Please read the job advert carefully !

mattcanary

The fairest result means the best candidate.
Obviously, how you determine who is the best candidate or what makes any candidate the best is up in the air. But essentially that is the case.

I would say though that the best candidate can get the job, even if the process is unfair. The candidate has then achieved this despite the process, not because of it.
Just like the best team on the day can win a football match, even if they were denied a clearcut penalty and having several offside decisions go against them.

Are you a recruitment consultant, by any chance?

ShadowPuma

A CV generally has to have too many different types of information on it to truly sell your skills and give an impression of yourself as more than a body to do the the job.

In a cover letter I can go into things a lot deeper such as if the job needs to be able to deal with large amounts of data to be sorted I can mention that in a past temporary role I enjoyed taking a 3000 line £25m asset register and organising it so that management could see what had been spent on which areas and could find the relevant documents in the paper records for Audits. I can also mention that I was flattered that the MD of the firm personally approached me at the end of that contract to thank me and told me that he was incredibly impressed as for once he could actually get a feel of what asset and implementation costs were for each part of the business.

It also allows me to wax lyrical about the nature of the potential employers business, show I *do* know what is important and I do see the bigger picture required for the job.


Yes, I *could* do this in interview but why waste everyone's time? If they have 100 applications and 10 of them show "organised asset register data and paperwork" on their CV as a bullet point then with the cover letter I can show that I have done the breadth of the work and not just added a few transactions to the system and filed a couple of bits of paper to a file.

I can also explain why I'm seeking to leave my current role, for example: "having worked in X industry for several years has given me a passion for Y which I would like to expand far more than my current role allows and I can see is central to this role that you have available and I believe this passion would make me an asset to your team". (Never say "the best person/best qualified person for the job though - not yours to judge!)

It will also allow the company to get some idea of how I write, my personality etc. Personality matters much more than pure skills sometimes.

DKLS

Nope not an RC, I just have to recruit when the need arises.

noelphobic

I think that people who get jobs are the ones who are good at writing application forms/CVs (or have a lot of help) and are good at interviews. This doesn't always mean they're the best people for the job, although I would concede that it would be difficult to appoint someone based on anything other than forms etc.

I had to reapply for my own job some years ago (not just me, several departments within a large organisation.) I didn't get my job, someone who was a grade below me did. Everyone knew that he was lazy, stupid and made a lot of potentially costly mistakes through sheer carelessness. However, he could talk the talk in interviews and got a promotion out of it. I did eventually get my own job back!

Coincidentally, I just got a call about the interview I went for on Monday. It was a case of 'close but no cigar'. I scored 49.5 out of 61 which actually put me in 4th place out of 6 interviewees, which doesn't sound great. They did ask if they could keep my details on file and if something came up would get in touch and not need to re-interview me.

I also mentioned that I had applied for another job they were advertising for, which was a casual role to cover holidays, sickness absence etc. So, I've got that and, as I have no income at the moment (not signing on and not working), it means I will have some money coming in while I'm looking for something more permanent. It also means I will be getting valuable experience as this is a complete change of career for me (worked for a bank for 23 years but recently completed a degree in Health and Social Care and looking to work in that field.)

Sorry for going off topic - to bring it back to that, I did spend a lot of time filling in the application form!

poorlittlefish

These days, though, there seems to be a growing trend of using assessment centres (where you carry out individual and group exercises, the group being other people who are competing for the same job) and other ways of testing applicants far beyond an interview. For one job (with pitiful pay) there was a telephone interview, then three psychometric tests, then a presentation followed by Q&As and finally an hour-long interview.

Murphybear

patman99 wrote: »

Perhaps some of them applied purely to satisfy their adviser.
I have 2 cv's and 4 covering letters on UJM. 1 cv and 1 covering letter are deliberately littered with grammatical and spelling errors and the rest are highly polished and professional.
The badly-writen ones get used for jobs below what I need to earn to survive & the polished ones for the jobs that meet my earnings requirements to actually live.

This made me smile:D. I am not familiar with how the UJM works, presumably no-one else has access to your docs?

GothicStirling

AP007 wrote: »

Not seen many if any asking for it in the post since about 1998!

Ironically, I've just submitted an application for a management job which asked for an electronic and hard copy (and yes, both went with a cover letter!)

dappy_breh

poorlittlefish wrote: »

I use the covering letter to demonstrate how I meet the person spec by giving information and examples on each point. I also emphasise certain achievements that would be relevant. The aim is to "sell" myself and show that I would be a good match for the role.

If your CV doesn't already provide this information you may need to rewrite it

poorlittlefish

As I said in a previous post, organisations I've worked for have always had the requirement for applicants to demonstrate how they meet each of the person spec criteria. It is common to require a covering letter or supporting statement and clearly there's a reason for this. My CV would need to be extremely long if it had to incorporate examples for every point, particularly when some have 20+! Based on the feedback I've had I know my CV is already well-written.

The covering letter gives the chance to expand on what's in the CV and show the employer why you'd be a good candidate. Having been responsible for recruitment the covering letter is very useful in determining who to shortlist. Anything that makes you stand out from other candidates is worth doing.