The Resume A/B Test

Someone I interviewed for research ran an A/B test on his own resume.

The version he kept, generic, keyword-stuffed, no story, the version every career coach tells you not to send, outperformed the carefully tailored version. Through the ATS specifically, the generic version got more screens.

He'd run the test more than once. It kept happening.

What this said, and he was the one who said it, not me, is that the channel is what it is. The ATS isn't reading for craft. It's reading for keywords. Tailoring doesn't help where most applications die.

The implication isn't that you should send generic resumes. It's that the channel where the resume matters is a tiny fraction of where senior people actually get hired. If you're putting craft hours into the resume to get past the ATS, you're optimizing the wrong stage.

The stage where craft actually matters is after a human picks up your name. A referral conversation, an inbound DM, a recruiter who's been pointed at you by an inside contact. By the time you're talking to that human, the resume is the deepest detail, not the front door.

For senior people specifically, the resume effort is downstream of the access. Until you have access, the resume is filing paperwork. Once you do, the craft might actually matter.

Most senior people are putting craft hours upstream of where craft matters. The test he ran is one data point. But it tracks with what I keep seeing in senior search: where you put your effort matters less than where you have access.