I am involved in a considerable number of appointment committees for a wide variety of jobs. This afternoon, with others, I have been shortlisting candidates for a new appointment. As so often in the current economic climate, the advertisement attracted a much larger number of applicants than one would ideally like. People sometimes say to me that they are delighted with the huge number of applicants for jobs they have advertised. Ideally I would prefer about four applicants for any post I am involved with - but with each of them outstandingly able to do the job.
The truth is that for any advertised post it seems to me that a significant proportion of applications can be almost instantly discarded. Two things really stand out. Firstly it is amazing how many applicants do not proof-read what they have written - or perhaps if they have proof read it then they are leaving an indication that they can't spell and / or don't know the rules of grammar. I am not saying that those attributes are universally important - there are many jobs where that will not be the case - but for the jobs I am involved in the ability to communicate clearly and accurately in writing is usually crucial.
But the second fault with many applications is perhaps more severe - a failure to acknowledge the job specification in constructing an application letter. If 10 aspects of the job requirements are identified then a good candidate will show how s/he fits each of those ten. The poor candidate instead produces an unstructured account of themselves with no reference to the post in question. The poorest candidate will include clear markers that the letter they are submitting is a scissors-and-paste exercise from a previous unsuccessful application - for example (as in one case today) indicating a task they will be performing in the future, except the date given was over a year ago.
As regular readers of my blog will know, an exercise I get my students to do is to mark each other's essay drafts against the set marking criteria. They all say they learn a lot from doing so. Some say it's the first time they've really considered the criteria and how they can be used to help structure their work.
Several of the applicants we considered today could, I am sure, benefit greatly from being issued with two or three applications from other candidates and being asked to score them against the job specification for the post. That way they might recognise how to rewrite their own applications so that they provide a more convincing argument for shortlisting.
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