Break Through- Stop Waiting, Start Moving

You are not stuck because you don't know what to do. You are stuck because you've been getting ready to get ready for about three months too long. Break Through Week is here, and this episode is your permission slip to move. In today's episode, Lauren walks you through the Break Through Protocol — the three-part framework that gets career bloomers off the bench and into the interview pipeline. 

Plus a Horror Story of the Week about a woman named Monica who sent 247 applications (yes, really) and got three phone screens, a Listener Mailbag with a question almost every job seeker has asked at 11pm, and a Tip of the Week that includes the exact follow-up email template Lauren uses with her coaching clients.

Transcript

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Hello, y'all, and welcome back to the Career Bloom podcast. I'm Lauren, your HR friend, who tells you the things that your actual HR department would maybe prefer that you didn't know. So I need you to grab your coffee, your spite, maybe grab whatever keeps you going every Tuesday morning. Because today we're gonna have a conversation. It is week three of the full bloom season here at Career Bloom Solutions. And this week has a name. It's called the Breakthrough. And I'll be honest with you, this is my favorite week of the whole season because week one, we planted seeds, week two, we rooted them. And those are both beautiful metaphorical things where nobody actually actually, you know, do anything uncomfortable. But breakthrough is different. Breakthrough is when the universe taps you on the shoulder and goes, sweetheart, the plan is done. The spreadsheet is color-coded. The resume has been reformatted 12 times. And it's time to send it. It's time to apply to the job. It's time to post the LinkedIn and it's time to stop hiding behind preparation. Because if I'm being real with you, and I always am, most people who are stuck in their careers are not stuck because they don't know what to do. They're stuck because they know what to do. They just haven't done it yet. So today we are breaking through. We have a framework, we have a horror story that I promise will make you feel better about your own life. And we have a listener question from a woman who's been applying for four months with nothing to show for it. And on top of that, we have a tip of the week that if it going into it, it might make you uncomfortable, but like in the best way. So let's get into it. I need to welcome y'all into the horror story of the week, the segment where I tell you something that happened in the real world of hiring so that way you know you're not the problem. Okay. This one came to me from a woman that I'll call Monica. Monica is a marketing manager with nine years of experience. Good resume, good energy. She comes to me and she says, Lauren, I have applied to 247 jobs in the last three months. That's right. You heard me. 247. I had to sit down when I heard that number because she had a spreadsheet. She tracked them all. And out of 247 applications, she had gotten exactly three phone screens and zero, and I mean zero actual interviews or second interviews. So I asked her the question I always ask. I said, Monica, can you walk me through your last five applications? What roles, what companies, and what did you customize? And then there was a pause. And she said, Well, they were all kind of marketing, and I just used the same resume and I maybe changed the first line of the cover letter sometimes. Y'all, 247 times. She did that 247 times. Same resume, same cover letter with a little bit swapped out, different company names. Some of those jobs were in industries she had zero background in. One of them was for a role that I am quoting directly from her spreadsheet, closer to a sales job, but marketing was in the title. End quote. She was not applying for jobs. She was sending the same message in 247 different mailboxes and wondering why nobody was writing her back. Now, here's what's wild. When she stopped, when she took a whole week off from applying, rebuilt her resume for one specific type of role, and then sent out 12, 12 carefully crafted applications over two weeks, she got four interviews. Four out of 12 is a 33% response rate. Out of 247, she got three. That's a 1% response rate. The lesson, and we are going to come back to this like when we get to the framework, is that volume without intention is not progress. It's just noise and it's exhausting noise. You're burning yourself out to get nothing. And then you're wondering why you feel discouraged. You feel discouraged because you're working very hard at something that just doesn't work. Monica's fine now, by the way. She just started a new role last month, standing ovation for Monica. And let's talk about that framework that I just brought up because this is what's going on that actually moves you this week. I call it the breakthrough protocol, and it has three parts. And I want you to write these down, screenshot them, tape them to your bathroom mirror, whatever works. The three parts are get visible, apply with intention, and follow up like a professional. So let's start with the first part. Get visible. Here's what nobody's telling you about the job market in 2026. Recruiters are not sitting at their desks waiting for resumes to arrive anymore. They're searching. They're on LinkedIn, they're looking at who's posting, who's commenting, and who's engaging in their industry. If your LinkedIn headline says marketing manager at previous company and your last post was three years ago, and your profile picture is of you at your sister's wedding in 2019, you're basically invisible. I don't care how good your resume is because nobody's finding it. So this week's, here's what I want you to do. First, I want you to rewrite your LinkedIn headline to say what you do, who you do it for, and not just where you used to work. Second, I want you to post one piece of content on LinkedIn this week. I don't even really care what it is. It can be a thought, an opinion, a thing you learned. Just post something. And then third, I want you to comment thoughtfully on three posts from people in the target industry that you're trying to get into. Not that I agree with fire emojis or anything like that. So I need you to actually add something to the post, not just smiley face, smiley face. What is your opinion about what those people are having to say? Visibility is not about going viral. It's about being findable when somebody is looking for what you do. It's about showing up in the algorithm enough that when a recruiter is searching marketing leads in Dallas, your name shows up as a result. That's it. And listen, I know some of you are sitting there going, Maureen, I'm an introvert. I don't want to be a LinkedIn influencer. I don't want to do all that. And nobody's asking you to do all that. I'm asking you to be a professional who exists on a platform where professionals get hired. It's a pretty low bar to exist on LinkedIn these days. And then we're going to move into part two. Apply with intention. This is the part where we fix like what Monica was doing. Intention means you apply to fewer jobs, but they're targeted. And here's the test. If you could swap the company name on your cover letter for a completely different company and the letters still make sense, it's not a cover letter. It's a form letter. And recruiters can smell a form letter from like three counties over. Okay, we can tell that it was not written for us. And at that point, there's no purpose in writing the cover letter. You're just repeating the same things. So I want you to apply to five jobs this week. Five. Not 50, just five. Count them on your fingers. And for each one, I want you to do three things. Number one, read the job description twice and pick out the top three priorities for the role. Number two, adjust your resume. So that way those three priorities show up in your first six bullet points because that's what we're reading. A lot of us don't even read the whole thing. And number three, I want you to write a cover letter that mentions the company, the role, and one specific reason why you're interested. Genuinely interested. Not I've always admired your company because that's a lie and we know it. Unless you have like something very specific that happened to you or was close to you. We want something real. Five targeted applications will get you further than 50 sloppy ones, and I will die on this hill every time. And then we're gonna move into the last part, part three. I need you to follow up like a professional. And this is where like 95% of applicants disappear. They just do. They just into the abyss. They apply, they wait, they hear nothing, they get discouraged, they quit. So we're not gonna be like 95% of applicants. If you apply to a job and haven't heard back in seven to ten business days, you send a follow-up. Find the hiring manager on LinkedIn, send a short, polite, kind of specific message. Something like, hey, I submitted my application for this role last week and I wanted to reanimate my interests. I'm particularly excited about the team's work and this or that. Happy to answer any questions. That's it, just a couple sentences. And I don't want you begging, you're not groveling, you're just confirming interests, which is exactly what a confident professional does. And remember, that's what you're trying to say that you are. Half the time you're gonna get a response, and even when you don't, you at least made yourself visible one more time. The recruiter remembers the name, even if they don't follow up with you. And I have seen that play out where they didn't necessarily answer that person, and though I don't agree with that, I think you should as a recruiter, they will still bring that name up to somebody, or the name looks familiar when the resume comes across their desk. So that is the breakthrough protocol. Get visible, apply with intention, and follow up like a professional. It's three steps and they're really easy. Five targeted applications this week, one piece of LinkedIn content, three comments, and follow up anything past seven business days. I don't even really care if it's been like a month. It's just follow up anyway. It's simple. And it may not be easy, but it works. And here, here we go, straight into the tip of the week, okay? Because I'm keeping it efficient this week, if anything. This week's tip is a follow-up email that actually works. I'm gonna give you the template live on this podcast because I want you to use it. Copy it down, like put it somewhere. I want you to use the subject line following up on role title application. So, like you're gonna put the title of the role in your subject line. And then we're gonna move into the body of the email. So it's gonna sound like this Hi, first name of the person that you're writing to. I submitted my application for the role title position on date, put the date that you applied and wanted to briefly reiterate my interest. Based on the job description, it looks like you're looking for somebody who can and then write what they were looking for. And that's exactly the kind of work that I did at your previous company, where I and then put a specific accomplishment with a number, you know, some that where I accomplished this, where I improved this. Happy to provide any additional information. Thank you for your consideration, all the best, and then your name or talk soon. Get rid of that sincerely stuff. It's like six sentences and it takes you five minutes to write it. It gets responses because it's specific, it's short, and it reminds the hiring manager that you exist. So I need you to use something like that, please. And listen, if you use that template this week and it works, come and tell me. DM me, tag me, leave me a review. I live for success stories because I will change the advice that I give based on what works and what doesn't. And they keep me going during spreadsheet season. And when I give anonymous reviews to people, I go over actual information that works. And that leads us into the listener mailbag because a lot of y'all do send me messages and uh this right now is the time we're gonna talk about them. Because this is the part of the show where y'all send me your career questions and I give you an answer or a well-meaning opinion. Um, first question this week's comes from Jasmine. Jasmine wrote, Lauren, I've been applying for four months and I've heard nothing. Her and Monica must be France. Not a single phone screen. I'm starting to think something is wrong with me. Help. Okay. First of all, deep breath. Nothing is wrong with you if you're not hearing back. Something is wrong with your process. And a lot of the times that's a fixable problem. You either have the skills and you're not translating them well, or you don't have the skills and you're not translating your ability to learn well. So four months of nothing is not a you problem. It is a strategy problem. So here's what I want you to do. I want you to do this, Jasmine, and if anybody else is listening in the same boat. First, I want you to go back and audit your last 10 applications. Did you customize them? Like honestly, did you do anything different that you made sure that you were like telling that company you were applying to their job? Second, I want you to take your resume to three people that you trust and ask them to tell you the top three things that they see. If those aren't the jobs that you're applying for, your resume is telling the wrong story. Like if those three people you give that resume to are like, I have no idea what you're actually applying to or like what job title this is in relevance to, we have a problem. Okay. And third, reality check your target roles. Are you actually applying to roles that you could do? Like, like, could you work there? And are you stretching by multiple levels? Like, are you applying kind of out of your realm too much? Because when people are stuck in loop, it's usually one of those three things, right? And Jasmine, I please also I want you to hear this. Four months of silence does not mean that you're not employable. The market is weird right now. There are companies posting jobs that are not actually trying to fill them. And I hate that with a passion, but here we are. There's also roles sitting in ATS hell with nobody reviewing them. So you're not crazy. It's just kind of what it's doing right now. But you do have to change your approach because doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is well, we know what that is. So moving on to the second question, this one comes from Derek. Derek asked, Should I still be in a Should I still be applying to jobs if I don't meet all the qualifications? Derek, bless your heart. Yes. Yes, you should. The answer is always yes, apply. The qualifications in a job posting are like a wish list, like a well-crafted wish list. A hiring manager writes down everything they want in a dream candidate, and depending on how much like pull and power the recruiter, hiring manager, or whatever who's ever's making the job description has, a lot of times we'll put them all in there. Um, so we're gonna add what they want, like their wish list, and then we kind of look for the person that matches the best. Now, sometimes we get lucky and somebody matches absolutely everything, and that's great. But the research on this is pretty clear. Men tend to apply when they meet 60% of the qualifications, and women tend to wait till they match 100. And guess what? Most get most of those jobs are getting filled by somebody who met about 70 to 80. So there's kind of a happy gray area in there. So just see if you have the must-haves, which are usually like a degree, years of experience, core technical skills. I mean, don't be going in there crazy and lying to everybody. The rest is negotiable though, because I have 100% met with like hiring teams and stuff that they want certain things, but everything else they're willing to look past. Like I have seen them not hire somebody who technically met everything, but they were just kind of like a lump and they didn't really like them. Like they just weren't feeling it. And they definitely have hired people that met 70%, but they really liked their energy and they're like kind of just what they brought to the interview. And if the job description includes something like truly impossible, which I have definitely seen, like eight years of experience with a tool that was just made like two years ago, that's not about you. That's an HR team that copy-pasted a job description without reading it or didn't meet with the hiring team. So if you're kind of wanting that role anyway, apply anyway. And a lot of times stuff does make like get lost in translation. It's if it's a bigger company, you know, they say, hey, we want somebody really experienced on this software. Well, the hiring team means two years because that's how long that software's been around. But somebody in the HR team or the recruiter just put six, eight, you know, they were trying to compare it to something else. So apply to those anyway. And y'all keep those questions coming. Y'all can DM me on TikTok, Instagram, all those kinds of things at Lone Star Flower or look up Career Bloom Solutions because I read every single one of them and I stay up way too late doing it, but I love to see it. And all right, we have a couple minutes left because I'm keeping today short, sweet, and efficient, okay? But I want to use these last couple of minutes for something like a little bit different. I want to talk to whoever's listening to this right now, driving to a job that maybe they don't love, or folding laundry because they've been putting off applying, or scrolling LinkedIn for the fourth time today without sending a single message. I see you. And here's the thing about breaking through: it's not a Beyonce moment. It's not the montage scene in a movie where the music's swelling and everything happens. Breakthrough in real life usually looks like opening your laptop at 9.47 on Tuesday night, making yourself a cup of tea and sending three applications because you wanted to watch real housewives or criminal minds, and you just wanted to do it. That's it. That's the break that a lot of people get. You don't need a lightning bolt, you don't need an inspirational moment. You don't need to feel ready. You just need to do the thing while you still don't feel ready because the feeling of readiness comes after the action, not before. I don't think anybody's ever applied to their dream job and felt totally prepared. I've never met them anyway. Everybody is a little bit scared. Everybody thinks they're not qualified, they have imposter thoughts. The people who break through are the ones who stop feeling that way. They're just the ones who sent the application anyway. In fact, I that's how I started my company was on my laptop at my coffee table at midnight because I just felt the urge to do something. I wasn't ready and I was scared. And that's in fact also how this podcast was born. I just did it. So if you're looking for permission, this is your permission slip. If you've been waiting to feel ready, this is your week. If you've been telling yourself you'll start Monday, you'll do this, you'll do that. It's Tuesday, and Tuesday is close enough. Okay? Move. Send the thing, do the thing. You won't regret it. In fact, the worst thing that can happen is you send in the application and you don't hear anything. You don't get the job. So the only way to move is up in that situation. Stop taking the no's and the rejections so personally. And before I let you go, I do have some homework for you, which I know, not your favorite part, but wouldn't be your career coach over this podcast if I didn't give you some. So number one, update that LinkedIn headline. It's five minutes, Tops, y'all. You get it together. Number two, I want you to apply to five jobs with customized resumes and real cover letters, not 50. Again, just five. Count it on your fingers again. Number three, send the follow-up email I gave you earlier on for any application older than seven days. I don't care how old it is. I had somebody send me an email six months after we closed the job posting because we couldn't find anyone. And we had had actually had a new hiring team come in and we ended up hiring that person. Okay. Number four, post one thing on LinkedIn. Anything, a thought, an opinion, a win, a lesson. Just post something, reshare an article with your thoughts on it. It doesn't really matter. And if you do those four things this week, you will have done more to move your career forward than 80% of people searching right now. That is not in a hyperbole, it's math. And if you want help with any of it, we do have the full bloom career action plan available as a free download for the month of April only at careerbloom solutions.com. It walks you through this week and last week and upcoming weeks. And if you want one-on-one support, I do have career coaching for clients just like you. So check that out on the website too. It all starts with a free session. Now, next week is the big finale, week four, in full bloom. We're talking about momentum, offers, and negotiating like somebody who knows what they're worth. So I don't want you to miss that. And if you like today's episode, rate the show, share it with a friend, secretly put it on your page, maybe tag some people. I don't know. Um, but until next Tuesday, this is Lauren. And remember, your career is not going to grow on its own. You have to water it. Y'all get it together.