Finding a job has never been easy, but today’s hiring process can feel particularly frustrating. Hundreds of applicants compete for a single role, AI is reshaping how candidates are screened, and qualified people often struggle to get noticed. At the same time, employers insist they can’t find the talent they need. So what’s really going on?

In this episode of Career Sessions, J.R. Lowry talks with Lorena Prego, founder and CEO of Prometeo Talent, who has spent two decades in recruiting and helped companies make more than 5,000 hiring decisions.

Lorena takes us behind the scenes of the hiring process to explain what recruiters and hiring managers actually look for—and what separates candidates who consistently land opportunities from those who struggle to break through.

They discuss why applying to hundreds of jobs may actually hurt your search, how to take more control of an interview, what recruiters notice when comparing your resume and LinkedIn profile, and how to build productive relationships with search firms. They also explore how AI and remote work are transforming recruiting and why communication, critical thinking, adaptability, and the ability to keep learning will become even more important.

Whether you’re actively looking for a job or simply want to position yourself for your next opportunity, this episode offers a practical insider’s guide to getting noticed, telling your story, and managing your career for the long term.

Check out the full series of “Career Sessions, Career Lessons” podcasts here or visit pathwise.io/podcast/. A full written transcript of this episode is also available at https://pathwise.io/podcasts/lorena-prego-ojeda/.

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Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

Why Hiring Feels Broken—And How To Get Hired Anyway, With Lorena Prego Ojeda

Finding a job never feels easy, but for a lot of people now, it feels harder than ever. You submit dozens, perhaps even hundreds of applications, and you hear nothing back. You spend hours tailoring your resume only to wonder if a human being is even going to look at it. You hear that AI is screening candidates, recruiters are overwhelmed, and companies can’t find the right talent. Which is it? Why does hiring seem broken for everyone? In this episode, we’re going to go behind the curtain and talk about how hiring works with somebody who does it for a living. My guest is Lorena Prego, who is the Founder and CEO of Prometeo Talent.

Over the past two decades, she has helped companies make more than 5,000 hiring decisions, particularly in technology and engineering. That gives her a unique perspective on what separates candidates who consistently land great opportunities from those who struggle, even when their qualifications may look the same on paper. We’ll talk about how AI is changing recruiting, what recruiters look for, and the biggest mistakes candidates make.

Also, how to build relationships with search firms before you need them, what catches a recruiter’s attention, and what skills will matter more as AI continues to shape the economy. Whether you are actively looking for your next role, hoping to future-proof your career, or responsible for hiring great people yourself, this conversation will be packed with lots of practical advice that you can start using immediately. Let’s get started.

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Lorena, thank you so much for joining me.

Thank you.

I’m looking forward to our conversation. You have been involved in a lot of hiring over the years. I think something like 5,000 people you have been involved in the hiring of. What’s fundamentally different about hiring now compared with even five years ago or when you started your business?

I started my business in 2010, and I’ve been a recruiter for the last twenty years. It changed many times in many ways. Lately, what changed, everybody’s talking about AI and technology. Companies have access to a lot of information of candidates. Huge databases of candidates. That changed a lot. We use a lot of AI tools. We use tools with AI as well. It changed in that way.

I want to come back to AI later, but across these hiring decisions. What separates the candidates who consistently get offers from those who seem on paper equally qualified, but don’t end up getting the nod in the end?

Overcoming Poor Interviewing Tactics

In my perspective, first of all, candidates are able to communicate properly their experience. I always say to candidates, “You have to be prepared that the interviewer is not very good interviewing.” Hiring managers are not used to doing interviews. They are managers and once in a while they have to interview people.

They’re not usually trained properly, so you have to be able to present yourself. Even though the hiring manager is a bad interviewer. Communication is very important. Preparation is another thing that is very important. Gather information of the company you’re applying for. Organize the things you want to express and communicate in that interview. That’s important.

That point, not all hiring managers are good interviewers. You’ll get some who will have a checklist of questions. They’re going to run you through methodically. You’ll get others who will want to have a casual conversation. Your job is to make sure you get your message across no matter what. For a lot of candidates, they will respond to the questions and think they’re doing great. They will respond to the conversation and think they’re doing great, but they’re missing the opportunity to get their message across.

Correct. Sometimes, I go with hiring managers to interview the finite candidates. I remember once that I was having an interview with a hiring manager. A finite interviewer. I said, “I want to see the way you interview and everything.” The interview was a hiring manager talking all the time. The candidate didn’t say anything. At the end, the hiring manager said, “I love this candidate.” I said, “Why?” They said, “I like her.” I was like, “Why does she want to change now? What is she doing now?” She’s without a job.

I asked him like two or three things. He said, “I should do this interview again.” Usually, hiring managers are based on feelings. I like this person. I identify with this person. This person went to the same university or did the same path. This is crazy. You should try to prepare yourself and organize the things you want to communicate because this person you have in front of you is a manager. Not an interviewer.

A lot of them never get trained on how to do an interview, which is just mind blowing to me.

Correct. It’s not that frequent for a manager to do interviews. They forget. It’s not them to blame. It is what it is. Candidates do not understand this. As a candidate, you have a lot of power in you to be able to have more chances to get hired.

That’s very true because when you’re out doing interviewing, you’re doing a lot of them. You’re better practiced coming into that interview than the hiring manager is going to be. You need to remind yourself, “I’m here to make sure they know this.” Even if they don’t ask those questions, I got to make sure that gets across.

For me, this is fascinating because I do interviews all day. I love interviews and interactions. If you ask me one book that helps everybody to do better interviews like the book, How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dave Carnegie. At the end, you have a person with small things like thank you and you want for them to like you. That gives you a huge advantage. It’s a small thing. At the end, you have a person in front of you that needs to like you to work with you at the end of the day.

It does matter, but sometimes we overemphasize, “Do I like this person? Do I think they will fit into the team?” We don’t zero in hard enough on their actual technical skills. You’ve got to get it both if you’re the interviewer.

That’s why as recruiters, we train hiring managers as much as we can or we are allowed to, but we are not always allowed to do that.

Has remote work significantly changed how companies think about who they are willing to consider in their hiring pool relative to what might have existed pre-COVID?

Navigating Remote Work Timezone Hiring

It changed dramatically in a huge way. The way we work as well in our company Prometeo, because our clients are asking for time zones. They don’t care about countries or cities. They ask for, “I like this time zone plus two hours.” We do look at the map and search for people where they want to search. It changed everything because before that, you had to be in a city or in a specific place to have more chances to be hired. Now, you can be in a small town where cost of living is lower and you’re able to have a great job as well.

Out of curiosity. What percent of jobs that you’re involved in are they willing to consider a remote candidate?

All of them. All of our clients search for remote talent. Eighty-seven percent of our clients are in the US. They search in Latin America and in Europe.

Do you think that’s a consequence of the mix of business you’re in? I know you do a lot of technology recruiting, or do you think it’s because of general factors? I thought at one point, LinkedIn or Indeed, one of them was reporting even a few years ago. That percent of listings that were remote peaked at something like 15%, and then it started to decline again.

In technology, you have this advantage that you’re able to work from anywhere because everything is in the cloud. On the other side, the shortage of talent is something that keeps hiring managers awake. They want to have a bigger pool of talent in a huge geography to be able to find talent. For example, we are hiring AI engineers in Poland because Poland is a great hub of AI engineers, but the company is in the US.

I said we’re going to talk about AI, so let’s talk about AI. It’s hard not to talk about AI when it comes to recruiting. It’s pretty much seeped into just about every aspect of it. From your perspective, where do you think it’s helping? Where do you think it’s hurting?

Leveraging AI Tools Without Spamming

It’s helping in the sense that you’re able to use AI to automatize a lot of admin, and be centered on the most important things. Making the right decision or searching for the correct profile. Sometimes clients do not know exactly what they’re searching for or what they need. On the other side, there are companies that are overusing AI. For example, sending a lot of messages through LinkedIn without any personalization. In a way, spamming candidates and the ratio of responses. At least on LinkedIn, it’s getting lower and lower. You’re able to use AI, but if you use it incorrectly or too much in the wrong way, you damage the process.

For candidates who are frustrated with the fact that they apply to a job on one of the big job boards, they attach their resume, they click the button, and it goes into a black hole, probably viewed by an ATS, an applicant tracking system of some form. Whether they’re using AI or not. How do they get themselves around that process and gain traction when they’ve got a job that they feel like they’re a strong fit for? When you see 500 or 1,000 people applying for a job, even in like the first 24 hours it’s posted, it’s a numbers game that’s hard to win.

Escaping The ATS Application Hole

It is, but to be honest, I’m on the other side. My nightmare is that I need to find talent and I do not find enough good talent. I’m on the other side of the coin. With AI, both sides, candidates are able to apply to many hiring processes at the same time. Companies and agencies are able to access more data. I still believe that you should be applying to hiring processes that are aligned to your skills or your experience. It’s not winning the AI. It’s applying to a position that you are aligned to because if not, you’re getting frustrated, but you’re not necessarily aligned to that position you’re applying.

When people are applying to 100 or 200, when I see these posts online, I applied to my 500th job. My reaction is, “I don’t have a ton of sympathy for that because you clearly are not being focused in your job search.” If you picked 50 out of that 500 and worked at them, you probably would get more traction than you’re getting by blasting 500 resumes out to 500 different firms for 500 different jobs.

Correct. I totally think that as well.

Beyond the recruiting process, specifically, Lorena. How do you see AI changing the kinds of careers that people should be preparing for over the next 5 to 10 years?

Cultivating Essential Future Proof Skills

It’s a tough question. It’s hard because we don’t know exactly what is happening and the scope of what this change means. If you ask me, to be honest, this applies to technology very well. The people in technology and technology changes very fast. The people that go well in their careers are people that are able to learn how to learn and quickly. People that are able to learn new technology or new apps or new ways to do things is the key.

Things are going to start changing and the cycles are getting quicker and quicker. People that are able to learn by themselves, and people that are able to communicate well. Critical thinking is another massive thing because you have a lot of information from AI. Now, you should be able to analyze and think what are you receiving, if it makes sense or not. It’s not only data. It’s the human in the loop. The human that is you as a candidate, you should be able to have critical thinking and process that information in a critical way. Learn how to learn. Be able to communicate properly and have critical thinking.

Some of those critical thinking, decision-making, and problem-solving type skills will always be room for that. You highlighted the importance of continuing to learn. If you’re not focused on making yourself relevant, no matter what the change is, it’s AI now but it was data analytics, was machine learning, mobile applications, and internet many years ago. I can go as far back in business history as we want to go, but it’s always something that’s changing. You’ve got to make sure that what you’re doing professionally is relevant. For a lot of people, that message just doesn’t fully sink in terms of the way that they manage their careers.

Correct. It’s critical to keep on learning, studying, and improve yourself. It never ends.

It does never end. Let’s talk a little bit about this from the hiring perspective. You said a minute ago that you’re out there trying to find talent and there’s a shortage of talent. I see that more and more, this sense of both sides are frustrated. People who are looking for jobs can’t seem to get hired. People who are looking for candidates can’t seem to find the candidates that they’re looking for. Where’s the disconnect from your perspective?

That’s a trick question, and I ask myself that question very frequently. I sense this frustration on the candidates and on the clients as well, because they’re like, “We need to hire a good candidate.” It’s very hard to find a good candidate.

Maybe use an example or two of where that’s playing out in something you’re working on. Is it the companies in a bad location or the salary’s not enough or they’re asking for things that are unrealistic? I’m just curious where the bottlenecks tend to be from the hiring firm’s perspective.

Resolving Corporate Hiring Bottlenecks

You’ll be surprised. Usually, the first gap that we find in our clients is that they’re searching for something that they don’t need. They’re searching for a person that in technology is full stack is front-end, back-end, DevOps, and QA. These are four roles in one. It’s like, do we need to find this person? Where is the priority? What is the problem or the challenge you need to solve?

Therefore, we help them to organize their hiring process or their job description and determine that what they need is only a UX or UI, like a designer, for example. This is the first gap. Every company’s CEO or COO main challenge is to have their costs under control. Every hiring, in a way, is an investment for the company. It should be controlled. They try to solve many challenges with one role. I don’t know if it makes sense. That’s the first gap.

The other ones are, for example, they want someone with a lot of experience, but the budget is very low. It’s like, are you able to hire someone junior and go through the gap of training this person? If not, we need to hire someone with this seniority or sometimes the company is not willing to invest or they want to hire someone they’re not able to hire.

Sometimes you get a hiring manager who just wants to have another person on their team. DevOps, full stack developer thing. It’s like wanting a unicorn because they don’t know exactly what they need. They just know they want somebody else.

Exactly. There are many problems. Sometimes, in the hiring process, the problem you find is that the chair manager and the hiring manager are not aligned. They interview someone and then the hiring manager is interviewing someone else. They’re not aligned and they’re searching for different things. The candidate goes through the interview, but then the hiring manager says, “I don’t like this person.” I have a fintech and we’ve been searching for six months and one says yes and the other one says no. The HR says yes. There’s no alignment or whatsoever. It’s very hard.

Which I’m sure is very frustrating to all involved. If it takes you six months, there’s a message in there for the hiring firm that they need to rethink what they’re looking for and what they’re willing to give.

When this happens, what we agree with the client is that what you need is a consultancy process. Not a hiring process. We do start working as a consultant in terms of who is involved in the process, how we can align this process, and why you’re not getting any results because the company is frustrated as well.

What are some of the other things that tend to separate the organizations that are good at hiring from the ones that are just more average?

The companies that are good in hiring first are the ones that they know what they’re searching for. Not only skills, but culture. That’s very important because it’s important for you to hire someone that is aligned to the company they are going to be working at. The other one is that the companies that train their hiring managers in interviews are. These companies that are able to understand that they don’t need to hire replicas of the hiring manager. They need to build a team and the team members should be different from each other and from the hiring manager. If you find a team that everyone is the same, like a replica, we are in a huge problem.

Diversity is a benefit. Whether you’re thinking about it in whatever form, but certainly diversity of thought, background and experience in a team makes a huge difference. To have 5 clones or 10 clones of the hiring manager just means that you’ve got a collective blind spot because they’re all good at the same things.

Correct. Another thing that is getting great hirings is candidate experience. That the candidate has a great experience through the hiring process. The companies that are working on their employer branding. That is, they start communicating what they’re doing internally to be able to connect with potential candidates in the future when they want to hire. They’re investing on communicating what they’re doing inside.

A lot of companies, like a lot of candidates, most candidates don’t worry about this until they need a job. Most hiring firms don’t worry about what they’re looking for until they need to fill a role. Both sides need to do more to prepare.

Exactly. Companies that work on their employer branding get better applications and candidates because they are all out there already.

Anything else as a recruiter that you wish hiring organizations would do better or differently to make the process better?

Flexibility. Usually, we get frustrated. It’s hard to work with the client that is rigid. We go to the market and we give the clients a lot of data. Where is the client located geographically? What are the skills and the salary ranges? We give them a huge scope. Especially with AI, you’re able to scrape data and you’re able to have a lot of information. When they say, “I don’t care about this data. I want to go there because I want to.” I’m like, “This is going to be hard.” When we give the clients feedback, they are able to fit things a bit more flexible.

I want to come back to the candidate’s side. You talked earlier about the best candidates being better communicators. What are some of the mistakes that you see candidates making when they’re trying to tell their professional story?

One is not knowing that they have more control in their interview than they think. Sometimes candidates talk too much and are not accurate about the position they are applying for or their skills. The candidate should be responding with what they’ve been asked. The candidate’s so nervous that they start talking nonsense. Be accurate. When you said what you wanted to express, make a pause. If the interviewer is not very good, they don’t know how to manage time and how to interrupt you a bit to do another question because they have a list of questions they have to do. If you talk and talk, you are going to make yourself worse in the process.

I’ve certainly seen candidates who ramble. It is hard for most hiring managers to pull that back in to make sure that you end up getting the questions answered, then 30 or 45 minutes or 60 minutes goes by and you’re like, “I didn’t get all my questions asked.” That’s a problem for you in the end, because then you’re making a less informed decision or you have to have the candidate come back again, which is a bad use of everybody’s time.

At the end of the day, as we said before, prepare for the interview, and understand what are the topics you want to talk about, but be accurate because this person is going to interview many people. Not only you. Probably three at least. If you’re not accurate, this person will forget what you said.

What advice would you give candidates in terms of how they work with you? The search for morals is fairly opaque to most people, but what’s the best way to work with recruiters who tend to work in the markets that you are looking for work in or working actively in?

To give you data. In our database, we have 100,000 candidates. They’re current candidates. They are not older than eighteen months due to GDPR. If every candidate wants to search for a job, contact me through LinkedIn saying, “Could you find me a job?” It’s very difficult because I’m searching for the positions that I have.

Usually, what I recommend is for candidates to connect with the recruiter after they apply for the position they want to and tell the recruiter, “I found a hiring process that I could fit for.” It’s something to connect and then the recruiter will look at your LinkedIn and if it makes sense, will make you go through quicker. If you connect with the recruiter every time you want to search for a job and it’s not in their pipeline of hiring processes. It doesn’t make sense.

Does it make sense if part of the traditional wisdom has been that you should build relationships with recruiters when you don’t need a job because then they know who you are? In this era of databases and artificial intelligence, do you still need to have relationships with recruiters or do you just need to be in their databases?

Both. If you’re not in a database, it’s harder for us to search for you. What I would say is that when you participate in a hiring process, although you’re not hired or you’re not moving forward, make a professional way through the hiring process. Do not disappear. Don’t be a non-responsive candidate. Things that make you look unprofessional.

In the future, when this company or agency has another hiring process, we’ll consider you as a potential candidate. You never know. Make a good impression. Behave professionally in every hiring process because you never know. That’s building a relationship with an agency or recruiter because we have notes on our databases and we say, “Strange behavior. Non-responsive. This is not professional.”

As a simple example. A lot of people don’t take calls from recruiters. They ignore them. I always tell people, why not pick up the phone and take the call? At worst, it’s going to be ten minutes out of your life but you have an opportunity to at least get on somebody’s radar. Maybe get something favorable entered in their database about you as opposed to something unfavorable about you. Why would you not seek that opportunity? For a lot of people, it’s like, “I’m not looking for a job. Why should I talk to a recruiter?”

Maybe as a candidate in the future or now, you can have more data about what your value is in the market now or other conditions that you can ask for your current employer. There’s nothing to lose.

I agree with you. You must look at an awful lot of resumes and LinkedIn profiles. What types of things catch your attention positively or negatively?

Aligning Resume And LinkedIn Profiles

For example, what we do is that we ask for the candidates to attach their LinkedIn profile, paste the link, and also if they want to, attach their resume. The thing I do now is compare their resume to their LinkedIn profile. If they’re incoherent, because LinkedIn is public. My guess is that the candidates are more honest with on LinkedIn than their resume. It’s like, if there is a huge gap between both, this is a huge red flag for me.

On the other side, jumping from one job to another, gaps in their experience, and things that are too big. You’re not like, “I’m the manager or responsible for,” and you’re not clear on what. If you go to the LinkedIn company, they are the only employees there. Probably, it’s their own company. At the end of the day, we want transparency from the candidates. It’s both ways. I’m very honest when I find some candidate that is not suitable for the company. I tell them, “I don’t think this is the right position for you. Anyhow, if you have any questions for the future, let’s get connected.” Again, for the candidates, we expect the same.

I just think a lot of candidates don’t think enough about these kinds of things and the way that they’re coming across. It’s pretty hard to be invisible. Some people actively take themselves out of all forms of social media as a way of maintaining some semblance of privacy. The vast majority of people don’t do that.

All these data points connect a perspective on you. You can go to pick your favorite AI tool and say, “Tell me what about me.” That’s the same thing you’re doing, I would imagine. When you have a candidate that you haven’t had any exposure to before because it’s a way for you to gain information about them. If you don’t like what you’re reading, as a candidate, you probably need to do something about that.

The senior candidate or the profile is, the more information as a recruiter, we’re going to search for. The company they work for, the consistencies, and inconsistencies. You should be more aware of these things.

Last question. From everything we’ve talked about, Lorena, if you were going to leave our audience with one bit of advice from all of these thousands of hiring decisions that you’ve been involved in. What would it be?

If you ask me, I should say, do what you love. Working takes a lot of time. I know it seems romantic. Maybe I romanticize, but if you have to be someone that needs to be learning all the time, improving yourself all the time, because it’s very competitive. You’re competing against the whole world. Not the whole world, but it’s geographically bigger.

If you enjoy what you’re doing, you’re always improving yourself, studying and getting better and better. One thing is do what you love and keep on learning. Keep on listening to podcasts. It’s very realistic. It’s not like a book that was published many years ago. No. Keep on searching for information to improve yourself and your career nonstop.

Very good advice. I agree with the notion that you should continue to invest in your career journey because otherwise, things are going to run out of rope for you at some point. Thank you for doing this. I appreciate it. I’m sure our audience will get a lot of good insights out of the discussion that we had. Thank you for spending the time with me.

Thank you very much for this episode and the invitation.

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What do I want you to take away from my discussion with Lorena? Hiring has changed a lot since 2021. It started with the pandemic and the impact that had on remote work. Now, we’ve got AI to contend with. All of those things have transformed how companies recruit, but employers are still looking for people who can solve problems, who communicate clearly, who will create value, who will collaborate well with their colleagues. That’s what you need to be showing them in your social media profile, in your resume, in your cover letter, in your interviews, and your references. It all needs to be coherent.

Second, remember that your resume gets you noticed, but your story is what gets you hired. You have to get that across. The strongest candidates connect the dots. They explain their impact. They make it easy for employers to see why they’re the right fit. Importantly, if you’ve got a hiring manager that is not letting you get at that, you need to find a way to get that message across when you’re in the interviewing process.

Third, think of recruiters not as career agents. They are business partners. Understanding how they work, when to engage them, how to interact with them, how to build relationships with them will dramatically improve your career opportunities over time. You definitely want to be in their database, but you also want what’s in their database to portray you favorably.

Finally, treat your career like a long-term investment. Not just a series of job searches with a drab job in between. The people who are consistently landing the best opportunities are building skills, growing their network, strengthening their reputation, and staying visible long before they need their next role. That’s what true career management is about. As always, I invite you to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. If you found the discussion enlightening, please sign up for my membership community, which is called PathWise and our newsletter PathWisdom. Thanks.

Important Links

• Lorena Prego Ojeda on LinkedIn
• Lorena Prego Ojeda on Instagram
• Prometeo Talent
• How to Win Friends and Influence People
• PathWisdom Newsletter
• PathWise on LinkedIn
• PathWise on X
• PathWise on Facebook
• PathWise on YouTube
• PathWise on Instagram

About Lorena Prego Ojeda

Lorena Prego is the Founder and CEO of Prometeo Talent, an international recruitment firm connecting companies in the U.S., Europe, and Latin America with exceptional talent. A psychologist by training, Lorena transformed her understanding of human behavior into a career that has shaped the hiring strategies of startups, scale-ups, and global organizations, helping companies make more than 5,000 strategic hires over the past 15 years.

She is also a professor at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, in Barcelona, speaker, and a recognized voice on leadership, careers, and the future of work. Few people spend as much time studying the tech talent market as Lorena. She follows the industry, analyzing how artificial intelligence, new technologies, economic shifts, and changing workforce expectations are redefining the way companies hire and professionals build their careers.

Her perspective comes from the front lines. Every week, she works with founders, executives, and candidates making critical hiring decisions across multiple countries. That combination of psychology, business strategy, and hands-on recruiting gives her a unique view of where the market is heading and what separates companies that consistently attract outstanding talent from those that struggle to grow.