9 Tips For Applying To Job Openings When You’re Feeling Desperate

Based on the recent experience of someone on the receiving end of a job opening.

This is a guest post by Geoffrey Mendelson. If you’d also like to guest post here on JobMob, follow these guest post guidelines.

1. READ THE AD.

Don't just send out a resume because you are desperate. No one will hire you for a job you can't do because you are hungry. Sorry.

2. Get the details right.

Sending resumes to the wrong person, with the wrong details, or calling someone on the phone if they ask for emails will not get you anywhere.

In the US, I would get 3-4 messages a week on my business answering machine from people applying to a placement agency, something that I was not. If I did call them back after a while, most people were actually mean to me, acting as if I had stolen their phone call from the people it should have gone to.

3. Make sure you can actually do the job.

Sounds obvious but it is not.

Just because you think it's a job anyone can do, don't insult the person looking to fill the job with that attitude. For example, not all women are maternal so don't take a daycare job if you are not, and vice-versa with men.

4. Do some research.

Check the company website to be certain you can work in that field, in that location and at the times the job is open i.e. the work hours.

5. Make sure you understand what they want.

For example if you are a religious Jewish chef, don't apply for a Saturday afternoon dishwashing job at Joe's Pork Palace.

6. Understand the language requirements.

A PhD from the US or Russia won't help if the job requires you to speak a language you can't.

7. Don't expect them to be flexible for you.

Unless you are the top person in a rare field, no one is going to go out of their way e.g. to rearrange their schedule for you.

If a job requires you to work on Friday mornings, don't expect them to give you the day off. Or, in many cases I saw, religious Jews who wanted non-Jews to give them Shabbat off. A now-defunct call center tried that and ended up losing the contracts to the company that got the Friday night and Saturday contract.

This also applies to telecommuters. Friday is a work day in the US, and it's Shabbat here in Israel in the evening when it's still morning there. If your employer wants you to be available, it may not work out (to be polite). I had a job here where I was on call on Shabbat. Not for something basic like a computer crash, but a few times an alarm went off and I was called.  If you are not going to take the call, don't even apply for the job.

8) Make sure they can read your resume.

If your resume comes in some obscure document format from software that no one has, it will be deleted without being opened. Do not rely on format over content.

In terms of being legible to begin with, someone I met in the technical writing business used to stick a resume up on the wall and see what it looked like from afar. Everyone else I've known read the content. If it was difficult to read, it wasn't read.

9) Don't expect an answer.

If you had so little consideration to apply for a job for which you were not really a viable candidate, don't expect anything in return.

If you wasted someone's time, sent your resume for a job you had no business applying for, then don't feel bad if they make you spend an entire day traveling to an interview so that they could show you to their boss as a bad example and then hire their cousin.

About the author

Geoffrey Mendelson is a frequent contributor to Tachlis, one of the mailing lists mentioned in The Ultimate List of Mailing Lists For Your Israeli Job Search. He can be reached at gsm [at] mendelson [dot] com.

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