I have 15 years of experience in sales management and strong customer service experience in both phone-based and face-to-face environments. I have been actively seeking new opportunities for over a year, but I am finding it challenging to understand why applications are not progressing past the initial stage. I would appreciate insight into what employers are prioritizing today, as I am eager to improve my approach and better align with what organizations are looking for sales professionals.

It’s not you, it’s the market. Either there are tons of other qualified applicants as well or the company wants to pay you 100% commission as if that’s normal.

Being in sales I’ve always networked. I find most of my jobs through referrals from previous coworkers.

I’ve only worked remote since Covid and those jobs are competitive. I have much better luck locally but have been lucky enough to avoid having to commute to work in Dallas traffic

I have been on the job hunt for 6 months now. I have over 2 decades of sales experience and 18 years of management experience. I’m not getting any interviews.

You may not be doing anything wrong, a lot of us have been looking for work for months now, amd are getting turned down or overlooked for roles that are a direct near 100% match.

The job market is the worst it's been in decades.

Many employers are using AI filtering if certain "keywords" are not used in the beginning of each bullet per job description. So, use AI, too, and get help with ATS-Friendly keywords. Copy and paste sections of your resume and ask if Ai can give you ATS-Friendly keywords to catch employers attention and get you past the filtering out of resumes that do not align with EXACTLY what they're looking for. But make sure to make the bullets your own, just use AI as a guidebook in order to bypass their filtration system. Hopefully this makes sense. Because I have been going through the same thing for the same amount of time as you have been, and I have 100+ versions of resumes until I FINALLY was able to get a lot of feedback from my recent resume. Feel free to look at it on my profile, and if you cannot see it, message me and I will send to you.

I was told by a recruiter that most job post boards reject resume due to ATS software. Tailer your resume around metrics that are applicable to the job you want

What industry?

Had the same issue. rejection after rejection. I found a new role after networking with old employees. Sometimes its timing too.

I work in close coordination with our recruitment team, You're all correct that the hiring process has become nearly untenable. The problem comes down to the competitive market, for quite a while our sales team has been a revolving door. Everybody is looking for something a little better. At our company its become practice to post the jobs and then put some youngsters through a training protocol to "buy" their loyalty for a few years, while basically ignoring 99% of the applications. We just seem to lose too much face when in the course of a year a "good" client is introduced to five new sales reps. Pay is generous here generally ranging $160-350K depending on sales. Of course there are always the hitters that make $500k+

From my perspective, it often seems that many employers are focused on keeping labor costs down by offering lower salaries or hourly wages. At times, it also appears that companies prefer hiring younger candidates who may accept lower compensation or have fewer expectations regarding pay and benefits. Whether or not that perception is accurate, it has made me question how experienced professionals are being evaluated in today’s job market.

The truth is that you are too experienced and lay outside of the "selected" parameters AI review mechanism focus on. Persons with traditional "sales experience" are basically dated....and now face the ugly demon of age discrimination coupled with a job market riddled with shameless ghost postings. What's happening in the American job market ,today, is downright criminal with shameless employers taking every opportunity to maintain rock bottom labor costs by manipulating and abusing American workers struggling to survive.

I will give you the tip that just recently helped me. Contact the VPO on linked in and introduce yourself.

I'm in the same situation, all tolled 35 years of corporate B2B sales and sales leadership experience and have not been able to find anything that's not entry level 1099 sales for 2 years now. I'm thankful I put away alot of money over the years so I don't have to work but I want to work at least the next 5 to 7 years before I fully retire. It's a brutal job market for older people right now and I've taken odd jobs, driving a truck or anything else I can find to keep me busy and bring a little extra money in. Good luck with your search.

There is a thing called perpetual hiring ads. One place that I called actually had listed " come in and talk to a Manager". He was annoyed. They have no jobs right now. I have found that the companies still have ads up for stores that have closed. Theres been ads for BIG LOTS . All the ones in Az closed over 2 years ago. ​​Someone just isn't going in and taking the ads down. I
I ​was a care giver/ family support for 6 years. The resumes have that to explain the gap. It's crazy that the AI is picking that up and sending me caregiver job advertisement VS what I am looking for. I
Then there is the its summer excuse. Yeah some jobs are affected by summer hours in some states but ​not all states . Some jobs are not affected at all.

Some jobs AI actually pre screens and then if you pass the screen then you get to go to the application. I have over 20 years in sales,customer service and reservation experience. I don't get it either. AI is not anyone's friend.
Where is the personal experience.
I did my resumes with all the key word and kept it. Then let AI do my resume.
It sounded so fake. I know people who doing hiring and they will NOT even consider a fully written AI resume.
I saw an ad for a position that I once held.my resume was totally lines up with all the key words and title and name.
It was rejected by AI because I didn't use bullet points in the employee history of description. that is stupid.

It is a tough market at the moment. If you are getting interviews but not offers, it is usually interview technique. If you are not getting interviews, it is worth reviewing your CV and LinkedIn profile.

I’m open to roles related to remodeling. I had a company hire me right away because of all my experience I could be an ambassador at EXPO’s etc. oh and did we also mention that we have an in-store set up at a Walmart. You’ll never go without leads! Some days I may be there all day, but great spot for leads. (It was a good market for what I was getting leads on) I accepted anxiously. Stupid.

I went and saw the Walmart location it was a huge mess with three young employees hanging out. I’m 45. They were hiring me to train, fix and clean up their mess. I’ve never done it before but recanted my offer stating very very close to bait and switch. Massive waste of time. So not only looking for work but you have to do a light investigation. I’ve been there done that and tried to train, fix, sell, motivate, clean up set up, as an “associate designer” it was unreal. So, appliers BEWARE of that too.

One big suggestion I can give is to make sure your resume calls out specifically each of the items the employer has on the job listing, not just elude to it. It would also help to use the same wording or spelling the employer uses. The reason being that a good chunk of employers are running the Information resumes through an AI to filter out to just the ones that meet what they are looking for before a person even reads it. The next thing is that the cover letter is making a come back. Employers job listings are getting flooded with applicants, who wether true or not, are all putting down the employers requirements for the job to get through. Making a short, even two paragraph, cover letter can help you stand out. It helps the employer seperate who is actually interested in their job, and who is just spamming any job listong they can with applications.

I made this change to my process and had an interview within 2 weeks, and a job offer shortly after.

The last thing I can add is if you are looking dor remote or hybrid jobs only, then your pool of competition will be exponentially larger. If you really need to find something, look at the in office or on site jobs. They are getting a lot less applicants, and many are paying more than remote counterparts.