Three badly-understood truths about applying for jobs

How you think about applying for jobs determines how you do it.

If you think it’s something that it’s not, you’ll probably take the wrong approach to it.

What I know about hiring and interviewing

I’ve been on both sides of the table. In recent years I have spent a vast amount of time and energy in recent years hiring people, which has helped me understand some things about it that were previously far from obvious to me.

These are three key truths that I think hold very reliably, and are generally very badly understood.

Applying for jobs is a game

Applying for jobs is stressful, time-consuming and sometimes heartbreaking, so that makes it a rather horrible game.

You can’t win unless you play the game, and the game has rules.

I don’t call it a game to make light of it. It’s a game in the sense that if you understand how it works, you can see where you might be going wrong, and do better at it.

If you want to do well in the game, you must understand the rules (even if you think they are wrong), and you must play by the rules (even if you don’t like doing it).

The stages of the game

The game of hiring has levels that the candidate must work through - the stages in the employer’s hiring pipeline.

Each stage is like a mini-game of its own, with distinct challenges and rules. The game is not played or won as a whole, but in stages. You have to succeed at each stage to proceed to the next.

Not liking the rules

As a candidate, sadly you don’t get to set the rules of the game. They’re set by the prospective employer.

For example, people sometimes get angry about interview questions (“Why am I being asked how many ping-pong balls will fit in a bath-tub?!”).

People who get angry about the rules of a game while trying to play it never win.

It’s a game of skill

Having the right skills for the job is not enough. You need to get good at the game of applying for jobs.

Because it’s a game of skill, being the best, most suited, most deserving candidate isn’t enough. A weaker candidate who is a better player will often do better.

Employers do their very best to make the skills required for the interview good proxies for the qualities required for the job - but it’s not possible to do this perfectly.

As an interviewer, I try very hard to see beyond a candidate’s interview skills to the qualities that would fit them to the job. An unsuitable candidate, even with excellent interview skills, is fairly easy to identify, but when a candidate has poor interview skills, their suitability is very hard to ascertain.

It’s a real shock for someone to realise that the reason they failed to get a job wasn’t because they were not the best person for it, but because they performed badly in the game of applying for jobs. Some people keep getting this shock and never learn a lesson from it.

The skills required to do well in the game can be identified, learned, practised and improved. It’s necessary to start playing before you’re good at the game, in order to become better at it.

Very few people are naturally good at the game. Most people have to make an effort to become good at it.

The employer is on your side

Hiring is a game that a candidate can win or lose, and it’s structured so that the prospective employer (the most visible other presence in the game) appears as an opponent to be overcome. This is not the reality. The employer is your counterpart, but not your opponent. On the contrary, you are on the same side. The employer wants you to win.

This can be hard to believe when the employer is the one that sets the rules, and makes the decisions about candidates. For the candidate, it certainly doesn’t feel as if the employer is on their side.

Antagonistic mindsets

Understanding the relationship between candidate and employer frames the entire process and sets the candidate’s thinking. A staggering number of candidates enter the hiring process with an antagonistic mindset, and they all do badly as a result.

At its mildest, the candidate sees the employer’s process as an obstacle to success, that might be overcome with some cunning shortcuts - “tips”, “hacks”, “secrets” - if only they play their cards right. These candidates come across as weak and lacking in self-belief. They may be tempted to opt for expediency over integrity, like cheaters in an exam. They’re the ones that might reach for tools like ChatGPT for an advantage.

At its worst, the employer becomes an enemy to be defeated - a hostile entity that will delight in the candidate’s failure. These candidates come across as angry, resentful and self-defeating, determined to find ways to spite the rules of the game while still wanting to win.

Alignment of interests

Hiring is expensive and time-consuming. Every single candidate costs the organisation money. Every interaction is the tip of an iceberg of increasingly expensive actions for the employer.

Each candidate represents an investment of time and money by the employer. When you do well in the application process, the employer is doing well too - it’s a sign the investment might be successful.

When you do badly, their investment is at risk. The moment that they close your application, they have lost it.

The interests of the candidate and the employer are aligned, not opposed. The last thing the employer wants to do is place unnecessary obstacles in the path of the suitable candidate, or encourage the unsuitable one.

The employer’s special desire

There is a particular category of candidate that employers are concerned about.

If a candidate is unsuitable, then whether they are good at the game or not, they are not likely to do well in the application process.

If they would be excellent for the job, and have good job application skills, they’re likely to do well.

But if they would be excellent for the job, and have poor job application skills, they are not likely to do well - and unlike the other outcomes, this outcome is bad for both the employer and the candidate.

Many aspects of a hiring process are intended specifically to help this category of applicant.

How we feel about it on our side of the table

When I speak of an organisation’s wants, desires and intentions above, that’s metaphorical. I don’t really think that organisations want or desire, but it’s a way of highlighting the interests at work, that have real effects in an organisation’s behaviour.

Unlike the organisations they work for though, individuals can have feelings as well as interests.

When I open a candidate’s first application, I have my fingers crossed for them; all I want to see are things that will allow me to move them forward. Before an interview, an interviewer send up a silent prayer: let this be the one. It’s a thrill to be able to interview or advance a good candidate. At Canonical, when I inform colleagues on the interviewing team that a candidate has moved to the next stage, they are delighted. By the time a candidate has cleared the final hurdle, there is jubilation. We have won the hiring game, together.

It’s a co-operative game, in which you give us what we need to help you.

When I have to reject a candidate, or have a disappointing interview, I have lost.

The saddest thing of all, though, is to see a promising candidate fall short, because they have made an avoidable mistake in the game - perhaps because they simply didn’t understand the rules.

What we want most of all is that you give us what we need to help you. We want you to win, which means we win the hiring game together.

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Understanding these truths really does make a difference to how one approaches applying for jobs. They can frame how you think about what is happening and what people are doing, and impart a different meaning to the things you experience.

What you do about them is up to you.