Transcript

REBECCA

Understanding the sector that you’re aspiring to or applying to is absolutely critical in what I would describe as singularly the most competitive part of any recruitment process, which is the written application – at the beginning of any process. Once you’re past that stage, actually you’re able to show more of your personality and your character. And, of course, you’ll be more committed and engaged in the process, as will the employer. So a whole range of other factors then become much more important.

But at application in written stage, most of your competition who will be applying for the job will probably have similar qualifications, skills, and experience to yourself. And therefore one of the biggest differentiators are those people who can demonstrate real understanding and insight as to the organisation and the sector that they’re applying to. What are the values? What drives this sector? What’s the reality of the job?

CHARLIE

It’s so important to understand the sector that you’re interested in applying for, for many different reasons. First of all, I’d like to say that this is the area that people get wrong a lot and don’t make enough preparations or research into it. But it’s really important, because each individual sector has its own unique challenges that come from the people that work in it, the things that the sector has to achieve, the government policies that affect that sector, the social aspect of that sector. And it’s having an appreciation for those unique challenges that then will put you head and shoulders above other candidates that are applying, because you’ve done a bit of research around it.

You understand, for example, like, the transport sector that I’ve worked in has unique challenges around the demographics of the workforce – that it’s a service delivery that has to operate 24/7, 365 – that there’s a lot of governmental policy that affects the way that business can be done and can be operated. And so it’s having a keen awareness of that, so that the person that’s sitting across the interview table can say, ‘ah, right, OK, this person’s really, really interested in this job’.

REBECCA

There was a piece of evidence produced by an organisation now called Amberjack. They were Grad Web. And they looked at 650,000 data points as an organisation that manages huge volumes of applicants, primarily for graduate schemes. And I haven’t seen it for the experienced hire market, but I have seen it for this particular part of the market.

And they were able to prove a very strong correlation, in terms of the success that somebody will achieve in the recruitment process linked directly back to a question about, why do you want a career in this area? There was a high, high correlation between how well you scored in that singular question and how likely you were to get a job offer. Interestingly, there was almost no correlation between the question ‘Why do you want to work for us?’ and whether or not you were likely to be successful in the recruitment process.

And what that demonstrated, from the recruiter’s perspective, is that what’s really important is somebody’s drive and ambition to start a career and develop a career in that particular sector or area as a profession – much less so about whether or not they want to work for you or one of your competitors. So, for me, understanding your sector and understanding your profession – there’s proven research that there’s a direct impact on your ability to be able to get the job.