Writing to get a job is one of the most charted courses and beaten paths in the history of formal communication. Most everyone who is employed has done it at least several times, many career consultants earn fabulous incomes teaching people how to do it, bookstore shelves brim with how-to-guides to wow prospective employers, and the Internet is literally bursting with templates of job applications and résumés that can make even the rank tyro sound good to a jaded recruiter.
Young graduates entering the job market actually never had it so good in getting instant help to sell themselves in writing. Yet as many recruitment people know very well, most of them remain totally clueless on how to write a decent and convincing job application.
The main problem, of course, is that most first-time jobseekers are simply not proficient enough in English and its practical uses; many just muddle through until they land a job by a fluke or by accommodation. With so little evidence of competence and confidence in using the language, it’s not surprising that their job application letters and résumés invariably end up in the trash bin.
Even veteran jobseekers who claim sterling academic performance or have excelled in English-language declamation and oratorical contests become babes in the woods when presenting themselves in writing to prospective employers.
Take a look at this particularly disappointing specimen:
Dear Sir,
Greetings!
I would like to apply for the position of English Specialist. Enclosed are my scholastic records and resume enumerating extensive management experience in marketing, advertising and writing/journalism.
You may call for an interview appointment at [telephone numbers] during office hours, or email [mailbox address]. I hope to be of service to you soon. Allow me to produce more than the expected results with minimum supervision at the least possible time—as proven in my past working experience that this [initials of university] graduate is a fast learner, an analytical mind and a goal-oriented achiever in any field he pursues.
Sincerely yours,
(You’re right if you think there’s nothing wrong with its English grammar. But I think you’ll agree that its attitude and tone are far from agreeable, almost condescending and overbearing. No matter how talented and good you are in your line of work, you can be sure you won’t get the job if you wrote a job application that way.) The thing is that we really don’t have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to writing credible job applications. Precisely because prospective employers usually don’t give second chances, we should never indulge in experimentation or fancy semantics. We may be unsure of our English and the proper style and tone to use, but there are more than enough good samples in the job-hunting literature to pattern our application letters and résumés after. They are tried and tested, and there’s absolutely no stigma in using them.
The only thing we must avoid is copying them verbatim in such a way that our covering letters look and sound generic. We must make sure that we are specific about ourselves and our job fit, scrupulously avoiding glittering generalizations that either make us sound like bragging or shooting the breeze with the prospective employer. In a word, we must competently sell ourselves on our own merits.
The appropriate place for enumerating those merits, of course, is the résumé or curriculum vitae; covering letters should only dwell on the qualification most directly related to the job, and only briefly. We also must not imagine that the résumé is an opportunity for experimentation and ornamentation. We can do ourselves better justice—and put ourselves in a better or at least equal footing with the other applicants—by using any of the excellent formats and styles already existing in the job-hunting literature.
Originality in résumés—unless we are gunning for a creative job in an advertising agency or design studio—is rarely prized in the job market. So we should absolutely avoid jazzing up our résumés with fancy photos, screaming colored headlines, bold and strange typefaces, and florid and longwinded self-descriptions.
We must staunchly fight the tendency to embellish our résumés with the many enticing visual tricks that the modern word processor makes available to us. If there’s anything that we should make these electronic marvels do, it is to make our résumés flawlessly readable, consistent, clean, clear, and simple. The key to a successful résumé format is elegant simplicity. What should emerge from our covering letter and résumé is the picture of a reasonably intelligent, levelheaded, and resourceful person who can be trusted to do a good job.
The presumption here, of course, is that we are qualified for the job we are applying for in the first place, so the only thing to prove is that we are a decidedly better choice than the rest of the applicants. For this, we need to make an impression good and strong enough to be called for an interview.
IMAGE CREDIT: JOBS2.DELOITTE.COM/PHBut that, of course, will only happen if the written English we use is just right: confident but not overbearing, courteous but not simpering or subservient, and—most important of all—coming through in just the right tone or language register.
This essay, 358th of the series, first appeared in the column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in the March 23, 2004 issue of The Manila Times
, © 2004 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
