The recruitment process- there to scare you?

As I start to fill out yet another ridiculously long application form, part of me thinks that the whole recruitment process of some employers is just there to scare! Seriously, just looking at the thing - all the hurdles I would have to overcome, all the hoops I have to jump through - makes me feel nervous. Some of the application forms actually ask the same question about three times, making it much harder for those applicants with less experience. “Explain a time when you lead a team to a common goal” and then “Explain a time when you convinced a team to work towards a goal?”. 

We all know why employers have such a long and hard recruitment process, it’s to make sure that they can get rid of as many numbers as they can along the way. The point I’m trying to make here is that some people are scared out of the process. It just takes too much precious time and effort during the final year of university, when frankly, there are so many more productive ways to spend time. There is just no possible way to have the time to complete all of the graduate schemes on offer as well as juggling university work, lectures and a dissertation.

Anyway, this would be a terrible blog post if it didn’t suggest some ways to overcome this issue with time management. So here we go with top tips to handle the fright of the recruitment process:

Tip 1: Save every single answer you create in a word document of “answers”. Sort them by the core competencies they are demonstrating; being either teamwork, leadership skills or communication etc. This will help you to start building a bank of useful answers that you can then use in future application forms and adapt them to the particular question.

Tip 2: You can print out a version of your “answer” bank to use during a telephone interview. It will help you demonstrate those core competencies and remember the main points about them. That is one of the main advantages of the telephone interview right?! No one can see what you’re doing!

Tip 3: Allocate time. Do not let yourself have open-ended deadlines to complete applications. Just set yourself one to two evenings or a day to complete x number of applications. Re-use your answers and work efficiently.

Tip 4: Research the company and add this to your self-constructed documents so you have something to refer to in a telephone interview or surprise phone-call.

Tip 5: Do not complete applications half-heartedly or the ‘I can’t really be bothered’ attitude. It will end up being a much bigger waste of your time at the end of the day when you are not selected to move to the second round. Take care with each question you answer, try and tailor it to the organisation, and absolutely no spelling mistakes!

One final word of advice, If you have an Internet presence make sure you remove any inappropriate or unappealing content (remove all of it completely in my opinion!) as I have heard that employers will research you. We do the same to them after all don’t we?