When Will Your Resume Be Reviewed?

Hi friend,

Yesterday I got a question from a frustrated job seeker, asking when you should hear back about a job you applied for: 

I never heard anything back from them and it's been a few weeks- I’m guessing I didn’t check all of their boxes!? But no idea. Is it typical for companies to not respond at all if they aren’t interested?

We talked a little bit more about the situation, and I thought it would be helpful to walk you through the process of how to figure out what it means when you haven’t heard back about your job application.

First, exactly how long has it been in business days since you submitted your job application? 

In this case, it had been three weeks, which is a long time to not receive any communication, but doesn’t necessarily mean a company has rejected you. Sometimes companies run their hiring processes on a rolling basis with dedicated recruiters who get back to top candidates within a matter of a couple of days. Other times, it can take much longer.

Is there any way to estimate how long it will take a company to review your resume? 

Three factors generally play into how fast a company reviews applications for a position (or lack thereof): the importance of a position, the amount of organizational bandwidth for hiring, and the maturity of the company’s recruitment process. This company was young and growing fast; they had less than 50 employees and seven openings on their job board! That’s a lot of hiring, and organizations under 50 rarely have a dedicated recruiter. I suspected that hiring responsibilities were either spread across the entire company, or that a few people were working on all of the roles. Either way, there is a high likelihood that the hiring process will be slow for at least some roles, and candidate applications are being reviewed in batches as people have time to get to them. 

But why does it take so long to review a resume?

I was familiar with this particular company, and based on my knowledge, I guessed that for each position they were averaging 100-250 applicants per job. For seven jobs, that’s 700 resumes to review on the low end, and 1750 on the highest end. I think you can imagine how that could pile up at a small organization where it’s not anyone’s dedicated responsibility. (In case you’re wondering if you even have a chance of being hired among a pool of that size, check out my post on your odds of being hired by job stage.)

What if a company never gets back to me about my application? When should I assume I’ve been rejected if I don’t hear back? 

In this case, I recommended the candidate send a follow up, but they already had, with no response. Charitably, the people they contacted might not use LinkedIn much (I recommended they try via email next), but unfortunately companies do ghost candidates. There’s no excuse for it— basic courtesy should be a policy! However, to some degree, you should assume you have been or will be rejected until you have an offer in hand. Keep sending out applications and following up, until your search is officially over. Don’t slow your job search by waiting to hear back from anyone.

Do you have a question for me? I’d love to hear from you! Submit a question or tweeter at me!

Karissa