Applying for a Java job - HOWTO
OK - I’ve just about had it. We have a few jobs (Sydney and New York) open at the moment and as usual the overall standard of applications has been nothing short of appalling.
For anyone out there applying for any Java job, here are a few tips from me (as I sit on the other side of the fence):
1. Your cover letter or email should be in readable English
Poor language in your application letter is the fastest way to get your resume thrown in the bin without even getting read.
Gain experience through a combination of general skills and theoretical
knowledge is my motive.
Get someone to proof read it. I don’t care what your grasp of English is, if you want to have any chance to get a job you have to at least fool the recipient into thinking that you can get through an interview to actually get to an interview.
Insincere flattery and other flowerly language in a cover letter look cheesy - forget it.
“With regard to the job opening In your esteemed Organisation”
“To your humble greatness I submit my application…”
In terms of language, poor English is one thing. Typos are completely another. If you can’t send an important cover email without spell checking it, perhaps you shouldn’t waste my, or your, time?
I beleive that I myself am the best suted and am the ‘Perfect’ match as to what you are looking for.
Sentences like this, no matter how much you believe in yourself, will make it very hard for a potential employer to believe in you.
2. Your experience should be relevant
Generally, people in job ads explain what they’re looking for. You should therefore explain why you suit the role.
If the job is for a J2EE architect, don’t tell me why your knowledge of CSS esoterica is important.
If the job is for a technical support person, don’t tell me why your financial knowledge will help with our accounting!
3. Read the bloody job ad
Yes - this sounds simple, but for some reason people see a job ad, get inspired, fire off their resume and then wonder why the hell it takes them months or years to get a job.
Did you think of actually reading the ad first?
When we have jobs in our Sydney office, we explicitly put “You must be available in Sydney for an interview.” - but despite this hundreds of hopeful people from around the world decide they should send in their resumes anyway. “I can telecommute!”, “Relocations are always in willingness to be undertaken from country X” (for the language tips, read point 2!) etc are not going to get you a job.
We used to always ask for resumes in PDF, HTML or text format and delete any that are Word documents. Now we do read the Word documents because there are so many of them, however we still give those people a small cross against their names for not reading the ad.
I’ve always wanted to ask for all resumes to be typed in pink, just to see how many people actually read the ad. My guess is we’d get one or two per hundred who actually cared enough about their application to send a pink PDF.
Save a few poor bits and don’t hit the send button if you haven’t read the ad thoroughly.
4. Do something, anything to stand out
There are a million people who will apply for any given job with potentially relevant experience. Your task in a job application is to stand out from the crowd enough that you will get an interview. (Interviewing tips may come in a future post!)
Every time we have a developer position, we can get a few hundred resumes. We’re not even going to interview 10% of that number. 50% or more will get cut based on the 3 rules above. Beyond that, you have roughly a 1 in 5 chance of standing out.
How do you stand out? There are plenty of ways to do it, my two favourites:
- start a blog or write an online article - this shows you can communicate and you’re interested enough in your choice of vocation to write about it under your own steam
- contribute to an Open Source project - hell, fix a bug in any project you use then include the project on your resume as something you’ve “contributed to” (if they don’t have a good bug tracker I can recommend one ;))
Other than that you can stand out by clearly reading the ad and responding to its requests,
5. So you have experience, explain it!
If you have had previous jobs, explain why or how your previous experience was good and most importantly - what the hell you did there!
“XYZ Corporation - Developer - Jun 2001-July2004”
Thanks - very useful. What did you do? Did you make coffee for the architect and senior developers? Did you develop the documentation and help files? Did you design a brilliant three tiered, event driven system that blew the previous sytem’s performance away by 100 fold? Tell me!
Oh, and don’t bullshit me. It’s very easy to see.
“High School - 1997-2000.”
“FooBar Technical College - 2001-2003.”
“Massive Bank X - Senior Architect, Guru Developer and Indispensable Team Leader of 100 developers - 2004-Present.”
Doubtful at best, lies at worst. If the rest of your resume doesn’t reflect god-like status, you’re likely to be thrown in to the trash.
Explain your experience, what you did and what you learnt, how you progressed in your career through positions 1, 2, 3, 4, but drop the bullshit.
6. Lose the insanity
“I truly had an experience of that of biting steel!”
I have no idea what this sentence really meant in the context, but it scared me about the person’s previous work experience.
If these tips seem like common sense to you, congratulations you probably have a great job and will continue to have a fulfilling career (if you don’t, tell us). From the perspective of someone who has hired a lot of developers in the last 3 years, sadly they are not.
This post was written by Mike, source: Applying for a Java job - HOWTO
