How Successful Are You At Job Applications?

Submit it anyway, they are bound to want to read all about your experience and skills

Chop out the older bits of your CV to get it down to one page. They are not interested in what you did five years ago

Reduce the size of the font and cram everything onto one page

Write ‘Dear Sir / Madam’

Write ‘Dear Hiring Manager’

Write ‘To whom it may concern’

Just write the application, you don’t need to know who they are

Decide not to apply, if they can’t tell you who you will be working for

Research organisations in the area and make a guess as to who it might be

Make it up, they are never going to check

Tell them about all the other experience that you have instead

Call the organisation, explain what experience you do have and ask them if you should apply

Leave it blank, you’ve already listed your education and employment experience so there’s nothing else to add

Outline your demands for salary and benefits

Tell them all about your other achievements including your health and safety certificates and music awards

Complete the form in the next few days but delay sending it until the last minute. That way yours will be top of the pile and the one they’ll see first

Schedule to complete and send the form a couple of weeks before the deadline

Decide the employer can’t be that keen to recruit and you need a job now, so forget them and concentrate on applying to other jobs

Ring the recruiter and ask if you can send the completed answer a day later

Quickly cut and paste your answer to a similar question on an application you did for another job. They probably want to hear the same reasons

Decide not to send it as your application won’t be good enough if it’s incomplete

Provide a list of every occasion when you have been part of a team from the age of 15

Answer ‘yes of course I’m a great team player’ and then provide a definition of what good teamwork means to you

Use the question to highlight all your other skills as well as team work

Add a low figure just to make sure you get an interview, you can argue about the salary once you are offered the job

Skip the question. You can discuss your salary later

Add a high figure, after all they will want a candidate who is ambitious