Applying for a job – what not to do
Headlines in my morning paper screamed “Job Seeker told to dumb down CV” and went on to say that staff at a Work and Income NZ office told a Napier woman to play down her qualifications in order to secure a full-time short term job. According to the article employers could be put off by her high ability and might not want to interview her, far less employ her. A quote from a recruitment specialist confirmed that this advice isn’t that rare for people seeking short term work.
I found the timing interesting as I’d recently been asked to help a business-owner friend screen some candidates for a job he was hoping to fill. It was a full-time permanent role, not a short term one like the one in the paper, and he’d chosen not to use a recruitment agency as he thought it would be easy to find the perfect candidate in the current labour market himself, with just a little help from his friends (me). Thinking that it might be more interesting than my own plans that day I said yes and was promptly supplied with a huge pile of CVs – he’d received a very good response rate, probably thanks to the recent recession. Apparently he was too busy to read them so he simply printed them off and handed them to me along with the job ad and job description.
The job required excellent attention to detail and great communication skills (don’t most jobs?) and he’d asked people to supply a covering letter with their CV, and he also gave his name as the person to respond to. I was amazed to see how many didn’t bother to write the letter at all and naturally they didn’t make it to the first base as “can’t/don’t/won’t follow instructions” excluded them from a second look. Job Boards are great but it makes it very easy for candidates to do a bulk application, often with disastrous results. Don’t they realise that their covering letter is their very best opportunity to sell themselves to a prospective employer?
The next pile of applications to get the heave-ho were the ones that couldn’t actually get his name right, if they used it at all, or the name of the organisation (I relented if they’d spelt it wrong by one letter only). Some were applying for completely different jobs to the one advertised (had obviously done a cut and paste from the last job they’d applied for) and then there were the applicants whose skills and experience were completely mis-matched to the job but who were obviously so desperate that they’d apply for anything that might still be breathing.
I was amazed at how many people couldn’t spell the most obvious words or who had relied on Microsoft spell and grammar checks and had submitted gobbledegook as a result. Don’t they ever read what they write? In this particular role a good command of the English language was really important and it was often those with English as their first language who made the worst mistakes. They got put into the reject pile too.
However, there was worse to come – something really scary that involved possible identity theft. Two applicants with different names and different contact details applied for the job with identical CVs. They had gone to the same college and university, had studied the exact same subjects, got the exact same marks and then went on to work at the exact same organisations, located at the same addresses for the exact same times doing the exact same work. Even their hobbies matched exactly, as did their career goals.
Clearly there was a logical answer – they must have bought their CVs on the internet, just as degrees were bought from fake US universities a few decades ago, so this is definitely one to watch. It’s just a shame (for them) that they’d both applied for the same job or we might never have known that this is happening. Has it happened to you or your organisation yet?
This left a much depleted pile with only four or five reasonably interesting candidates worth interviewing. I also included what I call the ‘wild card’ applicant. They’re the people who write a good letter, don’t always have what you’re looking for but it usually turns out that they have just what the organisation needs. I’ve included rank outsiders in the interview list quite a few times over the years and it’s surprising how often they are the right person for the job, and how well they turn out once they’re on the staff. I’m sure the purists would frown at this approach but it has been known to work, and more than once.
But back to the rejected applicants. Having worked in the area of employment for the last 20 years, including a few years working with unemployed people in the early 1990s, I always want to help people find the right job – I can’t help myself as I love happy endings (or beginnings as they are in these cases).
Years ago I was warned not to give feedback to unsuccessful job applicants as it could expose me to being challenged on why they weren’t selected. I took this to include not giving applicants feedback on their CVs either, but it seems so unfair on the ones who are screened out from the start. Though having said that if I’m looking for someone who needs to be accurate and detail driven for a specific job then I welcome being given an inside glimpse into their strengths and weaknesses before I meet them and get to like them.
There’s always a curved ball in this theory however. If they are actually lacking these skills but have managed to get someone to help them put together a flawless CV and letter of application you’d be none the wiser unless you ask them to fill in forms or undertake tests at their interview. On a positive note, I guess it shows that they are aware of their shortcomings and are smart enough to find a good solution or a ‘work around’ – both good skills to have in most jobs.
So in a nutshell here’s a list of what I’d suggest an applicant should do if they want to get to first base when applying for a job:
- Follow the instructions – they were given for a reason
- Do some research before you write your letter of application
- Watch the written detail, especially spelling, grammar and punctuation
- Read out loud what you’ve written before you submit it
- Get someone else who is good at English to proof read your CV and covering letter if possible
- Be authentic, honest and genuine (remember NZ is a really small place)
I’m sure I’m not alone in my experiences so I’ll offer a prize (a Peter de Jager book – refer to my earlier blog on Change) to the worst CV experience anyone can supply by 20 May 2010.
There’s another article on this very interesting topic on the Herald website http://www.nzherald.co.nz/career/news/article.cfm?c_id=141&objectid=10643973&pnum=2 written by Bridget Smith of Minter Ellison Rudd Watts.
Re: the Identity Fraud – this is also very common in the UK where individuals use the short-listing of one CV and not the other as evidence of racial discrimination (depending on the choice of names used) as the content is identical.
Yes, that’s a good point, thanks. However in this case they were both of the same ethnicity/nationality so I don’t think that was the situation here. Neither were interviewed but it could have been really interesting if they both were, preferably one straight after the other. Twins maybe, with different last names?