7 Common Questions On How to Apply for A Job With Recruiter Answers
Whether you are a recent graduate who wants to kickstart your career or leave your comfort zone and take a chance to grow your career with a new challenge, you will need to search and apply for jobs. Sounds relatively easy but we all know deep in our hearts that it’s not the case at all. Finding one’s dream job that will help them to achieve their potential is quite an anxious (exciting at the same time) journey. You won’t like to make any mistakes when you apply for the job that you really want, will you? That’s why we wanted to go back to basics and give you all the tips you need to learn/remember/master how to apply for a job.
Here we answer for you the most common questions we receive as an international recruitment agency on the job application topic:
1 - How does a job application work?
Starting from the very basics, a job application is basically a form that an employer asks you to fill out when you apply for a job. The best way to do a job application is to follow the instructions on the job listing. You can also take your chance on sending a spontaneous job application email to the companies or recruiters which can make your process stand out, however, make sure when you do that you already follow the steps of the job application instead of simply asking “how can I apply to this job offer”.
Most job listings will include a link to an online application, or they will provide instructions on how to apply. The application will most likely ask for basic information about you, such as your contact information and work history. Ideally, the application website would only ask for your CV rather than manually adding all the information one by one. As expected, either through an email, cover letter or directly on your CV you would demonstrate specific information about the job you are applying for, such as your qualifications and availability. If you are unsure about how to apply for a job you can find their “Frequently Asked Questions About Job Application Process” or you can always contact the employer directly and ask for clarification.
2- How do I write a short application email or cover letter?
An application email or letter is a text that you should write, though not mandatory in most cases, to an employer to show your motivations with a summary of your experiences, personal skills and expectations when you are applying for a job. The letter should be short and to the point, and it should include your contact information and a brief summary of your qualifications.
There is no one-size-fits-all answer to how to write an application for a job offer, as the best way to write it will vary depending on the company and position you are applying for. However, there are some general tips you can follow to make sure your application is as strong as possible:
Start by researching the company and position you are applying for. This will help you tailor your application to the specific requirements of the job.
Make sure to proofread your application carefully before submitting it. Typos and grammar errors can give a bad first impression.
Highlight your relevant skills and experience in your application. This will help you stand out from other candidates.
Follow the instructions on the job listing carefully. If the listing asks for specific information, make sure to include it in your application.
Finally, don't forget to include your contact information so the employer can reach you if they have any questions.
3- How to create a resume / CV that will stand out?
First impressions last, that’s why having a great CV that will attract recruiters matters the most before you apply for a job. Recruiters will know more about you starting from the first interview, however, in the very first step, CV check, they want to have a general understanding of each candidate. That’s why you should -of course- include your professional and educational history and current status and additional interests related to the job you have applied for. To start with, after giving the necessary personal and contact information, it is preferred to include a summary of your current status as a way of attracting recruiters in one or two sentences and helping them to understand what you are looking for.
The main part of your CV is your professional background. You should put the company details, time period of employment, and the title of your job and since the title does not give enough understanding of your position in a company in every case, you should include the main tasks you held and highlight the achievements you have realised in the given position. If you are a fresh graduate or junior level, while you should still include any related experiences in your CV, the main focus should be on your academic background and the theoretical and practical information you gained during your studies. In this case, adding extra curriculum activities, volunteering experiences and additional certificates will play a great role for you to outshine the competition. Depending on your professional experience, the relevance of your academic background and the detail you should include varies, however, it is still one of the main parts of a proper CV.
Lastly, is still a fashion to include personal interests and hobbies in your CV. It is an optional part, yet for many recruiters, being able to evaluate a candidate in a broader sense is significant. It should be a part to show your leisure time activities, especially if they really tell something about your personality that can be related to the characteristics required by the position. This part can be a great chance to show your soft skills. Don’t forget to tailor your CV and highlight different hard and soft skills for different positions you apply for. In addition to your professional and academic background, do not forget to highlight your hard skills in a smaller part. Most importantly, as you can see in our job offers, language might be a significant determinant for many positions in international and multilingual companies. That is why including the languages you speak is a must-do. In addition, certain positions require specific tools and skills. A higher number of matches of the necessary skills given in the job description and the ones in your CV will increase the possibility to get your first call for an interview, no need to be humble!
4- How to reach out to recruiters for a job and send a CV politely?
If you are interested in a position, the best way to reach out to recruiters is to send them a message through the platform they are using. In case the contact details of the recruiter were shared in the job description you see on a job board or their hiring websites you can send them an email. If you are sending a CV by email, you can personalise it, simply add a polite note at the beginning or end of the email to stand in the crowded inbox. You can write "Thank you for your time, and I look forward to hearing from you soon" and even this small gesture can make a difference.
If you are interested in a position that is being recruited through LinkedIn, you can send the recruiter a message through LinkedIn. Before that, make sure that your LinkedIn profile is as polished and professional as your CV
5- How to create an attractive LinkedIn profile for a job application?
Having a nice profile online is not an easy task nowadays. LinkedIn became a social media for many lately and having a polished LinkedIn profile that stands out as unique as possible and ATS and search optimized at the same time is quite critical. As many companies post job offers with an “easy apply” option that extracts your LinkedIn profile, just like we have the “log in/apply via LinkedIn” option on our job website, don’t forget that your LinkedIn profile is your online CV!
First of all, for your profile, take your time to make it visual, clear and organized. Write a clear introduction/bio of what you currently do or what are you looking for. After this, clearly define your career, companies and functions you had during the past years. We recommend you to use bullets to describe your tasks instead of long paragraphs considering the fact that most people spend a maximum of 10 seconds to find a relative work experience to stay longer in your profile to read it through. The same goes for your education. Feel free to describe your main subjects, projects and even experiences abroad. You cannot forget about voluntary experiences and languages. These two sections are very important for some companies and will make a difference when a recruiter will look for a profile like yours. The skills section is also very important. This will make you match with a job opportunity and its requirements. Be creative and sincere. Don’t forget all about software and soft skills, they will help you to attract recruiters in your field.
Try to start connecting with people you have the opportunity to work with and your colleges from your university. If you have some extra time, go and search for people who share your industry or sector and send them a kind message to connect and see their updates. They will bring you new insights into your interests and you’ll be able to stay updated and fresh. Your Network is not only about people but also companies. Once again, go on the search and start following companies you are interested in, as well as recruiters hiring for those companies. They might knock on your inbox one day for a dream opportunity. To keep your network aware of you, it is crucial to be active in sharing content on your activity. Try to keep always a professional vision. Maintain some kind of relationship among your posts. Go on your feed/news section and see what your network is sharing. If you have some thoughts or emotions while doing this, go and express yourself. From time to time, go and ask a professional question to your network. Let them interact with you as well. Remember on this kind of platform you really never know the impact of a single comment. It could bring you more than you think.
6- How to apply for a job without experience?
One of the biggest paradoxical questions of all time is “how can I get a job with no experience when all the job offers including entry-level ones explicitly ask for experience”. It is the nightmare of fresh graduates who have high hopes about their future career life to find the job they dreamed of or in the worst scenario to find any job. This paradox that brings the unemployment threat for inexperienced talents crashes many graduates and people who want to make a career change. To be fair, it is a myth that “it’s impossible to find a job with no experience” as you can see in our entry-level job offers where we recruit profiles without any previous experience based only on soft skills. If you want to increase your entry-level job hunt chances to get the job of your dreams and want to jumpstart your career right after your studies read our tips to pass the “no experience barrier”.
Fill That CV With Your Technical Skills
You study for three to four years, or maybe even more with your Master’s and you are frustrated to know that many employers don’t care that as much as they care about your professional experience. It’s true that you learn a lot while working by turning that theoretical knowledge into a practical one, but if you learned a software skill or anything that helps you in your prospective role you need to put that in your CV. Many times recruiters use those skills to search their new candidates. While you are still studying make sure that you choose the right classes, join the right projects and learn the best technical skills for your career. It’ll be the first step to increasing your chances of employment.
Start Working In Your Campus
Bachelor life is full of excitement, fun and parties. There’s no shame to admit that you are right to live your life before you enter the workforce. Yet, you might be losing a great chance to get light but meaningful work experience while partying hard and others filling their CVs with experiences. Not for the sake of competition but try to get as much as experience also to understand what you like and what you don’t while you are still studying. Attend university clubs where you can get to know the teamwork, departmentalisation, networking and hierarchical work structure. You’ll be still spending some quality time with your friends as well as learning a lot from this experience. If you need to make some pocket money for your student life and don’t have time for clubs, try to get a job inside the campus. Check with your library if they need help or ask student affairs for more opportunities. Any work experience counts!
Learn Through Voluntary Work
Social responsibility comes from the heart but it’s also something that most employers want to see in your CV. If you are already someone who wants to help others, I’m sure you’ll end up joining some non-governmental organisations (NGOs) somewhen in your life. However, bear in mind that starting early to do volunteer work does not only help you to get employed quicker but also to learn project management, again networking and most importantly to have a reason that motivates you to work for your future as well as others.
Have A Taste of The Real Work-Life
You might be thinking that starting working directly in your own field of studies must be the best way to show off your skills on your CV but you are wrong, that is not the only case. There are many jobs that can give you a specific set of skills to make you ready for any job in your own industry, including your dream job. As a fresh graduate or still a student, you have barely any idea of how is it to work in big companies, how to sell a product or a service or how to present your performance to your supervisor or prepare any important business presentation. Those things you learn by working. Get a sales job, work in an international company as a customer service agent or even find a summer job in a fast-food chain. Those are never irrelevant to your CV and on the contrary show that you are flexible and eager to learn. If you also have an internship experience in the field you want to work in, that’s all you need!
Travel and Learn New Ways of Doing
Did you put “travelling” in the hobby and interests section of their CVs? It’s nice, yes, but it doesn’t help you to outshine the competition. Do you know what does: Giving real examples with learning outputs. We see a lot of CVs with a special part given to these experiences and it works to impress recruiters like us. Travelling helps you to improve many of your soft skills that are highly important to have in work-life even though you were maybe not aware of it until now. If you combine travelling with work experience it is even better. While you still have a chance to be completely flexible in your life, try to get a one-year work and travel experience abroad and secure your seat in the company you want to work for later.
7- Should I use a recruitment agency to find a job?
Many of us think that applying directly to companies is a shortcut when it comes to finding a job. What about all those unanswered job applications or template answers you got 4 months later? You wasted your time and maybe the chance to be noticed by the company you wanted to work for, many times already. It might be the right time for you to consider other options.
How can recruitment agencies help you to land your new job?
In a normal scenario, you need to be contacted immediately and got the attention you deserve. However, in many cases internal recruitment teams get overwhelmed by the number of irrelevant applications for each position and your very relevant applications are just overlooked. No one wants this as a result. That’s why recruitment agencies exist, to help companies to find suitable matches and to ensure that the right candidates get noticed.
Finding the right job can be pretty challenging at times, but connecting international talents with multinational companies is what we specialise in as an international recruitment agency. We are ready to help you with your next move, whether you are seeking a first experience abroad or trying to catch the right offer to boost your career. When the basic requirements match what matters more is understanding your personality to see if it fits with the company culture. We want to know you beyond what is written on your CV, understand your needs and have got your back to make you experience the process in the Blu way. Let’s focus on how rewarding your next move can be for your personal learning curve and career.
Is it a long process to find a job with the agencies?
On the contrary, we see and reply to your application within 24 hours unless you applied on a Friday night (we are human too!). Within our working hours, we put all our effort into making things easier and faster for you. The rest depends on you and the company, if everyone is on board it may even take only 3 days for you to start your new job. In general? It takes 1 to 4 weeks to finalize the recruitment process. If you want to learn what we do step by step, take a look at our recruitment process below!
Welcome to the Blu Experience.
After screening your application, we immediately let you know if you are a potential fit for the position or not. In the latter case, we explain why and try to come up with an alternative vacancy which might even be a better one than what you were initially looking for.
Let’s have a chat.
The next step will be to get to know you better to understand your needs and preferences which will help us to come up with the ideal job offer and company culture for you. Learning more about you will also allow us to present you to our client in the best way we can.
We'll be there for you.
Now, the most exciting part is the interviews. If the company likes your profile, they will conduct their own interviews with you. However, if you think you are done with us, you are wrong. We will closely follow up with you until you land the job, or not, and even after.
#FeedbackMatters.
So, how was your interview? Would you see yourself working there? Gathering your honest feedback after your first encounter with the company is important to us. If you didn’t enjoy the experience, we can always go back to the first step and start over, with no pressure.
Time to move.
Now, there are two possibilities. Best-case scenario: we celebrate together, share the excitement, and keep each other informed until and during the big move. Otherwise, we focus on the areas for improvement, and prepare the next application… time for another opportunity!
Better together.
We will be proud matchmakers by being the ones connecting you with your new company and we want to know all the details about it! Give us a call, drop us a quick email and share your new experience. We just can’t get enough of these amazing reviews our candidates left for us after their recruitment experiences with Blu Selection.
Are you ready for your next job application?
Did we answer all of your questions about the job application process? If we missed any points, feel free to let us know by contacting us directly.We are here to tell you everything about our positions’ requirements, offer details, company size, culture, and tricks to rock your interview, as well as your next destination’s best spots. No surprise. With expert insight into the current job market, up-to-date information we gathered from previous candidates in similar roles, and recent changes in the dynamics of recruitment, we will provide you with every information you need, even share our own experiences as ex-pats working abroad. Consult and challenge us to learn more!
