4 Lessons From My Ongoing Recruitment Exercise

I want to share a few lessons from the ongoing recruitment at MyJobMag.com

The 4 week contract job is for a Data Entry Officer (Youth Corper). The job description was posted online on our online job site at exactly 7am this morning.
As at the time of this writing, 1.19pm, we have a total number of 91 applications.
The shortlisting has started as it is an urgent position and job description taken down.

Find below vital lessons to learn from this exercise.

1. Speed

The saying "delay is dangerous" can be said to be true for almost everything in life including job search. As a jobseeker, procrastination may make you miss a job and this is clearly illustrated here. Please, do not tell me that you missed it because "the job is not destined for you".

 Since the open position does not require any special skillset, we received 91 applications in less than 7 hours of posting. This may equally apply for other jobs that do not require special skills and experience.
So, what are you waiting for? Push out your application for that job right away!

Oh, we have closed submissions for the data entry position in 7 hours contrary to our initial July 24th deadline. Hope this gives you an extra reason to apply now.

2. Break a few rules

Disclaimer: You need wisdom here. If you lack wisdom, please move to point 3.

Considering that the Data Entry contract position is a basic one, we decided to peg the remuneration at N30,000 (Thirty Thousand Naira). This we believe is too little for a University graduate. Putting the aforementioned in perspective, we decided that we will prefer a Youth Corper that can quickly get the job done.  

Does this mean that we cannot recruit an OND graduate or awaiting service or even a graduate for the 4 weeks? The answer is NO. We only felt that the N30,000 can only make sense for an intern or corper.

This illustration can be further extended to other scenarios, such as:

• An accountant with ability the use two accounting software.
  If you are an excellent accountant with the requisite experience and can use one accounting software, you may consider applying for the job.
• The company requests for 5 years experience, and you have 4 years requisite experience. Please go ahead and apply. Just do your best to convince them that you can do the job.

Now, back to my disclaimer. Please, do not apply if:

• An accountant is required and you are an engineer.
• A man is required and you are a woman
• Minimum of 10 years experience is required and you are a fresh graduate (No prayer and fasting can help you here).

I am sure you can think of other scenarios where it may be near useless to apply. I decided to add the "near" to the impossible to ensure someone does not come up with "nothing is impossible".

The summary is: as a smart applicant, you need to understand the tone of the message. This will enable you know what is considered a deal breaker or optional.

3. Follow Instructions

Now, point 2 and point 3 appear contradictory, right?
Please, think again because they are not!

Not following application procedure is wrong.  The job description clearly states: "send application", over 50% of candidates that applied forwarded blank emails with their CVs attached. Seeing such makes me feel that you cannot write or you are just spreading your CV "as usual" or you simply think it is not worth the extra effort.

We also requested that the subject of email be "Data Entry".  Sadly over 30% did not follow this.
This is obviously a bad sign. Some emails had "FW: " as part of the subject. Do you think a recruiter needs to know that you are just forwarding an email?

4. Little things matter!  

It amazes me how jobseekers send in CVs with a blank body. I consider this simply ridiculous.
No greeting, no introduction, not even a reminder that you have your CV attached.
To buttress my point, we did not go through CVs that came with a blank body at all.
The question is this: Why go through a blank email when I can see better applications? Why go for a mediocre candidate?
You need to change the "lazy mentality".

Job search is a project and should be seen and handled as such.
Quit being regular and lazy (sorry for being harsh).
Determine to get your dream job fast.

Wish you all the best.

Further Resources

• Accounting Jobs in Nigeria

Staff Writer

This article was written and edited by a staff writer.