10 Silly Mistakes Job Seekers Make

Many writers, HR and non-HR practitioners, have written on the subject of hindrances to getting invited for job interviews. Unfortunately not all jobseekers have access to these information and some of the articles are distanced from the average Nigerian Jobseeker’s reality.

Even though economic reality may be one of the major factors responsible for applicants’ inability to get called for interview and eventually job, there are plethora of silly mistakes on the part of the job seekers.

I categorize these mistakes into three groups vis:

A.     Silly mistakes during submission of CV/application

B.     Silly mistakes in CVs

C.     Silly mistakes of non-alignment of candidate with the job opening.

We will concentrate on the first group and address the other groups in subsequent articles.

Silly Mistakes Jobseekers Make During Application Or When Submitting Their CVs For Job Openings.

1.      Sending mail without attachment: We sometimes make this mistake during our correspondences by sending mail and forgetting to attach the required documents, until the recipient of the mail call our attention to it. Unfortunately, Jobseekers don’t enjoy such luxury. No matter the number of applications you send without attaching your CV, be rest assured of not being shortlisted for interview.

2.      Sending mail without content: This may look harmless but trust me, a recruiter won’t find it funny if he opens an application and the only message in the mail reads: “Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device from MTN” with the subject “my CV or my application”. This is exactly what some applicants do, yet they expect to be invited for interview.

3.      Sending mail without cover letter: Most job seekers send out applications without cover letter. I personally don’t give too much weight to cover letters (especially if it is online application) because I hardly read them, and many HR professionals don’t either. You are however sending signal of an unserious job applicant if I open your mail and there is no form of introduction at least about yourself and what you are applying for (even if I did not read the content). I must quickly say most of us don’t read the cover letters because we want to access as many CV as possible and the time spent reading one cover letter is enough to read another CV. God help you if I have limited CVs and I am interested in reading your cover letter and you have none or you send hard copy of your CV without cover letter.

4.      Group application: I have received applications from multiple candidates through a single source at once and I have also received applications that have been forwarded to many other companies before I received them and I kept asking myself if those applicants really wanted the job or they were just testing their skills on the usage of the internet. Yet they wanted me to invite them (as unserious as they were) for interview.

5.      Not following instructions: Due to the volume of applications we receive, HR professionals device means of separating each of the advertised positions. In doing this, we either formulate code for each job or give each of the job a particular ‘subject of the mail’. But funny enough most jobseekers just ignore these instructions and follow their own regular way of applying for jobs. Little did they know that the complex application instructions are sometimes used to test their willingness to follow instruction and attend to details if employed.

6.      Sending scanned CVs: Sometimes I find it hard to understand why applicants go the extra mile of scanning their CVs before attaching and sending it when no instruction told them to do so. And in most cases those scanned CVs were never well scanned; what I still do not understand is whether they were actually scanned or snapped with phones, and of course sent to a friend to help them apply for a job they know next to nothing about.

7.      Inaccessible CVs: I sometimes wonder why, despite all the software on my system, I still cannot open some CV’s.  I have not met any hiring manager who will go out of his way just to open a CV to enable him invite the candidate for interview. Simple MS word is enough, except otherwise instructed. I wonder where the complication is coming from.

8.      Being Too eager for the job: There is no crime in contacting the hiring manager if you have his contact, but when your calls begin to distract/disturb him, he begins to have a rethink about you, if hiring you will not be a problem to the company. Except you have a personal relationship with him and that should not be abused either.

9.      Not applying early: This is an aspect many jobseekers take for granted. By practice all advert should have at least a week window for application, but in reality, the CV’s of the first set of people who applied for the job are considered, except where the job attracts limited applications or CV’s sorted electronically. We can imagine how many cases of the exceptions abound.

10.  READ 1-9 AGAIN