Career

How to apply for jobs

I read applications for a living. Almost all of them fail before anyone reads a word of the CV. Here is the order I’d do it in.

1. Apply to fewer, better.

   Ten applications you have researched will beat a hundred you haven’t. The scattergun is visible from the other side of the desk -- we can tell within a paragraph whether you know what the company does.

2. Read the description twice.

   Once for the requirements. Once for the words. The second read tells you what the team is worried about, which is rarely the same as the bullet list.

3. Mirror their language.

   If the posting says “stakeholder”, write stakeholder. Keyword matching is real, but the human reading after the filter matters more, and they wrote those words for a reason.

4. One page until you’ve earned two.

   Under ten years’ experience, one page. The constraint does the editing for you, and nobody has ever rejected a candidate for being concise.

5. Lead every bullet with the outcome.

   “Cut reporting time from three days to twenty minutes” beats “Responsible for reporting.” Responsibility is a job description. Outcome is evidence.

6. Skip the cover letter unless you have something to say.

   A generic one is worse than none -- it signals you’ll do the minimum. A specific one, three paragraphs, naming the actual problem you’d work on, is the single highest-leverage thing in the whole application.

7. Find one human.

   A referral moves you from the pile to the shortlist. Not a favour, just someone who can confirm you exist. Most people say yes if you make it easy for them to say yes.

8. Apply early in the cycle.

   The first two weeks of a posting get read properly. Week six gets skimmed against whoever is already in final stage. Same CV, different odds.

9. Follow up, and keep following up.

   Most applications go quiet because the person reading them is busy, so staying in front of them is most of the job. Send a short note about a week later, then try a different channel: a message on LinkedIn, a reply on the original email thread, a note to whoever you found when you looked for one human. Make each one worth opening by adding something they can use, like a thought on a problem they have written about or something you built that is relevant. A follow-up that provides value is welcome as often as you can genuinely provide it.

10. Track it.

    A spreadsheet with company, date, contact, and status. The pattern in your own rejections is the most useful data you will ever get about your search, and you can only see it once it is written down.