Top Job-Hunting Mistakes and How NOT to Make Them

by Erin O'Connor Jones, Director of Candidate Services

In the most competitive job market in recent history, employers can afford to be pickier than ever, expecting perfection from job seekers who they’ll move forward in the process and punishing mistake makers by throwing them out of contention. While it’s difficult to be looking for a job these days, it’s quite easy to avoid some of the most common mistakes made by job seekers. This article describes some of the most common and avoidable mistakes we see.

Let’s start with the ground rules. You want to run a successful search. We define that not as a certain number of networking calls, informational interviews, or job offers, though many of these are benchmarks of good search technique. We define a successful job search as a search that ends with an offer you’d like to accept from an organization where you’d like to work. For some, that means 327 interviews, for others, it means one networking call. In either case and for everyone in between, the mistakes are equally as costly.

You as a job seeker are seen by a future employer as a model in miniature scale of you as an employee. Not following directions on an application brings up concerns about your not following directions on the job. Superfluous and ill-timed materials trigger fears that you may not be incisive and crisp in your articulation of organization need and proposed solutions. Lack of critical thinking about which jobs are appropriate for you signals a potential inability to discern strategic direction for your organization or program. Each of the following mistakes elicits one of these, and each can and should be avoided.

Not following directions. Are you guilty of not carefully reading the application instructions before pressing “send?” If so, read this carefully: You must follow the instructions on a vacancy announcement. While it is important in this competitive market to set yourself apart by calling extra attention to your materials, negative attention never works. Your inability to follow directions as an applicant worries employers about whether you’ll be able to follow directions on the job.

Most nonprofit organizations spend time writing their position descriptions, determining what qualifications are sought after in a pool of qualified candidates, prior to posting the announcement broadly. In addition, they set up a system whereby they could most efficiently and effectively receive and review applicants. The instructions serve a purpose to move the process along by making the reviewer’s job easier. Most importantly, the system helps them to identify the best candidate: you. Going outside of the system, whether by choice or by lack of attentiveness to detail, diminishes your chances of moving forward in their process.

One sticky instruction to follow is the request for salary information. Many employers request a salary history or a salary requirement, two different numbers most likely. It’s important to provide this information because it helps employers determine which candidates are most likely to be realistic hires once the process moves into its final stages. However, should you feel that your current salary is far too low because you have been working in an organization that has, for example, frozen salary increases for several years, or if you have just earned a professional license or graduate degree, or to the contrary, your salary prices you out of the market because you are making the transition to the nonprofit sector from a successful career in Corporate America, than you should say so in point blank terms in your cover letter. Chances are good that it won’t be held against once you have explained the context.

Sending personal videos, brochures, and “extra fluff.” Can your resume and cover letter stand on their own, or do you feel the need to send a video resume, personal testimony, brochures, writing samples, or other “extra fluff” because you’re trying to make a better case for your candidacy? If so, consider beefing up your resume and saving the other materials until much later into the process, when they are requests and actually reviewed.

Take, for example, the comments of an experienced nonprofit recruiter who recently shared with me her strong opinion about candidates that send these types of materials to her mailbox (assuming they actually get past her spam filter). “It’s like the American Idol tryouts,” she said, “You don’t need a gimmick, just a good voice.” These materials rarely get opened in the initial stages, and often make good candidates look less serious. Save the fluff, send the real deal.

Applying for a job (or jobs) for which you aren’t qualified. Let’s face it: the economy is in the tank and people need jobs. As a result candidates are applying more often and for less targeted jobs than ever before, making the average resume count per search at our firm between 300 and 400, where before it was half that size. Many of these resumes come from repeat applications, from the people who apply for everything regardless of their qualifications, in hopes that something will stick. We call these people “serial job seekers” and we don’t mean it as a compliment.

In general, we throw out of the pool those who apply for everything. Unfortunately for those job seekers, this means that they might likely get thrown out of a pool where they ARE qualified only because we’ve seen their name so many times when they were not that we just assumed they were unqualified for this too. A good approach is to simply be thoughtful about your skills and qualifications. Think carefully about whether you meet the minimum qualifications posted in the description. Stretching is fine, but it the stretch feels too big, it probably is. The best resume, cover letter or references can’t take the place of education, experience, or other position requirements; apply for the job that’s right for you now, not the job that’s right for the job after this.

Not answering or avoiding questions during interviews. Interviews are nerve-wracking events and you should expect that at some point in the interview you’ll get a question that you cannot or will not want to answer. Not answering or avoiding the question are big mistakes made by many candidates; the interviewer asked the question for a reason, and will note evasiveness, blathering, or any smoke and mirrors you throw their way. If you are unsure about the correct answer, be honest. Alternatively, take a second to think about your answer; this is when you take a sip from the water you accepted at the start of the interview. Once you’ve gathered your thoughts, you can proceed with an honest, open, and articulate answer.

A difficult question often posed during an interview surrounds the issue of why you left your last job. You might have been laid off or fired, you might have chosen to leave, or the project you managed may have simply come to an end. In any case, there were likely things you liked about the job and things you didn’t. An important point when answering these questions is to avoid whining about a former boss, discussing financial strains, airing personal issues, or complaints about co-workers. During your interview, you are showcasing what it might be like to work with you on a daily basis; be the person with whom you’d like to work, not the person from whom you’d like to run.

Going it alone. Job seeking can be a lonely, long, and difficult road, especially if you’ve been at it for a while. Should you find yourself searching for more than three months with no leads, interviews or offers, you need help. This is not the time to be shy or afraid to reach out and get a second opinion. There is no shame in asking for help from your network. Enlist the troops - everyone that might be helpful. It could make all the difference to a successful job search.