Now more than ever you must put your best foot forward when applying for a job.  The trap is falling into “job mode” and thinking that somehow churning out a standard resume and a standard cover letter is the answer.  It’s not.  Your goal is to make a personal connection with the person reading your application, to use your application as a chance to tell your story.

How to do this right is not the focus of today’s post.  This one is about error avoidance: here are 20 things not to do on your next job application.  And while this post is meant to be lighthearted, these are all very common and very avoidable real mistakes people make.

1. Ignore the instructions in the job description – late submissions are a plus
2. Hide your personality, especially in your cover letter
3. Make sure 2 out of every 3 sentences in your cover letter start with “I”
4. Make spelling and grammatical mistakes
5. Write such a long cover letter than you have to shrink the font down to 8 point to fit it on one page
6. (And do this with your resume too!)
7. Refer often to “how much you bring to the table” and “how this job is perfect for you”
8. Lie or exaggerate
9. Use fancy, crazy fonts – cursive is a bonus
10. Write a really long resume…4 or 5 pages to show how accomplished you are
11. Misspell the recruiter’s or the organization’s name
12. Append titles to your resume (John Smith_nonprofit resume.doc), to make it clear that you’re applying for jobs in multiple industries
13. When describing yourself, both on your resume and cover letter, refer mainly to tasks.  Steer clear of concrete accomplishments
14. If there are gaps in your employment record, don’t explain them.  Instead, assume the person reading the application won’t notice
15. Describe yourself as “uniquely qualified”
16. Try not to refer to the organization and its strategy and needs.  Instead, keep the camera focused on YOU.
17. Never use bullet points or summarize your experiences in a pithy fashion.  Rather, assume the person reading your resume has 5-10 minutes to spend piecing together your experiences
18. Create a generic list of widely shared skills to describe yourself
19. Use jargon and acronyms as much as possible
20. If your experience is different than what the job calls for, don’t make clear that you know that.  And definitely don’t try to explain why your untraditional background could translate well for this role.

(this post was heavily inspired by 19 Offensive Presentation Techniques on paul’s blog.  The bonus there is the link to a wonderful lecture by Garr Reynolds of Presentation Zen.  In fact, to continue the thought from today’s post, you might want to check out Garr’s post from Monday about how to land The Best Job in the World.  Applicants for that job don’t send in a resume and cover letter; they get 60 seconds to make a video pitch.  As Garr astutely points out, “Remember: the goal is not to land a job in the one-minute video presentation, the objective is to state your case (or make your pitch) and make a connection in such a way that you can land one of the interviews.”

So here’s the question: is there a single substantive difference between the dream job 60 second pitch and every other job you apply for?  I didn’t think so.)

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