Job search diagnostics

Find the stage that is actually failing

Most job-search advice answers one symptom and is applied to all of them, which is why so much of it does not work. Silence, instant rejection, ghosting and losing at the final round have different causes and share almost no fixes. Start from the one that matches what actually happens to your applications.

How do I work out what is wrong with my job search?

Identify the stage your applications reliably stop at, because that single fact rules out most of the possible causes. Stopping before any human contact points at whether the application is readable and evidenced; stopping after a screen points at what your background actually evidences; stopping at final rounds points at competition rather than at a defect, and is not fixable by rewriting anything.

Each page below is a short decision tree over facts you already know. Nothing you select is transmitted anywhere, and every possible outcome is published on the page so you can see the reasoning rather than trust a verdict.

Nothing is coming back

Applications go out and the process never starts. The causes here are the most fixable.

Recruiters and sourcing

You are visible to recruiters, or you are not, and the two produce completely different next moves.

It starts and then stops

Someone engages and then the process ends. What ends it varies, and the stage tells you which.

Before you apply

Decisions about whether a specific role is worth the hour, which is where most wasted effort originates.

You are getting interviews

The application is working. What remains is a narrower and less discussed problem.

Targeting

Which roles you apply to is the least examined part of a search and frequently the most broken.

Effort and tactics

Where to spend the finite hours a search actually has.

Longer answers to the two biggest versions of this question

Or run the full Job Search MRI across the whole search