The answer is that it is worth it - but that 'yes' has to be a qualified one. The main qualification is on the amount of time that you spend on this aspect of your job search. Since advertisements account for, at most, 20 per cent of managerial job opportunities, you should not be spending more than a fifth of your time on them. Part of that budget will be dedicated to a regular review of every national and regional newspaper, trade and professional journal that carries advertisements for the kind of job you might be interested in. Never miss an issue. Get someone to keep them for you when you are away. The rest of your budget will be devoted to making applications, and making them count.
How do you fit all that in? In practice it is not as difficult as it may appear. The trick is to concentrate not on the amount of time available, but on how productively you spend it. There are three ways you can improve the return on your investment in replying to ads: by being choosy, being professional, and being creative. One or two applications a week which are spot on in every sense will earn you far more interviews than half a dozen a week which are misdirected, poorly prepared and unimaginative.
Being Choosy
Unless you are a close fit, which means meeting around three-quarters of the requirements stated in the advertisement, it is usually better not to reply for these reasons.
- A worthwhile application takes time - several hours of it - which you could be putting to better use.
- Most advertisements are placed not by the person making the ultimate hiring decision but by a selection consultant or personnel manager whose job is to reduce a response of, say, 200 to a short-list of about four to present to the line manager. Recruiters do this in an arbitrary fashion, often spending less than a minute on each application and screening out anyone who fails to match the basic yardsticks.
- It is better for your morale to get a couple of interviews from half a dozen carefully chosen ads than only a single interview from 20 - which is about the average.
- Regular advertisers, such as selection consultants, quickly come to recognize applications from people who are replying to anything and everything. They regard such candidates at best as lacking judgment and professionalism, and at worst as desperate. This, plus advertisers' natural annoyance at having their time wasted, counts against such candidates, even when a job comes along for which they are a reasonable fit.
Where very rare skills or experience are being asked for, it may well be worth replying even if you only meet, say, 60 per cent of the specification. In the case quoted at the beginning of this article, on the other hand, where an extremely attractive job produced nearly 1.500 replies, you would clearly have needed to have been very close to the ideal to have stood any chance at all.
In deciding whether or not to apply, careful reading of the text is vital. Seasoned recruiters (i.e. both selection consultants and HR professionals) go to considerable pains with the wording of their advertising copy, aiming to attract enough replies to be sure of filling the job; but - because of the time it takes to screen the response - not too many more than they need. They are therefore careful to use words like 'must' when a qualification, skill or other requirement is essential. When something is not absolutely mandatory they use terms like 'should', 'preferably' or 'would be an advantage'.
Apart from the tightness of the person specification, response rates will also be affected by the desirability of the job and by the impression made by the advertisement.
Examples of things that may turn people off a job, and consequently reduce response, include:
- job content, for example, only a minority of accountants want
- location;
- type of business;
- factors that impinge on family life, such as extensive travel or
The same factors may, of course, also deter you. If they do not, however, you could have identified an advertised opportunity where the odds are considerably better than the average and where the time taken in making an application is likely to be more profitably spent.
The odds are also likely to be greater when an advertisement is smaller than the average size, is tucked away in a bottom inside corner of a page, lacks polish in its wording or has been typeset to a lower standard than most. Small companies which only advertise very occasionally often fail to match the impact of the insertions placed by the selection consultancies and the large direct advertisers. While this may mean that they are also less professional in other ways, that is not necessarily the case and, even if it is, maybe that is the very reason why they need someone like you.
A further category which puts a lot of job seekers off is the ad placed anonymously under a box number. People who currently have a job may be deterred from responding by the fear of writing to their own employer, but those who are out of work need have no such concerns. If the advertisement appeals to you, give it a whirl.
Being professional
The whirl that you give any kind of ad must however be a totally professional one. Recruiters, facing an intimidating pile of CVs, running well into three figures, are not going to have much time for applications that are half-hearted or half-baked. As one selection consultant put it, 'Anyone who isn't capable of producing a decent job application almost certainly won't be capable of writing a professional report for the board of directors'. True or not, it is a perfectly understandable assumption.
Some of the most common, and most damning, errors listed by recruiters include:
- use of a duplicated, standard cover letter with the title and reference for the job in question filled in by hand;
- just sending in a CV with the job reference scribbled in the top corner;
- failing to sign a cover letter;
- mixing up two or more applications and sending them to the wrong people.
- the company - its size, ownership, culture, locations, products, markets, plans, management style;
- the job - reason for vacancy, whom the job reports to, how many staff, what are the responsibilities, the performance criteria, the prospects;
- the person sought - qualifications, skills, experience, personal qualities.
Now, how closely do you fit? Unless the job is one which is likely to attract only very few suitable candidates, it is not enough to say, 'I could do that job'. You have to be able to say, 'I could do it better than anyone else'. Go back to your asset register. Look at your USPs. How could you add value in a way that is uniquely yours?
If you are still convinced that you are a really strong candidate, and that it is therefore worth investing several hours in making an application, get to work. Put yourself ahead of the competition by doing as much research as you possibly can.
Then, putting together your thorough analysis of the advertisement, your conscientious research and your carefully selected USPs, make a first draft of your application. First draft? Yes - no one gets it completely right first time. Leave it for 24 hours, and then take another look. If you have someone knowledgeable who is willing to offer an objective view, get them to run an eye over it too. You will always find the odd word or phrase which you can replace with something better. Not infrequently you will spot a major point you have either failed to make clear or have even missed out altogether.
Take your time. There is no advantage to be gained by getting your application in early. Many recruiters do not even look at the response for the first few days, knowing that neither busy candidates, nor those who take the time to produce a well thought out reply, are likely to rush their application off on the day the advertisement appears. Once you have made the decision to apply, give it your very best effort. Anything else is a waste of time.
In most cases the format of your application will be a CV plus covering letter, but never neglect to read the instructions given in the advertisement, normally at the bottom of the text. For example, organizations in the public sector may insist on an application form, even at quite senior levels.
Application forms? Do you really have to complete them? And what about other apparently unreasonable demands - like age limits, for example?
Being creative
Most people get a kick out of beating the system, especially when the system in question appears to be unfairly loaded against them. However, before looking at ways in which you can get around the worst injustices of the advertised recruitment market, a word of warning: never try to buck the system unless you are convinced that you are a front runner for the job in question. Not only would you be wasting time you ought to be spending more productively, but you could also get up the nose of a recruiter who, subsequently, may be handling a job for which you really are a strong contender.
There are basically two ways you can annoy recruiters: by not doing what they ask you to, and by bypassing them completely. When is the risk worthwhile?
One of the commonest problems is the demand, in the advertisement, for either your current salary or your salary history. What if you have been earning more than the advertised figure but are willing to take a drop? There is no way of predicting how any one prospective employer will react to this. Some are delighted to get what they see as a bargain. Others may fear that you will move on as soon as the market eases and you can get something better, or may simply be suspicious of your inability to get another job without taking a reduction in earnings. The bigger the drop, the more questions they are likely to ask.
The other side of the coin is the situation where you are earning significantly less than the advertised figure, either because your salary has been held back in the hard times your employer has been going through or because you are right at the bottom end of the age scale. Here the risk is that you will be regarded as at too low a level, ability being equated in the recruiter's mind with earnings.
When the advertisement asks for your earnings without indicating what the remuneration is for the job, you have - if anything - an even greater problem.
In all of these cases, providing the information which has been requested could rule you out. But failing to do so may lead the recruiter to assume either that you did not read the advertisement properly or that you are deliberately concealing something. Stating that the advertised salary, where there is one, would be attractive to you is not only fudge but also compromises your negotiating position if you are ultimately offered the job - they might have been willing to pay more!
The only way to avoid all of these risks is to say, in your covering letter, something like, 'I shall be very happy to discuss my current/most recent remuneration package with you when we meet' or 'Rather than attempting to explain in this letter what is a somewhat complex situation regarding my current/last salary and benefits package, I would prefer to discuss this with you when we meet'. While recruiters may have their suspicions, you could simply be alluding to the fact that there was complicated bonus, profit sharing or equity participation elements in your package. If you are a close fit to their specification, there is a fair chance that they will respond to the suggestion you have (deliberately) planted and invite you in.
If they do not do that, there is a strong probability that they will at least telephone to clarify the matter - which gives you the opportunity not only to explain the salary situation but also to strengthen your claim to an interview by emphasizing your plus points, by asking relevant questions about the job or the company, and by the general impression you make through your positive telephone manner. Needless to say, in order for this to succeed, your files need to be so well organized that, when the call comes in, you can immediately access the advertisement.
Age limit elasticity
So much for salary; but what about the problem of age? How do you deal with the all too frequent demand in advertisements that applicants fit within certain rigidly prescribed age limits?
The first thing to do is to get the problem into perspective. Listen in to this conversation between a line manager and a recruiter.
'I'd prefer to have someone in their late 30s.'
'OK, but that's a narrow range. What are your upper and lower limits?'
'Not much under 35, though I'd consider exceptional people in their early 30s. At the other end, I'd go up to 45 or even a bit above, so long as they've got plenty of drive and energy. I want someone who's still hungry.'
'So the range is early 30s to late 40s, but I won't put that in the ad, otherwise we'll be flooded with everything from rookies who're barely out of university to people who're almost ready for their gold watch. Let's put mid 30s to early 40s. If people a few years either side haven't got the initiative to apply, they aren't the kind of candidates we want anyway.'
This kind of scenario is standard practice. Age limits are never as rigid as they seem, especially when they quote specific, often round, numbers like '30 to 40'. No one is going to rule out a candidate who is a year or two outside the range, provided of course that he or she matches the requirements really closely in every other way. At the upper end, the elasticity could easily be as much as five years, maybe more.
Bypass surgery
But what if you are way outside the quoted range - if, for example, the ad says 'up to 40' and you are into your 50s? And what about other fundamental problems, like having all the experience the ad calls for but lacking the professional qualification it demands? Assuming that you do genuinely have something special to offer, there are two things you can do.
The first is to telephone the person who placed the advertisement. Rehearse carefully what you are going to say. It is vital that, within a maximum of a couple of minutes, you get across your USPs - the experience, the achievements, the value you can add - which will make the recruiter want to interview you. Then raise the question of the one criterion which you do not match.
The timing of this call is important. It is no use ringing the day the advertisement appears, or even a day or two after. At this stage you will get, at best, a non-committal response because the recruiter will have no idea how strong, or otherwise, the field is. You need to wait until the bulk of the response is in - about ten days for daily newspapers, a fortnight for weekly or monthly magazines and professional journals. By this time, the picture will be much clearer. If the response is so strong that there is no need to bend the specification at all, at least you will be told that. Should the field be a bit thin, on the other hand, and the recruiter be getting worried, you will have called at just the right moment.
The alternative is to bypass the recruiter completely and make a direct approach to the person whom you would actually be working for. This option is, obviously, open only in those cases where the employer is named in the advertisement.
Your first task is to identify the target individual. If the advertisement names the title of the person to whom the job reports, a call to the switchboard will readily produce the name. Failing that, try using your network contacts or, as a last resort, calling the recruiter and asking about the reporting structure. To avoid undue suspicion, and to help you in your approach, you may want to check out any other information you need at the same time. It is not uncommon for candidates to ring up to ask for further details about an advertisement to which they are thinking of responding.
Once you have identified your target, the best approach is the warm, rather than the cold, one. If you can network your way into a personal introduction, so much the better. Be persistent. It may take a few calls to achieve, but it is worth it. The ideal is someone who knows the target personally and will make a call on your behalf, but even a name you can quote as a door opener is better than nothing.
All is still not lost, however, if you have to go in cold. Take the time to compose a letter which, preferably on a single page, summarizes your USPs in respect of the job in question. Do not include a CV (which will not only include additional information less relevant to the job in question, but will also make it plain that you lack the required qualification or are outside the age range) and do not refer to the advertisement, or it will be obvious that you are trying to buck the system.
Assuming that you really do have some value to add (and if you do not. it is no use wasting either their time or yours), there is a very good chance that the line manager will go straight to the recruiter with a comment like, 'Guess what landed on my desk this morning? Could be just what we're after. Certainly looks worth an interview.'
More often than not, the recruiter will feel obliged to comply. At worst, for example where there is a strong response from the advertisement or the recruiter insists on getting some more details about you before calling you in, you will at least have created an opportunity for a telephone conversation which, providing you have prepared properly, you should have a good chance of converting into a meeting.
The whole process is, theoretically at least, rather simpler in the minority of cases where the advertisement is placed by the person who will actually make the hiring decision. Assuming that you can get hold of what is probably a very busy senior executive, which may mean fighting your way past a dragon-like gatekeeper, you stand a good chance of making a strong impression with your carefully prepared, concise presentation.
The dreaded form
When you are called for interview, or sometimes even at an earlier stage, you may be asked to complete an application form. If you feel that this is an insult at your level, or an unnecessary duplication of information already provided in your CV, what should you do?
A few candidates refuse point blank. A somewhat larger minority arrive at the interview with excuses like 'The form only arrived in this morning's mail' or 'I've been away on business and only got back late last night'. Still more only partially complete the form, putting lines through whole sections with the terse comment 'See CV'.
This is another area where you can get one step ahead, so long as you are willing to try to look at things from the other person's point of view. These days, generally speaking, companies do not ask people to fill in forms unless or until they believe they have a genuinely valid reason for doing so. This may be simply the wish to have every applicant's key information in a standard format, the need to gather information to form part of a personnel file should you be hired or the desire to prove that they are operating an equal opportunities policy.
Given that the form is nearly always seen before you are, there is no point in getting off on the wrong foot. Create a good initial impression. Use the following checklist.
- Read the whole form thoroughly. Pay particular attention to such requirements as listing your career in chronological or reverse chronological order. Note whether you are given permission to refer to your CV in certain places rather than unnecessarily repeating information.
- Do not write straight on to the form. Draft your answers on blank paper or, better still, a photocopy of the form. Leave your draft for 24 hours before checking it, making amendments and, only then, copying it over.
- Pay attention to neatness and layout but do not try to type your answers in - they rarely line up properly and consequently look messy.
- Take every opportunity to tailor your answers to the advertisement, the further information you have obtained by research and the value you can add to the company.
- Make optimum use of any open questions which invite you to state how you believe you match the requirements of the job or to provide any further information which you consider relevant. All too often candidates, suffering from application form fatigue, fail to make the most of this golden opportunity. Take advantage of other applicants' short-sightedness and use these sections to get another step ahead.
The value of feedback
Both outplacement counselors and people who write books and articles on job hunting are prone to advising people whose applications earn no more than a standardized reject letter to phone up the recruiter and ask why they have been turned down, so that they can use this information to improve their chances in the future. Unfortunately it simply does not work like that in practice.
Put yourself in the recruiter's shoes. With literally hundreds of applications to every job, it is bad enough just having to look at each of them once. Having people call up after you have closed off their file is a pain. You have to retrieve their papers and check out the reason why you rejected them, which may well have been a somewhat arbitrary one. If this was the case, or if you have the feeling that the caller may be persistent, you give a reply calculated to get them off the line as quickly as possible, for example, 'We had an enormous response to this advertisement and, although you have a lot of relevant experience, there were a few candidates who were just that bit closer to our ideal specification.'
With luck, that gets rid of them. If they persist, asking in what way exactly the others were closer, you may get a reply,' I am afraid that professional confidentiality prevents me from discussing the details of other candidates with you.'
The only time you stand a reasonable chance of not getting fobbed off with half truths or outright lies is when you know a recruiter reasonably well and consequently have a more personal relationship. Failing that, you would make better use of your time by discussing apparently unjust rejections with friends or network contacts. They are likely to give you both more time and greater honesty.
If you still feel that, in spite of only applying to jobs where you fit very closely and of having been totally professional in your application, you have nevertheless lost out in the lottery of the screening process, what can you do? In the case of blind ads, very little. But, where the company is named, you could use the techniques described under 'Bypass surgery', even when there is not a problem such as age or lack of qualifications to be overcome. Where you have an existing contact in a company placing an advertisement, you would presumably have used it anyway.
"Headhunters are in the business of finding people for jobs, not jobs for people."
