I recently had to go through such an exercise and once again I was shocked by how poor some of the applications were. Out of 113 resumes, 80 ended up filed under “60 Seconds of My Life I’ll Never Get Back”, 23 were filed under “Not Totally Unreasonable” and seven ended up in the “Worth A Look” category.
In these harsh economic times there are lots of people competing for every job that’s posted. Luckily for me I can be ruthlessly barbaric when I’m filtering through resumes. When I open your application, you’ve got less than 15 seconds to get my attention otherwise I’m closing it forever. Here are a few pointers to keep in mind when you’re writing a cover letter and resume from a guy on the other side of the desk:
- Personalize each application: If you get some of the basic details about my posting wrong, I’m immediately disinterested. If I posted the position on Monster, don’t write that you’re responding to the position I posted on my company website. Take a few minutes to specifically address some of the requirements listed in the position or mention something specific that you saw on my website. Throw me a bone that you care enough to go beyond putting my company name at the top of your cover letter and emailing it to me.
- Don’t Dare Make a Spelling Mistake: Just don’t do it, it’s that simple. If you can’t be bothered to push the F7 key to launch your spell checker, I don’t want you working for me. End of thought.
- Formatting Makes a Difference: If I spend one minute to open an email, open the attachment, decide how I want to file it and move onto the next one, and I do that 113 times, I’m spending at least two hours straight staring at my computer screen. And chances are, my eyes are going to get tired about half way through. If you’re considerate enough on my poor eyes to consider the font and font size (11pt. Calibri with 1.2 line spacing is a nice combination), spacing (white space is a good thing) and your application is presented cleanly, I’ll like you. And if I like you, I’m probably going to be more lenient when I’m deciding which category you end up in.
- Keep It Brief: Whoever decided that resumes should be shorter than two pages is a genius. If you can’t convince me to set up an interview with you in less than two pages you won’t be able to do it in a hundred pages and I’ll think that you’re trying to substitute quantity for quality. To the guy who listed in significant detail (and I’m not even exaggerating here) the 31 projects he worked on at a previous company: my eyes will never forgive you.
- Don’t Suck Up (Too Much): I’m not Microsoft, Apple, Dell, General Electric, Samsung or any of the other mega-corporations out there. I’m a wee little company trying to make the world better one project at a time. If you use the words prestigious, distinguished, illustrious, glorious, wonderful or anything else that strong, I think that you’re sucking up and I don’t trust anything else you’ve written. On the other hand, if you say that you’ve done your homework on me and my company and in your eyes we’re alright, I’m cautiously appreciative of your kind remark and (unless you’ve blundered some other way) you’re likely headed towards my “Worth A Look” pile.
On a serious and sincere note, I don’t intend to make light of people looking for work, especially those in the unfortunate position of being unemployed. My point is that given the current economic climate competition is stiff for every position that’s available. Rather than sending out 10 generic applications, spend the time to focus on one or two well written, good looking and carefully tailored ones. In my experience, it’s not really that hard to stand out from the crowd and any edge you can get over the next guy or gal is worth spending time on.
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Steve Hartley, Managing Partner
Fering Communications Inc.
Website: www.feringcommunications.com
Email: steve.hartley@feringcommunications.com
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