The Psychology Behind Hiring:
Why HRs Are Ignoring You
Week of June 28, 2026 · Biotech & Bioinformatics Edition
"I sent my CV to 50 HRs on LinkedIn this week. Not one accepted my connection request. Am I doing something wrong or do HRs just not care?"
Something I hear every single week. And I want to be brutally honest with you about why this is happening.
I have been in this space long enough to see the same pattern play out thousands of times. A student spends weeks updating their CV, then fires it off to every HR they can find on LinkedIn. Connection requests ignored. Messages left on read. Zero replies. And they come to me asking what they did wrong.
Here is the truth nobody tells you: the CV is not the problem. Your approach is.
Think about it from the HR's side for a second. They wake up on a Monday morning and their LinkedIn inbox has 200 new messages. 180 of them are from complete strangers saying some version of "Hi, please find my CV attached, I am looking for opportunities." The other 20 are from people they actually know or have interacted with before.
Whose messages do you think they open first?
This is the psychology nobody teaches in college. Hiring is not a transaction. It is a relationship. And you cannot start a relationship by asking for something before you have given anything.
👤 You are a stranger
An HR only accepts connections from people whose name or face rings a bell. If they do not know you, your request goes to the ignored pile instantly.
📷 Your profile is blank
No clear photo, empty headline, no activity. There is nothing to tell them who you are or why you are worth a minute of their attention.
📋 You led with a CV
Sending a CV cold tells them you want something from them. It creates pressure. Pressure from strangers gets deleted, not read.
I want to reframe the way you think about job searching entirely. Stop thinking of your CV as the thing that gets you hired. Start thinking of your LinkedIn profile as the thing that gets you noticed -- and your CV as something an HR asks you for after they are already interested.
That order matters more than anything else I will say in this newsletter. CV last. Profile first. Always.
When an HR sees your name pop up -- whether in a comment, a shared post, or a mutual connection's activity -- the first thing they do is click your profile. That profile is your 10-second interview. And most biotech and bioinformatics students fail that interview before they ever speak a single word.
Your photo. Is your face clearly visible? Is it professional? A blurry selfie or a group photo where nobody can tell which one is you tells a recruiter everything they need to know about how seriously you take yourself.
Your headline. "Biotech Student at XYZ University" tells them nothing. "Bioinformatics Researcher | RNA-Seq | Drug Discovery | Portfolio at [link]" tells them exactly who you are and what you bring.
Your custom URL. linkedin.com/in/firstname-lastname looks professional. linkedin.com/in/ab12345xyz looks like you have never thought about your own brand for a single second.
Your activity. Have you posted anything in the last 30 days? Have you commented thoughtfully on anything in your field? A silent profile is an invisible profile.
Your featured section. This is where your portfolio lives. A GitHub link, a documented project, a certificate with context. If this section is empty, you have wasted the most valuable real estate on your entire profile.
Fix all five of these before you send a single connection request to another HR. Seriously. Until your profile passes a 10-second scan from a stranger, no amount of outreach will work. You are pouring water into a bucket with no bottom.
I am going to share something that sounds counterintuitive after everything the internet tells you about "applying to as many jobs as possible." I want you to spend the next 6 months focused on one target at a time. One company. One HR or hiring manager you genuinely want to connect with. One goal.
Here is exactly how I think about it, month by month:
I know you are wondering what to actually say. Here is a first message template I have seen work consistently in the biotech and bioinformatics space. It is not magic. It works because it is human.
I am a bioinformatics student building toward a career in exactly this space -- right now I am working on [one specific thing you are learning or building]. No agenda here, I just wanted to connect with people who are actually doing the work I want to be doing.
Would love to stay connected."
No CV. No job ask. No desperate energy. Just a real person reaching out to another real person because they find their work interesting. That is it. That is the whole formula.
Everything I just described -- the profile audit, the portfolio building, the outreach strategy -- takes time to get right. Most people look at their own profile and think it is fine when it is not. They write a headline that sounds good to them but means nothing to a recruiter.
This is exactly why I built the BTGenZ review process. We look at your LinkedIn profile and your resume the way a recruiter looks at it -- fast, critical, and honest. We tell you what is working, what is invisible, and what is actively hurting you. Then you fix it.
We are not here to write your profile for you. We are here to show you what a recruiter sees so you can make it impossible for them to scroll past you.
Six months sounds like a long time. But I want you to think about what you have been doing for the last six months. Probably sending CVs to 50 HRs a week and hearing nothing. Six months of that approach gets you zero. Six months of the relationship approach gets you a job you actually wanted, at a company you actually researched, with a person who already respects your work before you walk through the door.
The math is not even close.
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Read on BTGenZ →Top Free RNA-Seq Courses for Bioinformatics Students
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Read on BTGenZ →5 Free Drug Discovery Certifications for Biotech Students
If you are targeting pharma or CRO roles, these certifications give you the vocabulary and the documented proof of knowledge that makes a recruiter take your profile seriously.
Read on BTGenZ →Stop sending CVs cold.
Start building relationships that last.
Every week, BTGenZ publishes actionable guides for biotech and bioinformatics professionals at every stage. The specific things that actually help you to prepare for the industry levels.
Read All Editions →Sujay Mukherjee
The BTGenZ Report by BTGenZ
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