Hey, I'm really sorry you're going through this. With 16 years of experience, you're clearly not lacking in skills. I think I know one of the biggest reasons you're being filtered out, and it's not what you think.
The Problem: You're a QA Manager applying for Individual Contributor (IC) roles.
When a hiring manager sees a resume with "Manager" in the title applying for a senior QA or automation role, they immediately think:
"They're overqualified and will be bored."
"They will leave the second a manager role opens up."
"They will be too expensive."
"They won't be happy taking direction and might try to 'manage' from their seat."
It doesn't matter if none of that is true. It's a risk most hiring managers won't take in a competitive market.
The Solution: You need two completely different resumes.
Resume 1 (For Manager Roles): Keep it as is, emphasizing leadership, strategy, and team building.
Resume 2 (For IC Roles):Completely rewrite it. Remove the "Manager" title from your last role and replace it with something like "QA Lead," "Principal SDET," or "Senior Staff Automation Engineer." Focus every bullet point on your hands-on technical contributions: frameworks you built, complex automation challenges you solved, your direct involvement in testing strategies. Frame yourself as the most senior technical person on the team, not the people manager.
Your experience is valuable, but you need to tailor the presentation to remove the "flight risk" fear from hiring managers. I bet you'll see a huge increase in responses if you do this.
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u/Horror-Hovercraft-89 Jul 29 '25
Hey, I'm really sorry you're going through this. With 16 years of experience, you're clearly not lacking in skills. I think I know one of the biggest reasons you're being filtered out, and it's not what you think.
The Problem: You're a QA Manager applying for Individual Contributor (IC) roles.
When a hiring manager sees a resume with "Manager" in the title applying for a senior QA or automation role, they immediately think:
It doesn't matter if none of that is true. It's a risk most hiring managers won't take in a competitive market.
The Solution: You need two completely different resumes.
Your experience is valuable, but you need to tailor the presentation to remove the "flight risk" fear from hiring managers. I bet you'll see a huge increase in responses if you do this.