8+1 Common Sense Tips for Job Seekers

Sunday, February 4th, 2007
by George Appiah

Over the last weekend, I was given a task to go through a ‘pile’ (actually e-mails) of job applications to make a shortlist of candidates to be interviewed.

As the role to be filled involves tremendous amount of initiative (and the fact that the number of applications were really overwhelming), we decided to place some emphasis on how much attention the applicants paid to the advertisement, including the procedure for submitting their applications.

I grabbed my Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, and started my way through the applications. This is so easy, I thought, as I went to the third application. All I had to do was to hit “delete.” But no, wait a minute. Before I realized what was happening, I had thrashed ALL the applications! Goodness me! So I had to go into the trash to dig out a few boarder-line applications.

Now I don’t have much any experience in offline recruiting (I wasn’t born then ), but my little experience with online recruiting tells me that besides the employer name, job title, and required degree, most people pay very little attention to anything else.

And folks are too deeply stuck in the offline mentality, and do not give the least thought to taking advantage of new electronic tools to make their application stand out.

The end result is that online recruiters get inundated with increasing numbers of unqualified job applications. No wonder mini (topical) job boards are thriving.

So here are my 8 common sense tips for online job applicants. These are all plain common sense - no “top secrete tips” or “guru tips.” But, as I’ve come to appreciate now, common sense is not common practice. Let’s go now:

1. Pay attention to the job’s requirements. Don’t take employers for fools, and don’t waste your time and that of others. If the ad specifies a location for the job, and you cannot re-locate or commute, let it pass. If you feel you can fill the role working from somewhere else, explain this in your application for your prospective employers to know that you understand their position, but you have an alternative arrangement. Merely saying I want to work from X (instead of Y) ill not cut it.
2. Write to communicate, not to impress. You did enough of the latter back at school. Now you’re in the real world, talking to real human beings, for a real cause. No recruiter is going to call you and ask you to explain a line or paragraph you wrote, like your school teacher used to do. Use simple language, and just enough of it to say what needs be said.
3. For God’s own sake, don’t paste your CV into the mailbox. Yeah, everything might look OK for you in your mail reader after pasting your CV. But you know what? Not everyone uses the same e-mail client as you, and many people switch off rich text formatting entirely. SO your gloriously formatted CV will only appear as a junk pile of text that simply not be read, if you simply copy and paste it.
4. Proofread. Yeah, really do. Most Word Processors have basic proof-reading tools built in them. Use them, but with care: computers cannot think, yet.
5. “Here is my application” or worse … blank mails, no subject, only attachment. See, folks are busy. At the very least, put the title of the position you’re applying for in the subject line, and please write something. Not just “find application attached”. In fact, I personally prefer to read the cover letter in the mailbox, and only download the resume if the cover letter strikes a chord.
6. Ask a trusted friend to go through your application: It’s so easy to NOT see what others see, especially, in our own works. And if you’re asking someone to go through your application, better make it clear what you want the person to look for, else the only feedback you’re likely to get is corrections for spelling mistakes — something, IMO, you don’t need a human being to do for you.
7. Submit your application only in the requested file formats. This one is a deal breaker for me. I don’t know which one drives me crazy the most: the stuff pasted in the mailbox that I cannot make any sense of, or the MS Word attachments that I dare not open to make any sense of. Here’s another sure way to yell at your prospective employer …”hey dude, to hell with all those details.” If you’re asked to submit your application as a PDF attachment, just do that. RTF attachment? Just do that. And if you don’t know how, just ask for help. Period.
8. If you’re going to cite a prior project, better make sure it’s one that rocks. A busybody wanted to impress us by citing a “fully functioned website” (his words) he’d designed, even though we never asked for this, and the position had nothing to do with web design. And his “star” creation? You decide: www.deluxe-ict.com

Bonus Point: Now this is where I’m going to lose most readers. But for the really serious folks, my suggestion is to open a ‘fresh page’ for every new job application. Yeah, that’s right. Sure, you can go to your previous applications and copy blocks of text, but don’t start with an old application and edit it.

This way, you’ll avoid most of the obvious boo-boos … like addressing your application to the wrong organisation, or stating the wrong job title … all from your previous applications that you simply edited (both of which I saw while going through these applications).

But more importantly, this will force you to give more thoughts to the position and the employer you’re courting, and trust me, this thinking and planning will save you lots of time when you’re called for an interview.

Yeah, I know this list will look like a guerrilla warfare for most folks, and many will, in fact, just ignore it. But I think if a job is worth applying, you’d better give your best shot at it.

(After all the hard work, one — yeah, only one — lady was shortlisted for an interview, via IM. The last time I tried this, it was a terrible mess: the candidate simply couldn’t bring himself to the reality that he was being interviewed for a job, and not chatting with his buddies online. I’ll surely write about how this one goes.)

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