Job applications.
The actual graduation ceremony of our college. You send one of these, and your passage to an adult and employed life begins. Employment is a big thing, since it will take up literally half of your time for the rest of your life.
And because it is so important, you need to start with the applications properly. And because we are not used to the process itself, it is understandable to us that we screw up, but the employers may not take these mistakes so lightly.
1. Making things up in your resume
You probably played basketball once in your school and then went ahead and put it in your list of achievements in your resume.
Do not make things up so that your resume looks impressive. Obviously, your interviewer will not whisk you away to a basketball court to crosscheck, but lies always come out in the end.
Keep it real.
2. Faking work experience when you have none
We all know the pain of having no work experience after we graduate. The pain is unreasonable because you literally just graduated, and it is reasonable because most of the companies out there ask for work experience in their list of requirements.
Also some candidates, feeling apprehensive about their grades, might think that attaching work experience will compensate for it.
But companies have really updated their verification game. Some companies even hire third party companies whose sole job is to investigate if your work experience is legit or not.
Don’t do it. You might get blacklisted forever.
3. Getting a job through personal references
Personal references are good for getting a job, but come with incredible liability. Firstly, you are getting a job because one of your close people vouched for you and your abilities. Secondly, you will probably not be disciplined and treated like regular employees, because you got in through a person who knows the boss.
Get into your first job on your own caliber. After you build a good resume that reflects on your ability, you can get jobs through personal references, since now you have a good skill set to not screw up.
4. Not answering every question in the application form
When you get an application form to fill up, fill it completely. There may be questions on there that seem pointless and insignificant to you, but they are there on that form for a reason.
Skipping questions portray you as a careless candidate, who is taking the application form lightly.
5. Bad grammar and spelling mistakes in your resume and application form
Bad grammar is not a requirement for technical jobs, but your application forms are not always going to be read by engineers. Also, the resume needs to be proofread.
Grammatical errors are irritating and sometimes even confusing. Your resume and application form is almost like the first formal introduction, and like in every conversation you have.
6. Dirty resumes
It doesn’t look like it happens a lot, but many recruiters complain that people hand in resume’s with smudges and food marks on them.
This is a sign that you were not careful when you handed the resume and their application form. Always keep your hands neat when you are filling up these forms, or for that matter when you go to an interview.
No one needs to know that you had spicy fries for lunch after they shook hands with you.
7. Don’t elaborate too much, keep it simple
I recently came across a resume that had this written –
I am a thematic philatelist and numismatist.
Do not write or speak things that require the recruiters to have a thesaurus and a dictionary at his/her side. Also, do not over-extend when you are asked to speak in an interview.
Keep it simple and brief.
8. Forgetting to attach your resume
Before Gmail came up with this nifty trick to save our careers, people routinely forgot to attach their application emails with resumes.
Then they wondered why the company didn’t respond. Always crosscheck your mail to see if you have attached the resume before sending it.
9. Submitting a resume that looks like a template
Resume, as we know is the first impression and should be as unique as possible. Remember, there is a literal crowd out there for that job opening. In a sense, if you use a resume that is as uninteresting as a template, it is never going to stand out from the pile in front of the recruiter.
10. Screwing up the company’s name in the application
After we are done writing our awesome resumes, we all have that one format of a cover application mail we copy paste into every mail we send out to prospective companies.
Sometimes, we may screw up and send this mail with XYZ company written in it to ABC. Because you forgot to change the company name after you send the mail to XYZ.
Of all the mistakes you can do here, this is probably the worst.
Personally speaking, I have made a couple of the above, the most mentionable one was where I didn’t attach my resume and waited for a month for a response.