Companies these days are requiring job candidates to fill out job applications more than ever in an effort to shove past the laissez-faire, emailed CV. If you pay close attention to our blogs and our many outlets of project management media, though, you’ll no doubt have already undertaken the measures to improve your CV, and perhaps be left to wonder if its all for naught.
Don’t fret: the principles that need to come out in one’s CV apply just as well with a job application. Your polished CV can be a template for the questions the application asks of you. Here is an outline for making your job application flow.
- As we all learned as young grammar schoolers, follow the directions completely. You’d be amazed by the amount of applications where this doesn’t happen, and crucial information about is not delivered.
- The CV is a template; the job application allows for its expansion. It’s not about cut and pasting from your CV: Instead, you are taking what the CV provides and adding detail to its immediate relevance to the role you’ve applied for.
- Accuracy on a job application is just as crucial as it is for a CV: essential details, company names, dates, salary/benefits, notice period and job titles (among others) are a given. As we’ve stated in other project management recruitment posts, any lies will be unravelled by a shrewd employer or recruiter.
- Normally an application features a profile section. This is where you’ll need to provide the clearest possible description of yourself. Make it concise and be sure to avoid oft-recycled phrases like “determined self-starter” with “excellent communication skills” that “possesses a can-do attitude.” But be sure to tailor your words to the job specification. Use keywords from the spec that can take a prominent place in your profile (provided the words are a truthful representation of your expertise and viability for the role).
- Qualifications and education should be listed with your highest qualification first (a Ph. D before a Masters, a Masters before Bachelors, etc.). Like with your career history, this is another rare case where the chronological order is listed in reverse.
- In the Additional Training & Skills space, include all training, skills and tools you’ve acquired/used/mastered, and look to use it in an order similar to the weight the job specification requests skills. Again, relevance to the role is crucial in ordering your skills: if the job spec places heavy emphasis on “primavera” , there’s no need to list “MS Project” first.
Job applications almost always ask you to list referees, a notion that differs sharply from our prevailing view on their place in a CV; namely, they don’t have one. Given that you’re not able to get away with writing “Available upon request”, here is our suggestions:
- Keep in touch with the people you list as referees, just to keep them familiar with you and what you have done in the past for them. Imagine the ensuing calamity of listing a high rolling higher-up simply for “name value”, only your contact with them was minimal when you were there and they end up being unable to remember you at all. Highly embarrassing.
- Let all referees know you’ve listed their names for a potential role and to expect a call from the prospective employer regarding yourself. A call out of the blue to your referee from a potential employer may put your referee on the spot, leaving them ill-prepared to give well-informed feedback on your behalf. Give them notice (with a phone call at the very least), and they’ll have a better shot at aiding your candidacy.
- If you have not informed your present employer of your intentions to leave, indicate on the application you do not want these referees to be contacted. Otherwise, you may have inadvertently terminated yourself looking for external work.
I think its worth noting the importance of social media and your online persona when job hunting. With networks like LinkedIn the way we apply and get a job is changing, potential employees are just as likely to check through your online profile as they are your traditional CV
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Absolutely agree, check out the article on Social Media and the Five Tools for a Professional Job Hunter