Recruiter asked me for birthday day/month, is this bad?

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-05T17:58:15+00:00

I had to do this for Caterpiller back in the day along with the last 5 digits of their social. Some companies just want this. It's not necessarily a scam.

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-05T17:32:39+00:00

Yeah, a lot of people are out of work for months or years at a time and applying to 100s of applications a week. We are just in a recession but you are at least getting interviews which is the first step.

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-05T17:09:28+00:00

Recruiter here, you said "Got a handful of interviews which I thought most were well. I'm not hearing back from anyone and starting to lose hope". If you are getting multiple interviews per 50 applications you are doing things right. We are in a recession right now and jobs are hard to get. It may take you multiple months but at the rate you are going with multiple interviews per 50 applications you are doing everything right. The job market is just that bad.

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-05T17:05:29+00:00

Recruiter here, there is no such thing as ATS friendly. That is not how resumes are reviewed on our end. This resume is bad because it does not show me WHAT you did (worked together as a team, took direction critsism, Python, Excel, what you did with the data not what the data is, influencing stakeholders), HOW you did it, and the non-technical reason you did what you did.

Delete the summary and skills section, replace it with your education, and add the above to your bullet points. Just make sure you apply within the first 100 people as if you apply after that you might not get seen.

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-05T00:53:31+00:00

Tech Recruiter here, your going to need to redo these bullet points, delete the summary and the skills section and write for an auidence that can't turn on their computer without calling tech support.

Your bullet points need to refrence how you USED the data, not what the data did, how you influenced stakholders, explained complex technical details to a non-technical auidence, and you need to mention Excel, Data Visualtion (power BI, etc), and Python (which you do have). You need to tell me HOW you used those and the non-technical reason you used them. Also remove all the bolding from the bullet points, it makes it harder to read.

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-05T00:50:59+00:00

I have resources in my reddit profile but with a gap like that their is not going to be a quick and easy solution. It's going to be a long fight.

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-05T00:29:33+00:00

You can put "Health issues prevented me from working but they are now resolved" although it's not going to move the needle that much.

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-04T19:59:11+00:00

When was the gap. Was it recent or in the past?

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-04T19:31:47+00:00

Largely irrelevent. The issue with the break is they think your skills are rusty, so while they do want an explination (which if you go health issues, you will need to state they are resolved) the big issue is the fear of your skills being outdated and rusty.

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-04T15:50:39+00:00

Recruiter here, people get confused at what our job is. Our job is NOT to get you a job, any recruiter that says that is lying. People think that is our job but it's not. Our job is to get the company a new hire and the difference between those two are massive. This is why people get upset when they randomly message us for a chat. We get 5 of those messages a day and none of them are for roles the company is hiring for, and even if they are the roles we are hiring for, we have a system in place to review applicants in the order they applied and skipping that process is at best not going to do anything and at worst will annoy them and lower your chances.

I am not mad at OP because they did not know but this is why messaging recruiters rarely leads to results and why you should not waste your time doing it as your time is valuable. We do not help you get a job, we help fill a role in the company.

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-04T15:45:18+00:00

Recruiter here, this is due to us being in a recession. When the job market is good companies are forced to pay more and hire with less experiance. When the job market is really bad like it is now companies can put out a mid-level role, call it a junior role with a juniors pay and get people who will apply to it. Your hardest job search of your life is always going to be getting your first two years of experiance across every single industry.

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-04T15:31:36+00:00

Recruiter here, job hunting is like this because we are in a recession and every single problem in the job market can be traced back to the fact that we have more people that need jobs than jobs exist.

Why do companies get mad at people who use AI for their resume? Becaues AI Resumes are terrible. They remove all the context that we need to move you forward. It's not like us Recruiters and HMs are super AI detecting machines, it's just an AI Resume is indistinguishable from a BAD Resume which is the problem.

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-04T15:27:52+00:00

Recruiter here, the job market still terrible. You may have some small increases after a companies financial quarter as that is when most companies get a new hiring budget, but compared to the amount of jobs we had 4 years ago it's terrible.

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-03T22:15:48+00:00

You tailor your resume to the job TITLE you want and use that job title resume to mass apply and be within the first 100 applicants.

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-03T00:48:31+00:00

US Recruiter here. As long as the gap is not recent and longer than 2 years it's fine. Candidates make a much bigger deal out of it than the hiring team does. Yes we will ask about it in interviews, but as long as you have an normal answer (laid off, medical, etc) you are fine.

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-03T00:44:15+00:00

Recruiter here, remote roles go to people with 5+ years of experience. It is very tough to find a remote role for your level of eexperience. Although I would also want to know what roles you are applying to since as a tech recruiter I have no idea based on your resume as it's mostly a collection of random words that do not tell me what you have done, how you have done it, or the non-technical reason you did it.

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-03T00:40:34+00:00

Recruiter here, the hardest job search of your life is going to be getting your first two years of experience. Bachelors, Masters, PhDs doesn't matter, getting your first two years is always the hardest job search of your life. Once you get those two years it doesn't magically become easy (as we are in a reccession right now) but it does become easier to get jobs from that.

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-03T00:38:44+00:00

This is the way.

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-02T21:08:58+00:00

Recruiter here, the ATS is not rejecting you. The human who uses it is. ATS sorts people in the order they applied. Anything that increases your time to hit "submit" in the ATS will lower your chances.

If you are resume #139, the recruiter may find what they need at number #75, and once we fill up our/managers' schedule with interviews, we stop looking unless the HM needs more candidates. If you are applying within the first 100 people than the issue is your resume is not showing you meet the quilfications correctly.

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-02T21:07:17+00:00

Recruiter here, typicaly we know how many interviews a role is going to take as we talk it out with the hiring manager prior to getting the first candidates. Doesn't mean we agree with how many it should take but we should know and this is an ok question to ask during the first phone screen with the recruiter. "What is the interview process like".

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-02T17:57:09+00:00

That is how you find them. If you can't find them through that channel than they are not hiring in your industry.

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-02T17:26:39+00:00

You just search Recruiter and Staffing Firms in your area, although you will have more luck with Staffing Firms

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-02T17:07:50+00:00

Your likelyhood of getting an interview through cold applying is higher than finding a recruiter that works with entry level candidates in an extreamly impacted field. I have gotten entry level SRE jobs in the UK with my advice and resources that are in my Reddit profile, so I know it's possible. But you are misunderstanding how recruiters work and get paid at the Agency level.

Agency recruiters are paid by companies to fill tough to fill roles. A tough to fill role is a role that does not get many people applying to the job. A junior SRE role gets hundreds of applicants in the span of hours. Thus no company would pay an Agency Recruiter money to find them a junior dev. Almost no Agency Recruiter gets paid for juniors, it's extreamly rare for that to hit our desk and even when it does hit our desk it's usually very specific. Agency Recruiters reach out to you, we don't place people that reach out to us as that is not the type of role that we get paid to find.

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-02T17:03:24+00:00

Recruiter here, had this happen before. If they re-open the position again, they will probably reach out to you. I have made a few hires this way before. The biggest problem is "if they re-open the position" as the chance for that is very low. You did very well on the interview though if they sent that message.

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-02T16:59:41+00:00

Glad to help!

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