Helping You Get Interviews By Tailoring Your Cover Letters To Specific Job Applications

It’s a fact that generic resumes and cover letters don’t work. Your prospective employer wants to see that you’ve gone to some effort to create your job application. If you give them a template and general cover letter, they are going to see it a mile off, and might even feel resentful that you’ve wasted their time even reading it.

You can’t be general in your resume or your cover letter, but at the same time, you can’t include so many details that some are perceived impertinent.

Professional cover letter writers are bound to be familiar with the book “Don’t Send a Resume” by business expert Jeffrey Fox. In it, Fox claims that the best letters in response to job advertisements are boomerang letters. These are letters that essentially flatter the person who wrote the ad by echoing its words and intent, effectively mirroring the ad. If you do this, employers are likely to think that you fit the description or that you get what they’re looking for.

There are 3 key points I want to share with you today on how to tailor a cover letter to a specific job application:

• Address it to the right hiring manager – This certainly specifies your application to a particular company and, oftentimes, even position.
• Discuss your interest in the specific position – If you highlight relevant experience, list appropriate skills, and talk about your reasons for applying for the job, then you can put employers’ minds to rest that it’s not a generic letter.
• Mention your connection – There are cases when namedropping isn’t obnoxious and this is one of them. If you have a mutual friend or if you met somebody from the company at a job fair, mention it to make your own connection.

Customisation is the name of the game.  You’ve got to customise your cover letter to each job application.
If you have a cover letter written by a professional resume writing service like ours, you can still use the cover letter; just sure you use these key points to make the content job application-specific.

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If you are looking for work within Australia, then you’ll benefit from reading these resume tips.

How to Write a Resume for Australian Job Market

Australian resume formats put major focus on key words, key skills and are achievement based.  

What we mean by that is that a professional resume is targetted to one type of job, and ensures that all the key competencies and work skills are outlined.

To get an interview in Australia, you’ll need to give an example of how you have delivered the types of results that your future employers will be expecting you to do.

Australian employers evaluate candidates on their past behaviours and results.  Aussie hiring managers will still call your referees to ask questions about your character, values and general attitude while on the job.  But more importantly, they will be calling your references to ensure that what you have stated on your resume is accurate.

If you want to make a professional looking resume yourself, you’ll need to think about your work history, and how you’ve generated positive outcomes to your clients, colleagues and the companies you have served.

After you have decided upon the best resume template to you (you can see our resume examples by searching the Power Resume Writing Services’ website), the content is the most important aspect that will be considered and scrutinised by employers:

The more senior you are in your career, the more they will want high quality information about:

• The challenges you have faced to meet company goals
• The obstacles you helped the company overcome
• Difficult situations and clients you have dealt with
• Ideas you put forward to increase productivity
• Major projects you have worked on that led to a positive outcome

How to Write a Resume for Australia

 

Your Key Responsibilities

Hiring managers and recruitment consultants are interested in finding the purpose / value / contribution of what you did, not just the tasks you undertook or the duties of your jobs.

Recruitment consultants will have recruited similar positions on numerous occasions and will be familiar with the main duties of the job. Therefore, spelling out your duties can be a waste of space.

The reader is more interested in the level of your accountability and the purpose of what you were or are doing. They want to know what you were or are accountable for ensuring or achieving in undertaking the tasks or duties comprising your job. We will delve into the purpose of the role and ask how you have provided benefit to the organisation.

 

To get the conversation going, we will probably ask you:

1. Why does this role exist?
2. what value does the role bring to the organisation?

 

This level of information helps prospective organisations understand what you were required to achieve in the job. It helps them to understand the level at which you were working.

If you provide the reader with information at this level, it will help to differentiate you from other candidates because most people do not go to this depth. It will provide organisations with greater insight about your abilities and the level of responsibility you have had.

It will help convince organisations that you have what it takes to do the job, and have thought through your value to the organisations with which you have worked.

 

Your Achievements

To create an outstanding resume, we recommend at least 2 achievements for each of the roles you have been engaged with over the last 5-10 years.   These can be obstacles you have overcome to meet your key responsibilities or accountabilities or challenges  you and your team have faced in order to meet organisational goals.

Ensure each Achievement explains the three vital elements:

1. What you did
2. How you did it
3. The result / benefit / outcome /impact / value of what you did

Achievements are things you did which added value, made a tangible or noticeable difference and contributed to the business of the organisation.

They are not skills you learned, abilities you developed, knowledge you gained or awards you won.

It will also help to outline the Scope / Context regarding each of your Achievements

If your achievements are quantifiable, don’t just provide dollars or other raw numerical data because these are not very meaningful until they are put into a context. For example, if you increased sales by $250K from last year, this might be impressive if the company was a $1m a year enterprise. However, if the company was a $1billion a year business, a $500K increase is not nearly as impressive. Therefore, express increases in sales, decreases in costs, increases in market share and other changes to an organisation’s key performance indicators as percentages or fractions.

If you improved customer satisfaction to 90%, or if you increased on time in full delivery to 95% or if you reduced machinery downtime to 1%, indicate the previous period’s figure. This provides the reader with an understanding of the magnitude or scale of the improvement. (For example: improved customer satisfaction from 75% to 90% within 12 months by …… ).

If an achievement is not easily quantifiable, you can still provide a meaningful indication of the value of the achievement. For example:

‘Reduced duplication and enhanced the re-usability of test suites by improving testing and planning through discussion forums which enabled team members to share knowledge and identify areas for improvement.

If you were not the person wholly or fully accountable for an achievement, indicate your role or contribution to it.

Saying you  ‘participated in’ or were ‘involve’ in something is not sufficient.

An employer will rightly ask the question: “What was your role? What was your level of participation?”

Avoid weak and vague terms and phrases. Make your achievements as concrete and explicit as possible, while not getting bogged down in excessive detail.

It is useless to provide information about awards  without explaining what you did to achieve it.

They want to know what you did to earn those awards or what you did with what you learned. That is, if the company awarded you, the reader wants to know what you did to earn them. If you have learnt new skills, the reader wants to know how you applied them to the benefit of the organisation.

 

Contact us  on 1300 979 980 or email info@powerresumes.com.au to find out more.

 

Want to Update Your Resume for Accounting Roles?

Are you seeking to take the next step in your accounting career?

If so, you’ll want a professional resume that uses the latest keywords and phrases, so your job application is even considered by employers.

If you’re a smart job seeker, you’ll already know thatto stand out from other candidates, you need a highly effective professional resume that highlights your core skills, knowledge and experience within accounting, finance, compliance, and/or auditing.

Any good accounting professional has a high attention to detail, can effectively analyse data, and will ideally be results focused.   If this sounds like you, you’ll want to emphasis certain work experiences to showcase your competencies and natural problem solving abilities.

 

Check out our Accounting Sample Resumes Australia below:

 

A powerful resume will articulate how your experience will bring a benefit to your next employer.

A professional resume should immediately promote your attention to detail, ability to identify and resolve discrepancies, and expertise in a range of accounting practices. The most effective resume will ensure employers also recognize your core strengths and unique skill set in reconciliations, ledger entries, and reporting. As advocates for the job seeker, Power Resume Writing Services will craft interview-winning documents and employ leading strategies that ensure you can accomplish your career goals.

Energise your accounting or auditing job search with confidence; lean on our expertise and let us showcase yours!

 

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3 Steps on How to Write Selection Criteria Responses

Whether you are seeking to work for your local council, state government, Australian Government federal agency or government funded organisation, you will need to know at some point on how to write selection criteria responses that get you shortlisted for the job interview.

The Government is the largest employer in each State. Each department and agency has different objectives, functions and programs and may deliver services in a variety of ways to the community. So it’s important that you find out what the employing agency does – its’ objectives and functions and how the job you are applying for fits in.

Step 1.  Research the organisation who is advertising the job opportunity

A good starting point is to look at the agency’s corporate website or visit a public library to find out about:

• The agency – look at Annual Reports, Business and Corporate Plans. There may well be a question asked at the job interview to explore your understanding of the agency’s role. If you’ve done your homework, you will be able to impress your potential employer by describing what you understand the organisation does;
• The organisation structure – an organisation chart sets out the reporting arrangements and may tell you where the advertised job fits in. Usually the organisational context will be stated in the Position Description.
• Agency values – these vary for each agency. Public sector values are responsiveness; integrity; impartiality; accountability; respect and leadership.

 

Step 2.  Decide if you are you qualified to do the job.  

Ask yourself these 3 questions:

1. Do I meet all or most of the Key Selection Criteria of the job?
2. Could I do the job with some training – formal or on-the-job?
3. Do I have skills gained in other fields of work that may be transferable?

 

Step 3.   Apply for the Position, writing selection criteria that uses strong examples.

If so, then you are ready to apply. But before you start your online application, make a few notes on all the information you have gathered:

• Summarise the background and skills you can offer
• Highlight your strengths and relevant experiences, achievements and capabilities.
• Highlight relevant achievements from past jobs.
• Address any obvious weaknesses and what training you are willing to do to address these.
• Address each Key Selection Criterion for the job.
• Prepare or update your resume or CV.

Finally, talk to your referees about the job you are applying for and what they will say about you to a prospective employer. 

 

If you would like to find out more about how we can help you to write selection criteria responses,

please call us on email on info@powerresumes.com.au

 

Best Responses to Behavioural Interview Questions

Behavioural interview questions are used by employers and recruiters because they believe that learning about your past behaviour will help them to determine your future behaviour.   This is the sole reason that the majority of interview questions these days are some form of behavioual interview question.

Most behavioual interview questions start with “Tell me about a time when…” – and  the interviewer will want to hear about a recent example where you demonstrated the specific competenty or skill within the last year or two.

How to Answer Behavioural Interview Questions

So the first thing you do when preparing for a job interview is:

1. go to the job advertisement and make note of the top 5 job functions and the requested skills and experience.
2. write down 2 examples of times within your workplace that you have demonstrated these attributes and skills.
3. read through your resume and see what examples are already summarised there, as the interviewer will also be asking you to elaborate on each point.
4. jot down how you would answer the following behavioual interview questions, using the STAR formula.

 

1. Example Behavioual Interview Questions

    

“Give me an example of a time when you make your projects more cost efficient.”

Situation: My role as project manager was to ensure that projects are completed on time and on budget.

Task: My last role involved combining three office spaces into one. With a tight deadline of 45 days, I needed to deal with various tradesmen and contractors from different busiensses, I knew it was going to be a difficult to complete the job in time. I set the goal of having everything completed within 40  days to give us 5 days at the end to make final corrections.

Action: By segmenting the contractors into three groups, I seconded three project co-ordinators to supervise the teams.  This created a more efficient and effective work timetable and kept downtime to a minimum.

Result: As a result, we completed the job on time and reduced costs by 15%. This new way of dividing contractors into smaller teams has now been implemented into standard work procedure and seen a reduction in overall costs.

 

Some of the most popular competencies that recruiters and employers will ask behavioual questions on are:

 

1. Communication –  “Give me an example of how you were able to use your ability to communicate and persuade to gain buy-in from a resistant audience.”
2. Leadership – “Give me an example of a time when you motivated others through difficult times, and how this led to a positive outcome”
3. Teamwork  –  “Give me an example of a time when you had to cope with interpersonal conflict when working on a team project.”
4. Problem-solving –   “Describe a time when you proactively identified a problem at work and were able to devise and implement a successful solution.”
5. Organisation and planning  – “Tell me about a time when you came up with an idea that made a work process more efficient”
6. Creativity –      “Tell me about a situation in which you worked with team members to develop new and creative ideas to solve a business problem.”
7. Analytical skills –        “Give me an example of a recent roadblock and your logic and steps in overcoming it.”
8. Integrity –     “Give an example that demonstrates your professional integrity, for example, have you ever had to work with, or for, someone who was dishonest? How have you handled this?”
9. Accomplishments –     “What are three achievements from your last job that you are particularly proud of?”
10. Initiative – “Provide an example of when you showed initiative and took the lead”
11. Client Management – “Tell me about a situation where you have had to speak with an unhappy customer”
12. Decision Making – “Describe an instance when you had to think on your feet to make a split second decision”
13. Tact – “Describe a situation where you knew your boss was wrong – how did you handle it?”
14. Dealing with Change – “Describe a major change or adjustment to your job and your reactions to the change”
15. Conflict – “Tell me about a time when you encountered conflict in the workplace and how you handled the conflict”
16. Commitment – “Provide an example of when you had to go above and beyond your normal duties in order to get the job done”
17. Working Autonomously – “Tell me about a time when you had to solve a problem with very little guidance or direction”