the ATS scans, the LinkedIn Premium subscription, the recruiter messages, the polite follow-ups, the waiting. They are not sitting around hoping opportunity falls out of the sky. They are doing the work, or at least doing the version of the work they were told to do.

Then they pause and say some version of, “I don’t know what else to do.”

One recent client had applied to roughly 300 jobs. Her resume had passed the ATS score test her university career center used. On paper, she had done the “right” things: clean format, green score, keywords included. Still, no real movement.

“My resume passed the university ATS score requirement. I don’t know what else to do.”

That is the problem with the way we talk about ATS. We have made it sound like passing the software means the resume is working. Sometimes it only means the software can read it. Those are not the same thing.

Across 13+ recent discovery calls, the pattern has been hard to ignore. One client applied to roughly 300 jobs after passing a university ATS scan. Another spent six months applying with zero callbacks. Others had already tried LinkedIn Premium, recruiter outreach, career center reviews, and former-boss feedback before reaching out. Some kept messaging recruiters for 20 or 30 attempts before the silence finally wore them down.

This is not a motivation problem. It is not a “people don’t want to work” problem. It is a signal that something in the hiring process is breaking before the right people ever meet each other.

The Job Search Contradiction I Can’t Ignore

The part I cannot get past is that I can hear both sides of the hiring crisis in the same day.

In the morning, a business owner tells me they cannot find good people. They have posted the job, paid for the platform, and received plenty of applications, but apparently none of them are right. They are busy, understaffed, and frustrated because they need someone who can step in and actually help.

By the afternoon, I am talking to a job seeker who has applied to hundreds of roles with no meaningful response. Or a recent graduate with strong internship experience, a clean resume, and enough initiative to put many seasoned professionals to shame. Or an executive with decades of leadership behind them who cannot get a human being to acknowledge the application.

I cannot marry those two realities.

How can companies be desperate for talent while qualified people at every level are sitting in silence? How can business owners say they cannot fill roles while job seekers with credible experience, strong work histories, and carefully prepared materials cannot get through the front door?

When the math doesn’t work, I start to look at the system.

There are solutions for business owners. There are solutions for job seekers. There are good people on both sides of this. But the space between them has become a maze of platforms, automation, assumptions, poor communication, and very little accountability.

We Have Over-Systematized Hiring

I need to say this clearly because I do not want this to sound like an anti-technology rant. I am a huge tech lover. Over the course of my 20+ year career, I have been on both sides of the hiring table. I have been the candidate trying to understand what a company actually wants, and I have been behind the scenes helping develop the framework for an employer’s ATS system — from integrating mission and values throughout hiring materials to shaping candidate messaging, job posting language, screening criteria, interview workflows, and the handoff into onboarding.

So I understand why these tools exist.

Applicant Tracking Systems make sense in theory. If a company receives hundreds of applications, someone needs a way to organize the flood. I am not pretending a person can lovingly read every resume with a cup of coffee and a highlighter. That is not how hiring works at scale.

But somewhere along the way, the tool became the authority.

LinkedIn. Indeed. ADP. Paylocity. Payroll platforms with applicant tracking add-ons. One-stop shops that promise to streamline hiring. Dashboards, filters, knockout questions, automated emails, keyword matching, candidate rankings, and “easy apply” buttons that make everyone feel like they are doing something useful.

These tools were supposed to save time. I keep wondering: save time for whom?

If a business owner still cannot find the right person, and a qualified candidate still cannot get seen, what exactly did we optimize? We went from being inundated with applications to placing too much trust in systems very few people are actually auditing.

No one seems to be asking the simplest question: is this working?

Not “Did the system reduce the number of resumes I had to look at?” Not “Did it move applicants into neat columns?” Not “Did it make the process look more organized?” I mean, did it help you hire better people? Did it improve the candidate experience? Did it reduce ghosting? Did it surface qualified people who might not have the perfect title but absolutely have the right experience? Did it make hiring more human, or just more trackable?

That is the part that makes me crazy. We are tracking everything except whether the thing is doing what it was supposed to do.

Your Resume Passed ATS. That Does Not Mean It Is Working.

Candidates get bad advice when they are told to “beat ATS.”

So they optimize the resume until the score looks good. Then they send it out and nothing happens. Now they are stuck because, according to the tool, they passed.

But passed what?

A green score may mean your resume is readable. It may mean you used enough matching language. It may mean your formatting did not break the system. It does not mean a hiring manager understands why you are the right person.

ATS can read keywords. It can scan formatting. It can compare your resume to a job description. It can decide whether your section headers are familiar enough. What it cannot do is understand your life.

It cannot tell that your title was different but your responsibilities match. It cannot understand that your federal experience is incredibly relevant but written in a completely different language than the private sector uses. It cannot see the value in a career pivot unless you spell it out. It cannot appreciate that a caregiving gap, health interruption, layoff, visa timeline, startup chapter, or nonlinear path may have made you more capable, not less.

One client told me his former boss advised him to polish his resume for ATS. He did, and he was still distressed by the idea that computers were making hiring decisions.

This is common across multiple industries. I say that often because people need to hear it as a reality check, not as a fluffy reassurance. You are not the only person trying to figure out why the system seems to reward people who understand the application game more than people who can actually do the job.

The goal is not just to pass software — it’s to make a human understand why you’re the right bet.

Your resume has two readers: the system and the human being who is probably tired, moving too fast, and comparing a pile of resumes that all use the phrase “cross-functional collaboration.” The software needs clarity. The human needs a reason to care.

Most resumes are trying so hard to satisfy the first reader that they forget the second one exists.

The Real Pain Point: “I Know I’m Good. I Just Don’t Know How to Say It.”

This is the part I hear underneath almost every call. Most people I talk to are not confused because they have nothing to offer. They are confused because their value does not translate cleanly on paper.

Their resume feels dull. Their LinkedIn does not sound like them. Their leadership is buried. Their personality disappeared somewhere between the summary section and the skills list. Their federal experience reads like a government document because, well, it came from government work. Their creative experience feels too broad. Their executive background has too many moving pieces. Their early-career experience looks thin because no one taught them how to frame internships, labs, projects, or school-based work as actual evidence.

Then there are the life things: layoffs, acquisitions, career pivots, visa deadlines, health issues, caregiving, burnout, returning to work after running a business, trying to move from public sector to private sector, trying to move from survival mode into something that actually fits.

Almost no one has a perfectly clean story anymore, but hiring systems still love the illusion of one. So candidates start sanding themselves down. They remove the interesting parts. They hide the pivot. They over-explain the gap. They make themselves sound “professional,” which too often means they make themselves sound like everyone else.

That is not just a resume problem. That is a positioning problem.

You are not underqualified. You are under-positioned.

Candidate Ghosting Is a Hiring Process Problem

By the time someone books a call with me, they have usually tried a lot already. They have sent hundreds of applications, asked former bosses for feedback, gone through university career centers, paid for LinkedIn Premium, and messaged recruiters after applying. Some kept that recruiter outreach going for 20 or 30 attempts before the silence wore them down. Others made it to final interviews and then everything went dark.

That silence does something to people. At first, you question the resume. Then you question your interview skills. Then you question your background, your timing, your value. Once the job search gets into your head, it is hard to keep it from moving into your chest.

This is why I do not start by tearing apart what someone has done wrong. Most people have already done enough of that to themselves. The first step is figuring out where the search is actually breaking.

But I also think companies need to be held accountable for their side of this.

My clients are not just getting rejected. They are getting ghosted after applications, after recruiter screens, after interviews, and sometimes after final interviews. That should bother us more than it does.

A candidate who gives your company hours of their time deserves a response. Not a novel. Not a therapy session. Just a clear, professional close to the loop. This is basic etiquette, or at least it used to be.

Part of the problem is that we have people in hiring and leadership roles who came up during the pandemic, when work became a green dot, a Slack message, and a calendar invite. A lot of them were never properly mentored in the small professional behaviors that build trust: how to follow up, how to deliver hard news, how to communicate clearly, how to represent a company well when the answer is no.

At the same time, more experienced leaders who could teach those skills are often frustrated, burned out, or checked out. So the mentorship gap widens, and everyone pays for it.

We’re Still Pretending the Old Work Contract Exists

I was listening to Simon Sinek’s conversation with Dr. Eliza Filby recently, and one question from Dr. Filby stopped me:

“What am I offering in the age of uncertainty?”

That question should be taped to the wall in every leadership meeting.

The old work contract has been fraying for years. People watched companies preach loyalty, then cut teams. They watched entry-level roles ask for years of experience. They watched AI enter the workplace before many companies could clearly explain what problem they were solving.

So when leaders say younger people do not have “the hunger,” I pause. Maybe they do have hunger. Maybe they just do not trust the table.

If companies cannot offer stability, mentorship, growth, or a hiring process that treats people like humans, then what exactly are they offering?

Simon Sinek & Dr. Eliza Filby on an episode of "A Bit of Optimism" Podcast

Dr. Filby also talked about younger workers entering the workforce during COVID and missing the low-stakes social learning that used to happen in offices: overhearing phone calls, watching someone handle a tense client moment, learning how to ask for feedback, seeing what professional follow-up looked like in real time. That loss matters because hiring is not just a workflow. Hiring is a trust-building process.

Right now, too many companies are treating it like a software problem.

Business Owners Need to Audit the System Before Blaming the Market

I want to be fair to the hiring side because I work with business owners, too. Most small business owners are not sitting around gleefully ignoring great candidates. They are overwhelmed.

They need help, but they are also cautious. A bad hire is expensive. A slow hire is expensive. No hire is expensive. So they lean on tools, shortcuts, referrals, titles, keywords, and gut instinct. Some of that is practical. Some of it is where good people fall through the cracks.

It’s a cycle of vagueness. Vague job descriptions attract vague applications, which leads to guarded candidates and frustrated owners.

That is why the Sinek and Filby conversation felt so relevant to me. They talked about how work has become more transactional because the old promises have eroded. I see that everywhere.

Employers are worried candidates will leave. Candidates are worried employers will use them up and move on. Everyone is protecting themselves. No wonder the process feels awful.

If you are a business owner saying you cannot find good people, I would ask you to look at your process before blaming the talent market. Is your job description clear? Is your ATS filtering out people you would actually want to meet? Are candidates hearing back? Are interviews structured? Does anyone own follow-up? Are you using automation to support human judgment, or replace it?

Because if your hiring process is vague, automated, slow, impersonal, and full of dead ends, the talent market may not be your only problem. The process, the communication, and the oversight may all need work — not another tool.

AI Is Not Going to Fix a Human Trust Problem

Every business owner I know is trying to figure out what to do with AI. What tool to use. What to automate. What to outsource. What to replace. What to streamline. I understand the pressure. Nobody wants to fall behind.

But this is shiny object syndrome in real time.

Before adding another tool, we need to stop and look at the systems already in place. Is your ATS working? Is your job description attracting the right people? Is your hiring manager following up? Is your team reviewing candidates consistently? Are you filtering out people you actually need? Are you using automation to support human judgment, or replace it?

Adding AI on top of a broken hiring process does not make it strategic. It just makes the broken process faster. Faster is not better if the result is still bad.

AI can sort, summarize, scan, and generate a job description that sounds polished enough to make everyone’s eyes glaze over. What it cannot do is build trust for you. That still has to happen between people.

Leaders need to pay attention here. If you cannot offer the old version of stability, what are you offering instead? Are you offering mentorship? Are you offering learning? Are you offering a clear path? Are you offering honest communication? Are you offering a workplace where people can belong without having to pretend their lives outside of work do not exist? Are you offering a hiring process that respects the fact that applicants are human beings, not just rows in a dashboard?

Job seekers are paying attention. Especially younger workers. They have seen enough to know that “we’re family” can turn into “position eliminated” very quickly. That does not mean they are lazy. It means they are responding to the world they inherited.

If companies want loyalty, hunger, and commitment, they may need to rebuild the conditions that make those things make sense.

What Actually Helps

For job seekers, what helps is not panic-applying, stuffing your resume with every keyword until it reads like a bad software manual, or sending the same document to 200 roles and hoping the math works out.

What helps is diagnosis.

Where are you getting stuck? If you are not getting interviews at all, we need to look at ATS, targeting, and positioning. If you are getting recruiter screens but not moving forward, we need to look at how your story carries into conversation. If you are getting interviews but not offers, we need to look at interview strategy, follow-up, and whether you are connecting your experience to the actual business problem.

This is why I think in three buckets: resume, LinkedIn, and interview. Not because everyone needs everything. Most people do not. But your job search materials should work together. Your resume should open the door. Your LinkedIn should reinforce the story. Your interview should make the employer feel like the risk has gone down.

That is what good positioning does. It lowers the perceived risk of choosing you.

For business owners, what helps is pausing before adding another platform, another AI tool, or another automated workflow. Look at what you already have. Walk through your hiring process like a candidate. Read your own job description out loud. Apply to your own posting. Check the auto-replies. Review who is getting filtered out. Look at how long people are waiting. Ask whether your team knows what good follow-up looks like.

You may not need a new system. You may need to use the one you have with more intention.

This Is Bigger Than ATS

Keywords matter. Formatting matters. ATS matters. I am not saying otherwise.

But when that is where the conversation ends, we give people half a map and act surprised when they get lost. The deeper work is translation: translating experience into relevance, complexity into clarity, leadership into proof, and a career that makes perfect sense once you explain it out loud into something a stranger can understand in 10 seconds.

That is the work I care about.

Most candidates do not need more shame. They need a clear read. This part is the system. This part is the strategy. This part is fixable. Now move.

And most business owners do not need another shiny tool before they understand whether the current process is working. They need to pause, look at the systems already in place, and ask whether those systems are actually doing what the company needs them to do.

Because the real fracture I am seeing is not that good candidates do not exist or good employers do not care. The fracture is in the middle. Good candidates are exhausted. Good business owners are frustrated. The systems between them are not doing enough to earn the trust both sides keep placing in them.

ATS is one symptom.

The deeper issue is that hiring has become too automated to feel human and too inefficient to actually work.

That should concern all of us.

Ready to Find Where the System Is Breaking?

If you are a job seeker who has sent dozens or hundreds of applications and still cannot figure out what is happening, you do not need another generic resume template. You need a clear diagnosis. Is it ATS? Positioning? LinkedIn? Interview strategy? The target roles themselves? We can figure that out together.

If you are a business owner who keeps saying you cannot find good people, it may be time to audit the hiring process before blaming the talent market. Your job description, ATS filters, candidate communication, and interview workflow may be costing you the very people you are trying to hire.

At Maverick May Solutions, I help job seekers translate complex careers into clear, human, strategic materials — and I help organizations tell better stories so the right people can actually find them.

Book a discovery call with Maverick May Solutions. We’ll identify where the process is breaking, what needs to change, and what the next right move looks like.