I’ve written about why we don’t write selection criteria before.
We recently had a prospective client seek our help to apply for a fairly senior management job with a major airline. It carries a salary of around $110,000 and up.
We give advice and help with the editing of selection criteria, so the document is sharp and compelling but we don’t write them.
It’s unethical and employers and recruiters can tell the candidate got someone else to write it. That’s not good at all. In fact, it’s ‘see ya later’.
The airline HR assessment team really wants the client to answer the selection criteria from their own experience and in their own words. They’re trying to gauge what sort of applicant they are.
When our prospective client found out we didn’t write them, he ‘went shopping’ for other writers.
On his tour of Google, he will have met a sea of backyard ‘shonks’ and text ‘cut and pasters’, who will have quoted him $30.00 per criteria.
In his case, he will lay out about $400.00 to get the selection criteria written.
The shonks don’t actually write the criteria. How can they? They don’t work in the Australian airline industry. They don’t have the context and they can barely write resumes.
They’ll copy and paste text from a style sheet. Text used thousands of times before.
Will our lazy prospective client be short-listed for the job? No. Will he be $400.00 poorer? Yes.
Don’t handball your career to shonks. Take ownership and use your initiative.