The Secret to Acing a Job Application
Although the years of college applications are long gone, you may still come across occasions where a job, a contest, or a fellowship opportunity sits you down in front of a blank document, with five or seven hundred words to put yourself on paper, and try to get yourself what you want.
The space is blank. At this moment the possible combinations of words are at their most infinite, and one of them can definitely win you this thing. Yet, almost by reflex, your fingers flutter over the keyboard and a familiar string of phrases start to appear on screen: "As a graduate of..." "Long term interest in..." "And that is when I learned that..."
Halt. You know there are 99,999 versions of what you can write that will be eloquent but lackluster, professional but generic, or your credentials may be impressive but just not as brilliant as the one competitor that will squeeze you out. How, then, should you find the right mindset to produce an application you are sure (or as close to sure as possible) will get you what you want?
Over the past few years, I've had my share of experience in applications for educational programs, fellowships, jobs, and miscellaneous contests. I have downloaded the dreaded personal statement document many a time. Often, I have been pleasantly surprised by the outcome-- I got those acceptances or prizes often enough, and started realizing that it may be due to a method in the madness of my applications. You see, at their core, they were not calculated around the notion of ME, though you are told that's what these essays are all about. No, it's all about the people you know will be reading your application. Your goal is not to make yourself sound great and maybe impress them enough that they will choose you. It is about making them want, very badly, to give you what you want. And if you know that your application can successfully create that desire, then you can be fairly sure that you are well in the running for the position you're going for.
Of course, this is a notion implicit in the success of any application: that it makes the reader take a shine to you. However, it is often easy to be so focused on trying to write a decent, impressive-sounding, and vaguely creative statement that you hope that the reader's affection will just be a byproduct of your narrative, and not its very design and purpose. But it should be. Damn it, it’s the whole point of an application.
Without ever straying into falsehoods or misrepresentations, think of yourself as a character and the application a brief version of a novel in which you star. As a writer, your cunning goal here is to instantly make the reader develop a stake in this character. Instead of perusing your application among those of hundreds of others, you want the reader to become invested in your success and want to give you what you are applying for.
When I was a senior and college and impossibly stressed out about perpetual unemployment after graduation, I made the rather stupid decision of only applying for one job. It was for a foreign policy think tank in DC, and the application process was something straight from application hell: a first round of essays, statements, and interviews for the school nomination, another round of statements to become a national finalist, and eventually an interview round to win the competition and the job. Other than actually being a political science major, I had no grand achievements in the discipline that I knew could make me instantly stand out in the competition. I had only one advantage: I had grown to think like a writer and consider all the written materials in the application process components of an enchanting narrative, with my candidacy as a very character the readers are rooting for.
And it worked. Here's the kicker: I didn't even win the national competition when I moved to the penultimate round, but my interviewer created an extra position just to give me a job. I knew I was somewhat out of my depth as I was waiting for the Skype call of the final interview, and it is this one thought that calmed me down: you'll get a job if you make them really want to give you a job. I can't tell you what I said or did precisely, but being in that mindset worked like magic. Yes, I was not even the best candidate, but I had created enough of a desire within the employer to give me what I wanted that I got the same job anyways.
This is my one rule when applying to things now: it's more about the employer/contest or fellowship organizer than it is about you. They have a job, or money, or a prize to give; they are hunting for someone they want to give it to, and you golden ticket is seizing on that desire. Every decent applicant can make themselves sound great on paper, but the winner writes not with themselves in mind, but with the reader in mind. Research your employer or the contest organizer, think about their overall purpose and goals, the specifics of the particular contest you are entering, and look up everything you can about the people who may be reading your application. If you can find any writing they've done, talks or interviews they've given, or even tidbits of interests or personal trivia they've included in online bios, use it in your own character study of your reader. Once you are as familiar as possible with what your interpret as their motivations, personality, and organizational style, think about how you can make this reader become invested in giving you what you want, and treat every part of the application as an opportunity to establish this rapport between writer and reader.
If you write your application with this standard in mind, believe me, you'll have a pretty good idea of whether you will get the position when you hit the send button.
