[idebug]

in all my experience in hiring at my company, the one thing i find that 99% of applicants fail to understand is that a company is hiring a person to fit a certain need that is being unmet. therefore, listing a long resume full of all the impressive things you have done, but are completely irrelevant to the position being offered, is a waste of space and time and will increase your chances of being overlooked. you really need to think about catering your resume to the job and leave as much else as you can as a footnote.

if you do manage to get to the interview process, ask about the job you are being interviewed for so you can get a better understanding. a job interview is a conversation, so it goes both ways. try to find out why they are looking for a new employee. for example, they may be looking for a system administrator to do sysadmin tasks, but if you ask further, they might tell you that they are in the process of trying to scale their systems, at which point you can talk about your past experience or what ways your might go about developing a scalable architecture. make yourself relevant.

all too often, candidates just come in and sit quietly, waiting for the interviewer to ask them question after question, trying to pull information out of them and then it simply becomes checklist of questions to tick off (while looking at your watch) before thanking the interviewee and showing them the way out.