Confessions of a Copywriter #19
Why creative job applications don’t work and what to do instead
Confessions of a Copywriter; a blog dedicated to openness, humility and growth. This week I confess that I’ve wasted so much time with so-called ‘creative approaches’ to job applications. It’s only now that I’ve found a method that’s worth sticking to.
Earlier this week I received a slidedeck created by Jon Buchanan of Charm Offensive. In it, the growth hacking guru gives remarkably detailed tips on how to use humour to your advantage in cold calls, emails, pitches and job applications.
The pack itself was well intentioned, but there’s something irredeemably lame about stockpiling quirky phrases and allocating them to the highest bidder of unresponsiveness. I feel as though no matter the application of the joke at hand, the recipient can kinda tell if the same line is being whored out across a list of competitors (and not just because forgot to change the name in the greeting).
But I have to confess that I’ve done it too. I’ve made the grave mistake of crafting unspeakably try-hard creative applications. And each time I did, it was an even bigger mistake than the last.
In 2013, I applied for a writer role at Oyster, an ambitious new eReading startup based in New York. After raising $3m in funding, they were going on to raise another $14m from an array of investors and it was clear they were growing quickly. I made it my mission to get their attention and at least secure myself an interview.
As part of my application I photoshopped a picture of myself onto the staff section of their About page with a short, yet rather presumptive blurb that started ‘Lawrence is Oyster’s very own Englishman in New York’ and sent it off along with my CV. I was convinced that this cool new startup would lap it up and I’d be jetted off for my final interview before long.
That was, until I got a reply from HR politely asking me to ‘apply through the proper channels on the website’. Two years later the company would be ‘acqui-hired’ by Google and I’d breathe a sigh of relief that I wasn’t brought on board only to go down with the ship and be left adrift in a foreign land. At the time, however, I was shocked, and resigned their response to my location.
So I stuck to the plan, and in the summer of 2015 I applied for a marketing position at major book publisher HarperCollins. As soon as I saw the job posting I got to work, using Apple’s iBooks Author to create what I thought was a standout CV styled as a fiction novel. As far as I was concerned, this was guaranteed entry into an exclusive club — the small pile of preferred candidates. So you can imagine my surprise when sent it off to — not a no, but no reply, despite following it up by email and by phone.
Once more, I convinced myself it must’ve been something else; an oversight on the part of a big company who were only looking to do things in accordance with official procedures.
My allegiance to the religion of creative applications was dwindling but not dead. In 2016, I responded to a job posting for a Writer-At-Large role at Second Home, a small, boutique, creative workspace in East London plays primary home the likes of Google Ventures, General Assembly and Kickstarter.
In the posting, candidates were asked to write 800 words on ‘creativity and the city’. Being a massive fan of theirs, I wasted no time and penned the semi-prosaic 2016 piece titled Heart of The City in an official and public response on Medium. Taking no chances this time, I rounded up my friends and had them to hit the heart at the bottom of my piece as I followed it up with a tweet to Second Home and an email for good measure.
You can guess what happened next.
Nothing.
Staff took absolutely no notice of it, despite the fact that, unlike Oyster and HarperCollins, they’d formally requested this creative approach. Dumbfounded and frustrated, I continued to nudge, push and shove until I finally got a response from a senior member of the team who decided to put me out of my misery by telling me that ‘applications have shut’.
Beaten and bruised, I went back to the drawing board. After re-evaluating, I started focusing less on how I could be novel in my approach and more on the requirements of the role and exactly what they were really asking for. As with most JDs, a lot of it meant next to nothing, but I quickly developed a keen eye for identifying their business priorities amidst all the fluff and jargon. I called it the Duplo Method, due to the straightforward way it allows you to unpack and rebuild the needs of the business in line with your own past experience. This is something I now for every job application, and here’s how it works:
- I read the job description through from top to bottom at least twice.
- Copy and paste the bulleted job requirements onto a blank page
- Unpack the requirement, removing irrelevant fluff
- Shorten and get to the point of what they’re really after
- Find previous work where I’ve demonstrated examples of each.
- Then make a bespoke application filled with responses to their key requirements
- Most important: on for each work example, I reiterate the key requirement being addressed, creating direct link between the two.
And guess what happened.
Having broken down each individual expectation of the role, I was able to write more confidently about my ability to do the job. Writing more confidently about doing the job meant I felt more confident going into interviews. I could ask more specific questions during the hiring process, which made me appear more interested and switched on. With a better idea of the work required I could better negotiate my contract and so on.
The outcome? Every application done this for has offered me the job. I kid you not, this is the undisputed and unbeaten heavyweight champion of application methods.
My point? To hell with unconventional applications and the weeks of worrying that they didn’t get the wordplay in your opening line of your screenplay-cum-resumé. Or that your extended metaphor relied a little too much on the very obvious movie reference in the company’s name. Or stressing over how many other candidates have read Jon Buchanan and used the exact same sign off this week.
Here’s a better idea; just answer the requirements as clearly as you can. And when you do, be sure to repeat those same requirements and connect it to your experience. That way, the recruiter can say your LinkedIn picture is a little shady, or that you have the same surname as their ex, but they can’t say that you don’t have what it takes to meet the requirements for the role head on.
I’d love to hear about all your experiences with applications. Write a response or tweet me and tell me your story. Failing that, just follow me for future ramblings and confessions. Next week will be the last Confessions of a Copywriter. 😱
