We often get requests to update a resume and draft a cover letter, in partnership with the client, to apply for a specific job.
In a few cases, the client hasn’t looked or doesn’t realise they don’t have the ESSENTIAL experience or qualifications, for a key part of the selection criteria.
We had a client seek our help to apply for a fairly senior management job with a major airline. It carried a salary of around $120,000 and up.
When he found out we didn’t write them from start to finish, he ‘went shopping’ for other writers.
On his tour of Google, he will have met a sea of backyard shonks and text ‘cut and pasters’. He will spend about $400.00 to get the selection criteria written.
The shonks don’t actually write the criteria. How can they? They don’t work in the Australian airline industry. They don’t have the context and they can barely write resumes.
They’ll copy and paste text from a style sheet used thousands of times before.
The application will fall like a lead air balloon.
The recruitment assessment team really wants the applicant to answer the selection criteria from their own experience. They’re trying to gauge what sort of applicant they are.
We give advice and help with writing and editing. This includes using the CAR method (Context, Action and Result) and then editing the selection criteria so the document is sharp and compelling.
It’s important the client checks they are the right fit for the job. That means reading the position description closely.
If an applicant doesn’t possess the ESSENTIAL criteria, they are wasting their time and money.
The application will sink like a stone, even if Shakespeare did the co-writing.
When recruiters and employers state ESSENTIAL, they’re not joking. There’s little ‘wriggle room’.
Clients also ask us whether we think they’d be a ‘good fit’, based on their resume, for a certain position.
We can’t answer that because it’s ‘leading the client’.
It could be considered that we are advising the client to apply for a job, based on monetary gain.
Other ‘professional’ writers may do that but ethically, that’s not our scene.
Objectively assess the job criteria in light of one’s experience, qualifications, skills and capabilities.
You’ll save yourself, time, money and frustration.