Guest Contributor
Trending

5 Ways to Leave a Lasting Impression on an Application

By | McKenzie Jones

Chances are good that the more desirable a particular job is, the more competition there is to get it. Higher competition means more people are vying for that job opportunity, which means every applicant needs to work hard to make their application stand out from everyone else’s. This guide covers five solid points to up your visibility with recruiters and lands you that dream job.

1. Be Company-Focused In Your Presentation

Your interview and resume are an assessment of how viable you are for the company. Framing everything around what you know the company needs and how you are the best person to meet those needs can be a refreshing change of pace for the people who have likely spent several hours of their time dealing with braggarts. Keep these details in mind on your resume and cover letter.

Of course, the best way to meet this goal is by researching the company. Look into its culture and even trends in its performance, or the performance of its corporate overlord, if it is publicly traded. Once you know what the company needs, you can better show your investment in this company over others.

2. Focus On Achievements Over Obligations and Duties

Listing off your work duties is extremely common in an application, meaning everyone does it and recruiters will likely skim, if not completely skip, over that information. You should frame things in terms of what you achieved, if only because so few applicants do it. Framing things in the light of accomplishment also helps to hire managers because HMs are more concerned with firing someone who will perform tasks instead of just pursue them out of obligation.

Leave your proudest achievements from prior jobs at the front and center of your application. Ideally, you can phrase each of these points in hard statistics like “Elevated sales 11% in the second quarter of 2017” or “Cleaned an average of 18 rooms each day when other team members averaged 14.”

3. Show Your Enthusiasm

Again, you are trying to get this job and if it is the job you have your heart set on then you should convey that desire and aspiration to the hiring department. Work tends to be more enjoyable when your coworkers are invested in the company, what it stands for and what it provides. The real trick here is that your passion needs to be genuine instead of sycophantic; you want to convey a willingness to work with this company without coming across as a yes man.

4. Make Contacting You Sound Unique

Everyone has some sort of business address that can read as rather boring or bland. Do yourself a favor and find a way to make your sheet of contact methods, like e-mail, VoIP, and anything else that business phone systems might use to reach you; stand apart from the rest through a unique domain name. While you never want to convey a lack of professionalism in an application, having your name attached to a domain as “solvedbusiness.net” can certainly catch some recruiters by surprise.

5. Remain Consistent

You want to use the same style guide on every possible recruitment venue. While you do not want any sort of discrepancies between something like a PDF of your CV and your Linkedin page, you should also do your best to make sure that even the presentation and style are consistent across the board. This means arranging everything to fit the same aesthetic whenever possible. Keeping all information in the same layout also helps prevent any delays or hangups because one hiring manager noticed a discrepancy somewhere in all of your data.

Lastly, consistency also extends to spelling; make sure to go over all of your information with a fine-toothed comb and make sure that there are no errors or typos-you do not want to give the reference numbers of prior employers only for the hiring manager to wind up dialing those companies’ fax or customer service numbers instead.

So that is it. Following these five simple steps can do wonders for your visibility with potential employers. Be focused on the company, focus on what you achieved over what your jobs required, show genuine enthusiasm, make your contact info stand out, and be consistent.

Show More

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Back to top button