“I have sent out dozens of resumes. Why am I not getting a response from employers?” As resume writers and career coaches, we hear such questions very frequently. While the economy can be a major determining factor, the truth is that job seekers can take affirmative steps to improve response rates.

While many variables can impact the success of a job search campaign, four major factors merit consideration: background, resume, job search strategies, and aggressiveness of the campaign. Let’s review each of these in further detail.

Hotel general manager revamps his background, focus, and resume.

John was a successful manager at a prestigious 350-room hotel. During his hospitality career, he managed several large hotel properties and generated millions of dollars in cumulative cost savings. Yet, despite his superstar performance record, he was unable to attract the attention of employers.

What was going wrong? John was very passionate about guest relationship management and almost all the roles he was applying for which were focused on maximizing guest satisfaction and retention. While John’s resume showcased his management and leadership track record, there was very little information about his work with guests.

John could easily conceptualize his “transferability” from general management to guest relationship management roles, but hiring managers were inundated with resumes that had a background in guest relationship management. As a general manager, John had worked on guest satisfaction initiatives, but his resume was not targeted enough to bring out these accomplishments.

Solution:

After several coaching and resume writing sessions, John was ready for a “360-degree” resume makeover. His revamped resume utilized targeted keywords, action phrases, and accomplishments that showcased his experience in guest management. John is now on the road to success and has started interviewing for his dream roles.

If you have the right background, a well-written resume can make a big difference.

Liz was an accomplished hotel marketing executive with five years of experience and a graduate degree in hospitality management and marketing. She was considered a promising candidate by most standards and while her background was working in her favor, employers were not too keen on calling her. Why?

Liz was fantastic when it came to marketing her employers, but treated her resume as if it were a typed employment chronology list. Her resume simply does not highlight her strongest selling points. In addition to old-school resume writing strategies, she was focusing mostly on her job duties, and not on her accomplishments.

There was absolutely nothing on the document that would WOW potential employers.

Solution:

Complete resume makeover. Liz’s resume was rewritten from scratch to showcase her accomplishments and brand and position her from the perspective of potential employers. Branding statements, accomplishments, powerful success stories, eye-catching executive summary, and a complete overhaul transformed her dull resume into a powerful marketing piece that generated several interviews. Liz now works as a senior marketing manager with a leading hotel chain.

Active as opposed to passive job searching.

Amy was applying for a project management position. Her resume was compelling and she did have the right background and credentials. Despite having ace credentials, Amy was unemployed for over six months. When her unemployment benefits were close to termination, she hit the panic button but was unable to identify the mystery because that was foiling her career aspirations. She was the perfect candidate, no doubt, but why wasn’t she able to generate interviews? Wrong job search strategies.

Solution:

In current economic conditions, it is very important to use a portfolio of job search strategies—from job boards and classified ads to networking and social media, it is very important to mobilize all the job search tools, just as if you were launching a marketing campaign for a product or service.

Simply waiting for job leads to pour in is not going to work. Amy realized this and turned around her job search efforts. In addition to posting her resume on job boards, she started networking aggressively and focused on using a combination of several job search strategies, including cold-calling employers and recruiters.

Amy also intensified the aggressiveness of her job search campaign and started applying for 20 to 30 active positions on a daily basis (in addition to networking). Within a few months, she was hired as a project manager.

How did she find the position? She met her immediate boss during an Amtrak ride from New York to Connecticut.