Member Article

Five ways to be an awesome job candidate

Rachel Cook, senior recruiter at remarketing company SaleCycle, gives her top five tips on how to make a great impression the next time you’re job hunting.

Communicate

Okay, this is a simple one, but quite often the biggest faux pas. Hate it when a recruiter doesn’t get back to you? I mean, how tough can it be?! We don’t like to be left hanging either; it tells us you’re not really committed to this or potentially unreliable, not exactly impression you want to make.

If you’ve changed your mind, it’s ok to just tell us; what’s the worst that could happen - recruiters can often suffer a bad reputation but we wont chase you down the street like mad-men (or women).

And if you’ve forgotten all about their call/email/text, you’re probably not all that into the position anyway; why not put us out of our misery sooner rather than later? It’ll also save you the headache of all those voicemail messages…

Mind your manners

Another simple one, but don’t forget your please and thank yous, your hello and goodbyes, and watch out for those autocorrects on emails…the convo could become quite awkward…

Use appropriate language too. “I’m interested; call me!” is more suited to Tinder, not a cover letter. No company wants to employ anyone that comes across inappropriate regardless of how good your skills are… don’t be that person.

Be honest

Stretching the truth or including “experiences” you’ve not yet had will almost certainly come back to haunt you and could end up costing you your job; no one is that convincing or that forgiving.

Take the same approach if you’re lucky enough to have multiple offers on the table. A recruiter can sniff these situations out and being honest shows that you’re decent and respectful.

A good recruiter won’t be pushy - they want you to enjoy your experience with the company, not push you to adopt the problems in point number one above (you know, the one about communicating…).

It’s all in the details

In order to understand this point, you need to put yourself in the place of a busy recruiter. Having worked hard to advertise the role, the interest is huge and we’ve got 100+ CVs on our desk. We call this ‘reading time’ (or ‘GET ME A LARGE COFFEE PLEASE’!) and it’s when we start organising CVs into four neat piles. Yes, Maybe, No and ‘Why has this person sent me a book about their life?’.

Don’t expect the recruiter (or hiring manager) to read your life story before they’ve even met you; be succinct with your achievements and include vital information such as your notice period and why you are looking for a new job to save time.

Your CV is generally your one chance to make a great impression so look at it from someone else’s point of view and make sure it’s something you’d really want to read (however interesting the story of your summer job selling lemonade at 11 years old is).

Do your research

This might seem the most obvious tip of all, but you’d be surprised by just how many people apply for a job without having anything more than a basic inkling about what the company actually does… “Something about the internet, yeah?”

Nothing lights up my face more on a telephone call than someone who can tell me what we do, even if they do get the odd detail mixed up - the effort earns more brownie points than you can imagine!

Go the extra level and show a knowledge of company case studies, whitepapers, etc. and you’ll really impress the recruiter. We like knowing you care about the stuff we care about!

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Rachel Cook .