I tried this a lot. It did not work for me. But I also only sent one email and did not follow up. A few points:

1. Getting rejected does not say anything about you. The guy they hire says a lot about the company.

2. "If the interviewer(s) in question feel like you're trying to circumvent them, you're probably making your case worse"

This is the whole point. In most cased you don't deal with an expert, but with HR. HR are idiots most of the time. HR, like real estate, has also very low entrance requirements. This does not mean that all people are idiots, but the field attracts idiots.

3. A job is a sale. You have to sell yourself. And unfortunately there is only one way to make the buyer happy: Sell him what he wants, not what he needs.

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maccard 5 hours ago | parent [-]

> HR are idiots most of the time. HR, like real estate, has also very low entrance requirements

Soft skills are the most important. Calling a group of people you work with idiots because their role has a low barrier to entry reflects badly on you. Bad recruiters are beyond useless but a good one can read a resume, match it to the JD, learn what the hiring manager is looking for (do they keep saying no to people with too much experience or too little? Or in X tech stack), and they can glean out all of the really important job stuff - salary, location, flexibility, perks, etc. they can also get a read on whether the person is likely to be… difficult. The way they treat people they believe to be below them is how they’ll treat others when they’re frustrated/stressed or even succeeding.

	▲	Beijinger 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		"Soft skills are the most important. Calling a group of people you work with idiots because their role has a low barrier to entry reflects badly on you" Simple mathematics. There are close to zero entrance requirements to HR or Real Estate. Now compare this to a professor at a decent University. Has to get a HS Diploma, Bachelors degree, PhD, Post Doc, publications. While there may be idiots, it is much harder to become a professor at a decent university if you are an idiot. Back to HR. I did not say that all people working in HR are idiots. There are brilliant people. But on average, their level is not very flattering. And "soft skills" alone is not enough. Many, if not most, just follow check lists and have no idea what they are talking about. Recruiter are worse. They add another layer of unnecessary complexity to the process. I avoid them like the plague.