What not to do when applying for a design role in a company

Illustration from Blush.design —Messy by Pablo Stanley

In this difficult time, I know a lot of people are looking out for better opportunities, are eagerly waiting to get into a job. So I thought of writing this post as every day, I receive 100s of resumes for referring them into the companies. So here I am putting down things that you should avoid doing when you are sharing your resume with a recruiter or sending a message to apply/refer for a position in the companies.

1. Don't make your resume fancy, make your portfolio fancy. Your resume will mostly be uploaded in the company’s portal that has limitations like file size should be less than 2MB, it auto reads your phone number, email, etc from your pdf resume. So make sure you have a proper, neat, and crisp resume that can be uploaded into the system without much effort and manual entry of your details from the person who is uploading it.
2. When you are sending a message on Linkedin, Email, or a chat to the person, with your introduction, make sure you highlight for which position you want to apply, how much experience you have, attach your resume and portfolio with that mail, refer to the post. Don’t ask the other person to review your profile and see if you are fit for the position or not. You can ask for JD for the posting and evaluate your skills.
3. Don’t just apply, see if you have the experience that is required for that position. As most of the companies portal let you apply for one position or if your resume is already there in the system, when a position that fits you open up, you won't be able to apply for that as there is a cooling period of 3 months or even 6 months in some companies after which you can re-apply.
4. Send a personalized message to the person. Don't send a template with Dear Sir/Madam. Look at the content you are sending, the position mentioned, etc.
5. Don’t call or send messages on the person’s personal number or email without proper consent to get more information about the job role.
6. Mention if you have applied or have interviewed in the same company before. This will let the person who is referring you check the status of your resume in the company’s portal and do the needful.
7. Don’t message every day to check the status of your resume. The person who is referring can upload your resume on the company’s portal but later it goes through a process where it gets reviewed by the HR and the hiring manager and gets shortlisted for further process. So wait for a week or two weeks, if you don't get a call or email, then check with the person who is in contact.

Well, these are a few of my suggestions. I hope this helps you all who are looking out for jobs to get results and land up into your dream job, all the best :)

If you have any questions or more suggestions feel free to put them in the comment section.

Do check out my website: https://www.prateekgupta.me/