Job Application Notes

I’ve just finished a job search recently, and while the process is fresh in my head I’ve made some notes on how my preferred strategy and general pointers that I’ve picked up throughout my time. This advice isn’t really specific to any industry and will be very high level.

I think a good mindset to have is to apply for any job you think would half interest you as you might find in the interview when you learn more about the company/role that it is something that is really interesting to you and just the way the job description was worded didn’t give a great picture of what the job might really be like.

In general it’s good not to put all your eggs in one basket by applying to one job and waiting to hear back before applying to another one. Being in the interview stage for multiple companies can be advantageous for a number of reasons. It’s common for recruiters to ask you if you’re in the application process with other companies, I think it’s good leverage if you’re able to say yes I am, if they ask which companies, I’d generally say “I’d prefer not say if that’s okay” (no possible benefit to you from them knowing). It also means you’re able to compare different companies and which you might prefer at the time that’s important. Ideally you can get all your offers at once and you can decide your preferred one, although it’s easier said than done trying to keep the application process for multiple companies in sync. Additionally if you have multiple offers it’s easier to negotiate a higher salary at your preferred one.

The most obvious way to apply to a job is through the job advertisement that you see on LinkedIn/Indeed etc, but messaging people who work at the company on LinkedIn, even if you don’t know them can sometimes be a better way to apply than the normal job portal. If you see one of the employees repost the job ad or who you have a few mutual connections with, or even someone who maybe just went to your university, message them on LinkedIn saying you’re thinking of applying and ask what their experience of working at the company is. Often after a few messages they’ll ask for your CV and offer to forward it on, companies often have referral schemes so employees are often happy to do this. I think this gives your CV a slightly better chance of being read than applying through the job portal directly.

Curriculum Vitae

Ideally you want as little fluff as possible, if it doesn’t add value to your CV, remove it. A hiring manager is going to be skimming CV’s quickly and you don’t want to take attention away from your main selling points. Recently I’ve been making my education section smaller each time I review my CV, most recently I removed secondary school experience (A levels + GCSE) as it was using up space and adding no value to whoever is reading my CV. I have over 3 years experience in my field so my secondary education no longer has any weight, perhaps if I did amazingly in school I would leave it on as showing you did well academically can be seen as proxy for intelligence, but my secondary school experience is not particularly amazing so it was an easy decision for me to remove it. If you have no experience having a more detailed education section makes sense.

Relevant Work Experience or whatever you’ve named it on your CV is the most important section if you already have experience so put at the top, Then I put the bullet points in descending order of value, that means the things I think are most impressive that I really want them to ask me about are at the top, this should be balanced against making sure your bullet points are related to the requirements of the job description. If you don’t have a lot of experience that lines up with the job description you want the bullet points that are most relevant to the job description at the top.

Interviews

Before the interview look the interviewers up on linkedIn and see what their role/background is so you have a better idea of the people you’ll be talking to. Know your CV inside out, any experience/bullet point/skill you have listed is fair game for questioning so be prepared to talk in detail about any bullet point you have, and be prepared for follow up questions, such as what were the main challenges you faced when doing that etc. I scrub old experience bullet points from my CV in favour of newer ones that can replace them. I don’t want to be asked about a project that I did three years ago that I can barely recall the details of. I would keep a less impressive experience bullet point on my CV if I need it to show I have one the requirements listed in the job description and I have nothing else that shows I have that skill.

As well as your CV look at the job description, prepare for questions that prove to the interviewer that you fulfil the expectations outlined in the job ad. Have a quick read about the company and anything notable they may have done recently, it can be bad if you go into the interview and it becomes clear you know nothing about the company. If the company has a Vision/Values page know the company values are, be prepare for questions around these eg if the company has “Creativity” in their core values they could ask “tell me about a time you had to think creatively to solve a problem”. You can look up on Glassdoor for possible interview questions from the company.

If you haven’t interviewed in a long time consider doing a “warm up interview” by applying for a job you don’t particularly want just to grease the groove of interviewing.

Avoid saying “we” in the interview when describing things you did, if you work on a team likely there were a few people involved in what you were doing, so saying “we” seems natural, but you want to say “I did X”, and describe what you specifically did as the interviewer isn’t interested in what anyone else did in the project besides you. If you say “we built X, by doing Y to achieve Z” it’s not clear what you did at all in that project, if you had a really prominent role, by saying “we” you’ve immediately diluted your contribution.

Have a glass of water beside you if it’s online, if it’s in person they’ll often offer you one, take it. You’re going to be doing a lot of talking and you’ll be thankful for it.

For behavioural questions try to answer using the STAR method. Have some stories prepared to answer common “Tell me about a time… ” questions, eg Tell me about a time you worked in a team, tell me about a time you had to give feedback, tell me about a time you received critical feedback.

Be wary for questions that are framed negatively, at no point do you want to talk purely negatively about something/someone as this will make you come across bitter. Examples of negatively framed questions are:

1. “Tell me about a time you had to work with someone that wasn’t being cooperative”.
2. ”What’s your biggest weakness?” (horrific interview question). Here you generally want to say, “The thing I’ve had to work the hardest to improve is X, and I did/am doing Y to improve this”.
3. ”Why are you leaving your current company?” I usually try and turn this round and say why I’m so interested in joining the company I’m in the interview for.

It’s okay to ask clarifying questions if their question isn’t clear to you. Questions they ask are either trying to assess your knowledge on something, see if you would be an easy to person to work with personally, or to see if you have particular experience or a skill that the job requires. If you understand what they’re looking to get out of the question you’re better equiped to give a good answer.

Often at the start of the process they might ask you your current and/or expected salary, for expected salary do some research into what the market or company pays for that position, generally answer with a range where the lower number is a salary you’d be happy taking. For your current salary it’s nice if you can say I’m currently interviewing at companies in the £X - X+5k range and just ignore the question (no possible benefit to you from them knowing), if they pry further or your not interviewing at other companies you can say I’d rather not disclose it but again I’m aiming for X based on market research, this ties back to the previous point about it being advantageous to be interviewing at multiple companies.

When they ask you if you have questions, definitely have some questions prepared, here I really want to find out what working at the company will be like. This is your time to figure out if you would like to work there. Asking what the team is currently working on, what they will be working on in the future is what I’m usually interested in. Asking about career progression at the company can show you’re career focused. When they answer often I try to follow up and turn it into a bit more of a conversation. This time is also a good opportunity to squeeze in any good stories/experience you have that are/is relevant that you might not have had the chance to say in the interview so far. You can ask a bit of a bait question asking them if they ever deal with X (knowing that they do), and when they answer you can follow up and say “I actually have experience doing that myself when I did …“.

After the interview, reflect on any questions you think you might have struggled with and make sure you’ll have a good answer if they’re ever asked again.