Online applications are long and demanding to fill in. To come out with smart answers for those tricky questions is not easy. This post might give you some advice.
Let's assume you have chosen about 20 or 30 companies you would like to work for and let's assume they offer the positions you are interested in. To make it simple let's also assume you are interested in graduate programmes I mentioned in the last post. Now what? Now you have to apply for those programmes and companies using online application. Unfortunately these applications are very long and demanding. The good thing is that the companies are not very creative and ask you the same questions again and again so you can became really efficient in filling in those applications. When answering most of the questions you don't have to be very creative since it asks you only details about you - where you live, what have you studied and so on. But there is one tricky part, that usually asks you these types of questions:
- Why do you want to work for our company? - you should really explain why you want to work for them and answer "You are big and offer lot of money" won't do. If you want to successfully answer this question, you really should find reasons why to work for them and support it by a real world experience. Here is an example for IT position in KPMG:
"During winter semester 2006 I had an opportunity to work as IT consultant for a GreatITCompany Inc. and I simply loved the work – we worked on interesting project with smart people – and since then I am convinced I would like to work for a consultancy company. Last month of my studies I had an opportunity to see presentation of KPMG on my university and have several friends working in KPMG, who recommended me your company. To sum up: I want to work in consultancy company and KPMG brand is the most appealing for me."
- Why are you interested in the position you are applying to? - again, you have to have a clear idea why you apply for that position. You should do extensive research about what the position is about and try to link what they offer to what you want and support it with your real world experience. Example for AXA Graduate Programme:
"I am passionate about IT since I was a grammar school pupil. This is why I decided to study Applied Computer Science for my bachelor and Information System Design for my master. After graduation I would like to use my theoretical knowledge gained during studies in real life. I am convinced that Graduate Programme offered by your company is the best opportunity to do so. I believe that Graduate Programme will allow me to gain wide experience and build a strong skills base not just in IT but also other disciplines. I also want to stay business oriented and that is the reason why I apply for IT position in non-IT company – to experience how IT supports business from inside. After finishing Graduate Programme I would like to stay in your company and develop my career further."
- There are several other questions asking you about your greatest achievements, team work, time you have to help somebody etc. All of them ask you about giving real world example, so do not try to bulls**t, you should really give them example and to make it trustworthy you should provide some details (when did it happen, where and what was your role are the basic ones).
Hints
- do research about company you are applying to, use not just their web pages, but also wikipedia.org, news.google.com etc.
- try to answer honestly, but little exaggeration is OK :)
- spell-check is essential
- and if you use one answer for more companies (you should not do that but everybody loves CTRL+C and CTRL+V), check if you changed the name of the company!
- Choose the companies you really want to work for and apply for them later! You should start with those you are not that interested so you can practice. I my case, start with IBM was really bad idea :-(
Useful links
- vault.com - useful source of information about companies; you have to pay for access :-(
- http://www.wikijob.co.uk/ - very useful, for free, you really should have a look at this one; unfortunately focuses mainly on Big4 and other consultancy companies
No comments:
Post a Comment