«My goal when applying is to be invited to as many interviews as possible!» Many job applicants would agree with this statement. But is that a reasonable goal? In this absolute form, I clearly deny it, as the following example illustrates.
A client called me and told me in despair that she had made it to the last round of an application for the seventh time and had then not got the job. She is a highly qualified applicant with a successful career. An application process at her level is time-consuming and involves several rounds of interviews, presentations, case studies and sometimes full-day assessment centres.
She had been in coaching with me two years earlier and we had optimised her application documents. I asked her to send me one of the applications.
Making CVs blurry
To my amazement, I could not see my previous inputs in the CV. Nor could I understand her work history based on her descriptions. I expressed my suspicion that she had downplayed her extensive responsibilities in the various jobs. She confirmed that out of fear of not finding a new job, she had presented herself as less qualified to be considered for more jobs. This is unfortunately a common practice.
What happens when my client does this? Even if the CV is not understandable, recruiters recognise that this is an interesting candidate. Therefore, they invite her for a job interview in the hope of getting to know her better in the conversation.
Stand up for yourself – even if you are tops
Because of her fear, the candidate has stuck to her strategy and kept her experience to herself during the interview. With top applicants, many recruiters are afraid to question them if they don’t understand something. After all, they don’t want to appear hard to understand and they don’t want to upset applicants. So, they conclude that the candidate is interesting, even if they still can’t figure her out. So, they invite her to further interviews. And this way it goes on until the last round. And then another candidate is preferred to her, of whom the interviewers have been able to form a clear picture. Or they finally found out that my client was not ideal or even overqualified for the job.
Therefore, my advice is to make sure that you are sorted out early in the application process if you are not suitable for a job. You can achieve this by showing yourself as the person you are throughout the application process. This will save you and the company time. And above all, you save yourself a lot of frustration.
A reasonable goal for your applications is therefore: «I want to be invited to as many interviews as possible for jobs that really interest me and for which I am suitable.»