Job applications

This week’s lecture was given by Rimington, instead of Nori, who has been with us up until last week. The topic was something many of us are familiar with and probably have done before anyway, and have already learnt from the school of hard knocks, not a lecture. But it is interesting to learn about something, from an academic perspective, that you have already done without much know-how.

The three main factors

1. Knowing yourself
2. Knowing ways to find available positions (which the IBL program makes very easy for us), and
3. Ability to market yourself effectively

How to find suitable positions

The job search process is a tricky one. On the one end you’ve got the carrot of a rewarding job that meets you qualifications and aspirations perfectly, and is easy to commute to; and on the other end you’ve got the stick of having to make ends meet, and just getting any job whose end justifies the means. Those are the harsh realities of life, but right now while we are mostly still in our comfort zones, we can learn better job search techniques, such that when we graduate, and are thrust into the real world, we are already equipped with the necessary skills such that we might lean more toward the carrot than the stick.

The first step would be to evaluate the employment market and find out what the prospects are in the relevant industries and professions – relevant, that is, to your qualifications and aspirations. I guess this could be done by staying up to date with the news, paying special attention to the trends in the various industries: Getting a job in a booming industry is going to be a lot easier than getting one in one past its prime; and the similar for job security.

Then decide on which ones are for you, and go for them. The way to go about doing this is to use your connections, as well as information searching ability to find the jobs that are for you. This may be through your own contacts of family, friends and previous business contacts – I know someone who claims that his biggest asset in business is his deck of business cards that he has collected over the years. Also professional associations can help you to network and find the right opportunities – for us the most relevant one would be the ACS. And individually, one might turn to advertisements in newspapers & publications, employment agencies or even search online from job websites such as seek.

How to market yourself

After having shortlisted several jobs that you would be interested in, the next step is to market yourself to each of them.

Experience tells that personalising the way you market yourself to different organisations and positions can make or break the success of your application – an hence this is probably the step of the job application process that is vital for you to not screw up.

This process is two part: first comes the written application, which is then, hopefully, followed by a personal interview.

The written application consists of a cover letter plus a resume. The resume should list references, but copies of these references should not be mailed together with the rest of the written application. The interview is when you meet with a manager of the organisation which is potentially hiring you, and you answer a series of questions they ask you; and also where you present them with your folio of documents that support your written application, but not mailed in with the written application, when asked for them.

The sticking point in marketing yourself is your ability to articulate what you can bring to the position, be it particular skills & abilities that you may possess, and even what transferrable skills you might have, such as leadership, planning, or even time management. All of this is of course assuming that you have met the benchmarks set for the position: the qualifications or university that is degree necessary. You shouldn’t bother applying for jobs for which you do not meet the benchmarks. Knowing this, we see how important it is to collect evidence of all your skills and achievements, such as certificates and awards.

The written application

”You have less than 45 seconds to make a good impression. That’s the amount of time a typical recruiter devotes to each application before tossing it into the maybe pile or the reject pile”

That is why getting the written application right is so important. Get this wrong and you do not even get to the next stage (interviews). This is why it is important to write the cover letter well, because that may be all that is looked at.

The distinction between the cover letter and the resume is that, (normally) the cover letter is rewritten for each individual job application, and hence is tailored for each job application; whereas the resume is often just one standard document that you send to every employer.

Resume

The resume is, in essence, a summary of your personal data; organised into a number of sections with headings, and ordered in a way that suits your particular qualifications and experience. These sections should not contain any sentences, and should be comprise entirely of bullet points. Common headings for these sections are:

• Personal details


• Employment or career objective


• Qualifications


• Education


• Professinal skills or work experience


• Other skills


• Acheivements or awards


• Activities and interests


• Referees

A note about referees: normally you are expected to have three referees. Graduates applying for jobs should have at least one academic referee and one work referee. Personal referees may be used when you do not have enough referees. Potential employers will actually contact your referees, after all, that is what they are for, so you must ensure that the contact details you provide are up to date, and that you inform them ahead of time that you are listing them as your referees.

Cover letter

The cover letter is where you write in prose (and thus should be in the standard business letter format). This is where you highlight the particular bullet points in your resume that are most relevant to the job you are applying for, and state why they are important, or elaborate further. The cover letter is not a copy of your resume – do not repeat everything, just the pertinent points which convey that you are the match for the job description.

The standard cover letter consists of 5 paragraphs:
1. Introduction
2. Academic [highlighting points from the resume]
3. Work [highlighting points from the resume]
4. Personal Attributes [highlighting points from the resume]
5. Conclusion, including where and how you may be reached.

Interviews

All interviews have 4 basic questions, which other questions are, mostly, just expanding upon:

1. Why are you here?
   Why did you pick this organisation, and why this one over the rest.


2. What can you do for us?
   Here, they are looking for the key things: given all your skills, qualifications, attributes and specialised knowledge, what can you bring the organisation? Here is where you should bring in any transferrable skills you have that are relevant. Now it is not the time to be humble, use the opportunity to promote yourself, but don’t exaggerate either.


3. What kind of person ear you?
   Just to find out some background information about you; to assess your potential in fitting in with the organisation’s values and culture.


4. Can we afford you?
   What is your asking price, vs. what you can do for the organisation: are you worth it?