New career? Avoid these job application mistakes
For anyone making a new start or looking to progress their career, here’s some insight from someone who has filtered through way too many applications
The 10 page CV
There still seems to be a tendency to write a biographical life story of where you started as a young child and how you grew into your current day self.
We don’t need to know. We want your most recent, most important skills and experience.
- 2 pages max.
- 1–3 current/previous roles max.
- Snapshot your skills and experience
Less is always more — we don’t need to know that you have experience testing Window 98 and Internet Explorer 9. Keep your CV fresh and cut out all the unnecessary information.
The superhero skill set
The amount of times I’ve questioned a skill or technology on someone’s CV, for them to proceed to act like they’ve never heard of it before, is too damn high.
- Don’t lie — any decent recruiter or interviewer will pick apart your CV
- Be honest — if you’re less experienced in a certain area, just say that — there is much more respect in that, and you are more likely to be given a chance
The copy/paste template
My background is QA, so this is specific to that industry — I’m not sure where everyone is getting the same generic, painful to read CV from, but please stop. There are so many modern templates that you could use, and are more likely to make you stand out.
There also seems to be a tendency for everyone to copy/paste the skills and experience they think they should have.. here are some examples:
- Building a framework from scratch — apparently almost every applicant has done this in their company — if that is true, be prepared to deep dive into how and why you built it the way you did
- Set up a full CI/CD pipeline from scratch — its a red flag when you don’t know what CI and CD mean as concepts, and its worse when you say you actually just sat next to DevOps when they did it — almost all of the top build and release platforms are free to use (GitHub, Azure DevOps etc.) — make sure you understand the fundamentals
The abandoned building
This is a relatively new one but shockingly I see it more often than expected. The current or previous place of work, that when searched, seemingly has only 1 employee or is somebody’s house…
- Again. Don’t lie on your CV
- If you’re looking to get into the industry — make connections, ask for help, study in your own time — your career will progress much faster
The suspicious technical test
This is your chance to show off your skills and knowledge, you may have to tackle some logic problems or complete a set of technical questions.
- Doing some research and planning is a great idea — copying and pasting solutions, not so great. Remember your interviewer also has access to google
- Don’t get someone else to do the test for you — it is painfully obvious, and makes for an awkward interview experience when you have no idea how the test was completed
Summary
Your CV and application is a reflection of you and the first impression an employer makes — if its messy, illogical and full of false truths, it will be assumed that is also how you work.
