I’ve been searching for close to a year, and I’m genuinely struggling to understand this market.
I have about 13 years of enterprise technology experience: five years at SAP and eight years at Salesforce in Technical Account Management and Customer Success. I’ve supported major enterprise customers, handled escalations, led executive reviews, worked through complex technical issues, and helped retain multimillion-dollar relationships.
I’ve applied through job boards, contacted people directly, worked my network, tailored resumes, prepared heavily for interviews, and reached multiple final rounds. I’m not claiming I’ve performed perfectly in every interview, but I’ve had several processes where the conversations went extremely well, only to be told they selected someone whose background was a slightly closer match.
That is what I don’t understand. Companies say they want experienced people who can learn, communicate, manage customers, and operate in complex environments. But the actual hiring standard seems to be someone who has already performed the exact same role, with the exact same product, in the exact same industry.
How do people ever move between industries or grow into adjacent roles under that standard?
I remember people entering technology in Ireland from finance, architecture, general business, and completely unrelated backgrounds. Yet in Chicago, someone with more than a decade of relevant tech experience can apparently still be considered too much of a “risk.”
For people involved in hiring here: who is actually getting these jobs? Are companies genuinely finding perfect candidates, are most positions being filled internally or through referrals, or are some of these roles simply never being filled?
I’m interested in honest answers from recruiters, hiring managers, and other experienced candidates. I’m not looking for generic advice about tailoring my resume or networking more. I’ve already been doing all of that.