13 Tiny Tweaks to Improve Your Chances of Getting An Interview – By Up To 139.6%!

What lights me up about the work I do to increase sales for e-commerce and lead generation websites is how TINY tweaks make such a MASSIVE difference to our decisions.

On the surface, they seem irrational.

(After all, how can a tweak as tiny as removing a few options lead to a 416.67% increase in sales… and another like removing a logo lead to $321,400 in additional sales… you get the idea.)

These tiny tweaks speak to something deep within our psychology.

(I believe these tiny tweaks speak to the ways we evolved as a species and the psychological traits that were hard-wired into our ancestors’ brains to help them to survive.)

And I’m not the only one researching, documenting, and exploiting these tiny tweaks that enhance our results…

Study Reveals The (Sometimes Irrational) Ways Hiring Managers Pick Interviewees

In a recent blog post, Kushal Chakrabarti of TalentWorks crunched the numbers behind over 4,000 job applications and job applicants.

From this data set, Chakrabarti shared how applicants could make tiny tweaks to their resumé to substantially improve their chances of getting an interview.

The data looked like this:

Interestingly, it seems that being the most qualified or educated candidate isn’t as important as touching on the right “hot-button” words or submitting your application at the right time.

1. +139.6% Improvement – Describe your job achievements starting with a distinct action verb(e.g. “Developed…”, “Lead…”, “Achieved…” etc)

2. +89.1% – Submit your job application between 6am and 10am

3. +64.7% – Apply in the first 4 days

4. +58.8% – Include a “Key Skills” Section

5. +54.7% – Don’t use personal pronouns(e.g. “I”, “my”, “us”, “them”, “her”, “he”.)

6. +50.9% – Use leadership words(e.g. communicated, coordinated, leadership, managed, organization)

7. +50.8% – Don’t be a “team player” – talk about what you owned, achieved, or did.

8. +48.3% – Women were 48.3% more likely to land an interview than men

9. +46.0% – Apply on Mondays – avoid Fridays and Saturdays

10. +40.2% – Use concrete numbers to demonstrate achievements.

11. +29.3% – Use industry-relevant buzzwords regularly

12. +25.1% – You’re more likely to land an interview if you’re aged between 28-35 years of age.

13. +21.9% – Having a second degree.

Again, here’s the full blog post if you want to go deeper than my summary above.

Time of day, gender, age, or the choice of “Word X” vs “Word Y” SHOULDN’T determine whether you get the job, or not.

The job should go to the best candidate – right?

But it seems the same (on the surface, irrational) principles that apply to job applications as they do to making sales via eCommerce stores…

…And that tiny tweaks make a huge difference to sales.

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