If you are a new graduate looking for work, or a student who is about to graduate, you need to jump over to Careerealism and check out their post called 3 Reasons Why Your Application Will Be Put in the Circular File (a.k.a. Waste Basket). Why do you need to read this? Two reasons:

First, it has excellent, simple advice on how to keep from being rejected before you are even considered.

Second, you can avoid situations like the following:

…when I first started hiring interns, an eager application came in my e-mail inbox. The college junior wrote a nice note explaining how he had heard about my internship and then attached a cover letter and resume for me to review.I immediately opened the cover letter and was impressed. The formatting was proper and the sentences were relatively well-written.

But then…. There it was, in the very last sentence – the deal breaker that put his resume sight unseen in the “I don’t think so pile.” He closed the letter by saying, “I’d really love the opportunity to work for Bank of America.” Hmmmm. Last time I checked, I was a online start up company, not one of the nation’s biggest banks.

This is especially painful for me to read, not only because it was an avoidable mistake, but because I did this once myself.

As I was nearing graduation, I started applying to every job that looked remotely interesting. It didn’t really matter if I wasn’t going to be the best candidate, I just applied anyway.

However, I got lazy. I started reusing cover letters, only switching out the basic information. The problem was that as I was mass e-mailing out applications, I sent a cover letter to Colgate-Palmolive. The cover letter was addressed correctly and even referenced the correct open position. However, the killer mistake was that I had missed a reference to Bain and Company (a consulting group) in the body.

Needless to say, I didn’t get an interview.

Regardless of where you are in your job search, check out this article. It may make the difference between landing the job and not even being interviewed.

Related posts:

1. Quality vs. Quantity in Job Applications
2. Resumes vs Cover Letters
3. How to Kill the Perfect Cover Letter
4. The Rules For Electronic Job Applications (From A Real Hiring Manager)
5. Hard Copy vs Soft Copy Cover Letters