“My goal when applying is to be invited to as many interviews as possible!” Many applicants would immediately sign this statement. But is that a reasonable goal? In this absolute sense, 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 then did not get 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 all-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 appli-cations.
Making CVs blurry
To my amazement, I could not see my inputs in the CV. I also could not understand her experience and knowledge based on the CV and could not follow her career path. I expressed my suspicion that she had presented her profile as less experienced and had written down her extensive responsibilities in the various jobs. She confirmed this and we found out that she had presented herself as less qualified to be considered for more jobs out of fear of not finding a new position. This is unfortunately a common prac-tice
What happens if my client does this? Even if the CV is not understandable, recruiters immediately recognise that she is an interesting candidate. So, they invite her for a job interview in the hope of getting to know her better.
Stand up for yourself – even if you are top
Because of the fear of being unemployed, the candidate has kept to her strategy and has also kept quiet about her experience in the interview. With top applicants, many recruiters are afraid to ask more demanding questions if they don’t understand something. After all, they don’t want to appear slow on the uptake. They also 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 the candidate to further interviews. And this way it goes on until the last round. And then another candidate is preferred to her, of whom the recruiters and hiring managers have been able to form a clear picture. Or they finally found out that my client was not optimally qualified or overqualified for the job.
Therefore, my advice is to make sure you are sorted out early in the process if you are not a good fit 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 meaningful goal for your applications could therefore be: I want to be invited to as many interviews as possible for jobs I am really interested in and for which I am eligible.