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Qualified, but not getting interviews, and don’t know why?
September 1st, 2008
The curse of the job application process is lack of responses and not having any idea why. It’s very common, and it’s often very discouraging, not to say infuriating, after all the work and effort put in to making a good application.
There are a variety of reasons why people don’t get interviews:
1. Too many applicants.
This is the most common reason, and even if you’re 98% suitable for the position, there may be 20 other applicants who are 99% suitable. The sheer number of applications, particularly in highly competitive industries like IT, means that 90% of applicants will not get an interview.
2. The selection and culling process
Employers select interviewees by reducing numbers of applicants. They have to work on the basis of getting the candidates most likely to succeed. If there are 100 applicants for a job, at least 80 will be rejected, even if they meet the criteria and there’s nothing wrong with their applications.
3. The selection process isn’t perfect, itself
Nobody in the employment industry has ever claimed that the methods used for selecting interview candidates are perfect, or anything like it. Far from it. Mistakes are made, regularly. Hiring the wrong person isn’t exactly unknown. The many drawbacks and failings of the system are now a hot topic. Google recently scrapped the standard interview methods as being effectively useless for finding the people they need for a good fit in their corporate culture. Better methods of selection are now a major issue in the industry.
4. Lack of information to candidates
In many cases the job advertisements are themselves flawed. Applications are made on the basis of information which may not reflect what the employer is looking for. That’s partly thanks to employment agency advertisers getting it wrong, and partly because employers don’t give the advertisers enough information, or don’t brief them effectively.
5. Applicants often don’t contact advertisers for more detail
Some job applicants tend to assume that the job ads provide all the information they need. That’s not a safe assumption. If you have a look at some of the job ads, you’ll find a lot about being a great team player, and the rest of the usual useless blurb, and much less information about the actual position. Always try and get as much information as you can about a position. You can save yourself some time, for sure, because the contact person may tell you something that makes it clear that’s not your job.
6. Application is out of date, or not properly targeted
We’ve found that a standardized CV simply does not meet all cases, even if you’re a professional with all the right qualifications. Your application must stand out, and show direct relevance to the position. The entire CV may need an overhaul to show your skills and experience in relation to any specific position. Remember that all the employer has to go on, in terms of your application, is the information you provide.
7. Entry level positions aren’t simple, either
The greatest possible misconception about entry level positions is that less is expected of them because they’re entry level.
The idea that I’ll obviously have less experience and less on my CV, because I’m only just now qualified must be avoided.
You need to show a range of skills and motivations to separate you from the other 200 applicants who also think that they can just provide a bare bones application and have a chance. A few extra words about your skills do count, and can be the difference between getting a job and having a life, or staying up to date on the daytime soap operas. You need to produce a credible statement of your abilities.
8. Not learning from past experience with job applications
Not getting an interview can mean you’re making some basic mistakes.
Don’t tolerate not knowing what you’re doing wrong.
Get on the phone, find the person who did the cull of applicants, and find out why you weren’t successful. If the answer is that your application didn’t stand out from the others, get some details, and find out why. There’s a real risk you could be undermining your own chances by not including information, or by expressing yourself badly on your CV, and misleading employers with information which is ambiguous.
Another, very serious, and very possible, problem, particularly with experienced applicants, is that you’re sending in applications which are too verbose, with too much information. You could be obscuring the very things that make you a suitable candidate.
You need to know.
9. Job application fatigue; not checking your application before sending
If you’ve been doing a lot of applications, the most likely situation is that mistakes are creeping in. It is perfectly possible even to send the wrong job application to the wrong employer.
Most likely are:
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If necessary, use the job ad as a checklist. Tick off each point on the job ad regarding the information you have to send to them. Make sure you’ve covered the essential criteria.
Use a clean page for your application, and only cut and paste one piece at a time where appropriate, not the whole of a previous document, because you can be sure there’ll be mistakes with a whole document.
If possible, get someone else to check your application against the job ad before you send it. Quality control has to start somewhere, preferably before you send in your application.
10. Be realistic about any job application
The heartbreak in any unsuccessful job application is quite avoidable:
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11. Being overqualified
Ironically, employers are wary of overqualified people. Not because they don’t believe they can do the jobs, but because they can be seen as potentially expensive, too good for the job, and the logic of going for a position downscale doesn’t always appeal to employers and interviewers. Older people sometimes find their levels of skills and experience are higher than the supervisors or managers. That sometimes looks threatening. Highly qualified younger people can look quite strange to employers who don’t understand their reasons for going for a position below career norms. You may need to include in your cover letter your reasons for applying.
12. Career path job applications; finding a way round obstacles
These are tricky. If job applications on your career path aren’t succeeding in getting you to the interview stage, you have a genuine problem that must be solved, and solved quickly.
But with career moves, you can’t pin everything on job applications, anyway. Rejections should be seen as temporary delays, rather than major obstacles.
You need to be able to find alternative career paths, in self defence against the grind of the application process. It’s advisable to make direct contact with possible employers and do some cold canvassing prior to making your career moves. You’ll get more information, and you’ll also make contacts.
13. Cover letters
The cover letter is part of your application. It’s an additional tool in making your case for your application, and it also needs to be targeted to the essential criteria of the job. The cover letter is sometimes considered to be a summary of the application, so keep focused on the important points. Style comes second to information, in this case, the better the information the more interested the employer will be.
Don’t get verbose in the cover letter, either. Stay on topic.
Emphasize your achievements, your qualifications, and include a reason why you want this particular job. Include as many hard facts which support your application as you can fit on one page.
14. Irrelevant information
If there’s one major turnoff for anyone reading a job application, it’s irrelevant material. If you’re going for a job as an IT technician, that’s what the employer needs to know about.
Don’t clutter it up with information about your job as a shelf stacker for the local supermarket. Leave that to the employment history part of your application.
Do not include anything which is going to take up time and has nothing to do with the job application.
The faults in any job application are always findable.
You must check out any situation where your applications aren’t hitting their targets. Above all, you will need good information about making applications for the jobs you want when you find them. Make contact, get the information, and use it to design your job application.
Your contacts can provide that information, and they can answer your questions, so you’ll be able to create much more effective job applications.
Reality check.
The facts are that if you make ten job applications, you’ll only get to interview stage for two or three, on average, at best.
Don’t even bother getting discouraged, it’s not worth the time.
Just get on with it.
You do have to go through this process, it’s unavoidable, and it has to be done properly to get results.
All you need to do is make sure you’re getting your applications right. That’s where you have control of the process, and that’s how you’ll get the job.
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