I’ve hired people and my wife has been in a position to evaluate applicants for a job.

What we have learned is that choosing an applicant is super subjective. Different things impress my wife and I in an applicant. (We work at different places)

Additionally, once I instructed applicants to do something specific in their application, but someone didn’t follow the instructions. Turns out the thing I said not to do when applying was actually much more helpful than I thought.

So even though a few people applied the “right” way, the girl who did it “wrong” got the job.

So when you apply, it’s mostly a matter of checking the right boxes and getting lucky.