Why you never hear back after applying

Quick answer: silence after applying is usually not personal, and it's rarely about resume formatting. Most of the time it's volume on the other side, a posting that was never really open, or a resume that reads generically because it was sent to fifty other jobs unchanged. The fix is applying to fewer, better-matched roles with a resume that actually speaks to each one.

It helps to know what's happening on the other end, because it's less mysterious than it feels.

The posting probably got more applicants than you think

A single posting on a decent-sized company's careers page can pull in several hundred applications in the first week, especially if it's also on LinkedIn. One person, sometimes without any help, is expected to look through that pile. They are not reading every resume in full. They're skimming for a match, and if yours doesn't say the thing they're looking for in the first few lines, it doesn't get a second look — not because you're unqualified, but because nobody has time to find out.

This is uncomfortable to hear, but it's not a reflection of you. It's math.

Some postings were never really open

Companies post roles for reasons that have nothing to do with hiring right now: to build a pipeline for later, because a policy requires external posting even when an internal candidate is already picked, or because a manager is testing whether a role is worth budget approval at all. You have no way to tell these apart from the outside, and no way to avoid applying to a few of them. That's not a flaw in your approach — it's just how postings work, and it's part of why a normal search takes longer than it should.

The resume is probably too generic — not too plain

There's a popular myth that resumes get rejected by robots for using the wrong font or having a graphic in the header. Mostly false — see the companion piece on what applicant tracking systems actually do. The real problem with a resume that gets no replies is usually that it was written to describe you in general, not to answer the specific question this posting is asking.

A posting that says "manage vendor relationships and cut procurement costs" is quietly asking: have you done that, and can you show it briefly? A resume that leads with something else entirely — even if it's true and impressive — makes the reader do the work of connecting the dots. Most readers won't.

What's actually worth doing about it

Two things move the needle more than anything else:

Apply to fewer roles, more carefully. Twenty applications where each resume actually speaks to that posting will outperform a hundred sent with one generic version. This isn't a moral point about effort — it's that the specific version is the one that survives the first skim.

Give the reader the match in the first few lines. Not a summary paragraph about your career — the actual thing this posting asked for, stated plainly, near the top. If they're looking for procurement cost savings and you have a number for that, that number belongs in the first third of the page, not buried in bullet six.

Neither of these guarantees a reply. Nothing does. But they're the two levers that are actually yours to pull, and they matter far more than the font you picked.