Graduate Job Applications: Will someone please just let me get my foot in the door!

Applications are a portal. Despite my use of this pretentious metaphor, the fact remains true. Applications are the doorway into your future career. My industry of choice is the advertising industry and having read a good few blogs on the topic it has become increasingly obvious that a fantastic application is only the very start. Nevertheless, without a great application the metaphorical door is as good as shut. The process of writing applications comes with a few hazards or at least should come with some warnings, so let me help.

1) A half-hearted attempt at an application will not only stand out like a sore thumb, it will be discarded instantly. Therefore, NEVER send an application that you don't think is brilliant.

However, the real hazard when sending off applications, comes when you've written the best application you could ever have created. In the world of advertising, (and many others too I am sure) there are many unusual open questions, "if we were trapped in a lift, why would I like you?" "Tell us your life story in 200 words." "Fill this space anyway you feel necessary." So you pour your soul into your application, you let your personality shine through your occasionally witty, (yet always relevant) words and you send it off. This leads to my second piece of advice.

2) Even the best application you think you've ever done will probably receive and automated "Thanks, but no thanks," or worse, it may be ignored entirely. On multiple occasions I have genuinely believed that there was no way that I could have made that application any better and it still got ignored. So what can you do?

Stop feeling sorry for yourself, man up and take it on the chin. Every application you do will help you make sure the next one is even better. You will always have to write similar sections, from describing yourself, to summing up your experience. Therefore, you will be able to finish new applications much faster. Only after you have been chewed up and spat out by this seemingly harsh process of rejection, will you realise that all the first applications you sent out were rubbish. Finally, before you get yourself too worked up, just remember everyone is going through the same thing as you, It's all part of that organic learning curve they call life.

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