Recently, I talked with a jobseeker who had been laid off from a company in shutdown mode. A long-term employee, she had been promoted many times, with her recent job involving distributor relations.

She was most interested in working for a university near her home. When I asked her what type of job she would pursue, she told me that she’d be applying to their posted career counseling position, since she did have HR experience—but from more than 10 years ago!

It didn’t even enter her mind that employers would find OTHER candidates with recent career counseling experience! All she could see was the short commute.

Unfortunately, one of the biggest problems plaguing otherwise well-qualified job hunters is forgetting about their competition.

Here are 3 ways that other candidates (the ones with more experience and job-hunting savvy) are dampening YOUR search--and what you can do about it:

1 – Your resume doesn’t stack up to theirs.

Most sales managers have sufficient experience to fill 2 pages on a resume, with team leadership skills, revenue growth, and channel development achievements.

Yet, you may have more of more of everything, including development of marketing campaigns and speaking engagements and a host of other skills that it seems could be put to good use in a sales leadership role. Your resume will therefore be constantly expanding in length.

When I see this situation developing, I’ll frequently counsel you to minimize this experience — and why? Because all the other sales managers will have a concise, polished presentation, and when employers see your 4-page tome, it will be an instant turn-off.

2 – Your experience isn’t as strong.

So, you’re shooting for that VP role in operations, and while you haven’t quite made it there yet, you’ve been told many times that your leadership is exceptional and your knowledge of efficiency, cost control, and workflow analysis is stellar.

However, after creating a strong resume centered on this target, you start to have doubts. Here is where it’s time to solicit some advice.

If you sense that you haven’t quite earned your stripes in a particular field, you may be right — and it’s a good idea to get some validation for your strategy. Talk to a hiring manager, another expert in your industry, or even a recruiter that specializes in a particular career field. These are all experts when it comes to qualification levels, and they’ll give it to you straight.

You may find that you’re better off pursuing a role with the potential to move into a VP-level slot at this point, rather than overshooting your target and ending up with no results.

3 – You’re asking for a leap of faith from employers.

I frequently see this from candidates that are going through the resume process. You’re convinced that your 30-plus years of information technology experience or manufacturing operations must count for something, and beefing up your experience (while hoping that a lack of C# coding or ISO quality experience will be overlooked) seems like the right thing to do.

However, if you haven’t been there and done that in some time, no amount of resume verbiage will cover this shortage.

Employers (and recruiters in particular) are looking over the pool of applicants for some sign that they can jump right in as if they’ve done it yesterday...and they most likely HAVE done it yesterday.

If you're mired in this situation, you have 2 choices: either obtain those missing skills by taking a certification course, or pursue a lower-level opportunity.

So, the takeaway here is that employers don’t care if you live 5 minutes from their office, or that you are a fast learner.

Results and experience DO count in the job search, and you’ll find your next position faster by leveraging what you truly have over the others that compete against you.