We received an email this week from a student at a selective college who’s completed an internship at her school’s admissions office and is looking for summer opportunities in college counseling. She’s doing a lot right. She’s taking advantage of an interesting opportunity on campus. She’s showing initiative to seek out a valuable summer experience. She’s not waiting for graduation to start building a resume and showing potential employers what she can actually do. But everything from the standard language in her email to the noticeably different font in the “Dear Collegewise” had an “insert name of company here” feeling.
Applying for jobs is a lot like applying to college, as I’ve written about before. Sure, some big employers are impersonal in their hiring the same way that some big colleges make decisions based only on grades and test scores. But that’s not true everywhere. And whether you’re trying to get a job or trying to get into college, it helps to notice the difference and to act accordingly.
I don’t bring this up here to be critical of college applicants or job applicants. All too often, the people doing the evaluating don’t make their expectations clear. So here’s a past post on this topic for job seekers, and one for college applicants.