My friend Stephanie wants to know why I'm so adamant about the Black Hole, the one that swallows resumes the way my dog eats mac and cheese off my seven-year-old's plate when the seven-year-old isn't looking. "I know there are a lot of people applying for these jobs, besides me," she says, "but my resume isn't bad. I know I'm playing the odds, but why not go for it?"

Here's why not. Stephanie doesn't understand how the Black Hole works, and in that respect she's exactly like most job-seekers, who think that the resumes lobbed into the Black Hole get reviewed one-by-one by a careful reader, either an HR person or someone in the hiring department. That happens sometimes, especially in small employers. Most of the time, the process works very differently. Here's a dramatization to give you an idea of the true nature of the Black Hole.

Let's say I'm an HR manager, and I'm sitting at my desk. Down the hall comes a hiring manager -- we'll call him Ted. "Liz," says Ted, "I just got a job requisition approved. You'll see it in your email inbox." "Cool," I say. "What so