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Get Your Applications Checked!

28 September 2015 |

If you have not yet made applications, perhaps visit your university"s Career Department and/or meet with friends and family members if they have experience applying to or working in similar firms. They may be able to provide an insight into what firms are expecting from your application answers (their insights will be distinctly less helpful if they work in completely different industries!).

It can be really beneficial to have your applications checked by multiple sources over an extended period (whilst making improvements along the way). You are probably more likely to miss mistakes or structural issues than a person taking a fresh look at your application. People tend to read what they thought they wrote as opposed to what they actually wrote after proof reading their own work multiple times (this is something that happened to me over and over again whilst drafting this handbook and accordingly, I accepted any help I was offered from people willing to proof read sections!).

Career departments tend to offer this as one of their services. As such, start working on your applications as early as possible. In addition, look out for firm presentations on campus that relate to the application process. After all, who better to secure advice from than the firm to which you are applying? You may have to sign up for these presentations in advance, so check whether this is the case. This may also mean that the firm leaves your university with a record of who attended (and who knows, the attendance list may be checked by the firm if you claim in an interview that you had attended). Note that presentations led by societies and career departments can also be really useful.