These 9 little tricks amaze every HR manager

Let’s start with a small estimation question: How long do HR managers take to look through the application documents? Twenty, ten or five minutes?

Everything wrong: Significantly less! On average, it is just 48 seconds, according to a survey of HR professionals by the online job exchange Stepstone. The number shows: Applicants must stand out from the stack of application folders right away – otherwise every effort is in vain.

Even those who fit the search profile, can show professional experience and have been abroad for several years are far from guaranteed an invitation to an interview. The salt in the soup is therefore the creativity that applicants show when formulating and designing their documents. What matters? We have compiled nine useful tips.

Applicants only want to show their best side. After all, career advisors keep preaching that you should only focus on professional and personal strengths in your CV. Instead of “I can’t get a straight sentence in English” we dutifully write: “I have a good knowledge of spoken and written English”. The indication of weaknesses can also bring in valuable plus points.

Career consultant Svenja Hofert For example, he dared an experiment with a customer, a commercial manager in his mid-40s: the section “What I can do” in the CV, which lists the strengths, was supplemented by the section “What I can’t do” by the applicant. “Presenting yourself, programming, speaking French fluently,” he stated there.

The result: Around 25 percent of the 50 HR managers addressed invited Hofert’s customers to an interview. In comparison, more than in classic applications with the sole specification of strengths (15 to 20 percent). In addition, there were consistently positive reactions in the subsequent conversation, says Hofert: “The HR managers were surprised by so much honesty.”

We usually know cliffhangers from crime novels: With one or two short but crisp sentences at the end of the chapter, the reader is forced to turn the page. But in an application? What was that nonsense doing there? After all, advice guides keep telling us to stick to formal standards.

Nevertheless, HR managers can also work with a cliffhanger amaze. How about the following sentence, for example: “You want to know how I managed to steer my China project to success in a critical phase? You can find out more in my attached project list.” The clou: A sentence like this can be convincing, especially in a cover letter, where as much information as possible has to be accommodated in a small amount of space. It strengthens your profile and sticks in your mind. Two crucial requirements for an invitation to an interview.

You can also make use of literary tools for a creative application. Ideally the same in the first sentence of the cover letter. The journalist and language critic Wolf Schneider advised: Start fiery!

So: Instead of boring HR managers with phrases like “I read your job advertisement in the Wittlager Kreisblatt with great interest” or “I hereby apply for a position as an office clerk”, applicants should rather come straight in with the door and show: I know everything about the company and fit perfectly into the position you are looking for!

Nora Feist from the PR agency Mashup Communications provides a great example: In the first sentence of the cover letter to a job advertisement, an applicant replied: “Facebook junkie? Head of Headlines? Social media addict? Bingo! Enthusiastic and curious as I am, I feel magically attracted to Mashup’s innovative and groundbreaking profile and I am highly motivated to become part of your team.” Oh yes: It is important to remain authentic in the formulations and to remain motivated in the later interview convey credibly.

A creative application goes beyond cliffhangers and fiery first sentences. Above all, the otherwise so standardized CV offers many possibilities for creative design thanks to countless templates and templates. Instead of a simple table, how about an infographic that stylishly visualizes previous stations?

of services prezume for example, transforms the CV into a horizontal timeline. Once linked to the Facebook or Linkedin account, the individual stations and qualifications are illustrated as colorful bars. Valuable plus points can be collected in this way, particularly in the creative sector.

However, the application expert Branko Woischwill advises only using such a timeline for unsolicited applications in order to open a first door. It is then sufficient to indicate that you are happy to submit the classic documents later.

“Applying is advertising” is a common motto among career consultants. And that’s true: After all, it is important to convince the desired employer as best as possible not to fill the advertised position with anyone other than your own worker. Applicants should therefore not shy away from presenting themselves as a brand in the application folder – ideally with a slogan.

The explanation is very simple: triads such as “sheer driving pleasure”, “Vorsprung durch Technik” or “Nothing is impossible” have stuck in our minds. Applicants can also use this trick. The slogan must reflect what applicants have to sell and what they can offer the employer of their choice. The slogan should be catchy but not overpowered.

Example: “Cook – home cooking – cost-conscious‘ or ‘Doer, leader of the pack, human’. Ideally, applicants place the slogan prominently on the cover page, right next to a chic photo. It is important that you really represent and sell the communicated values.

He called it the best application he had ever seen. When Airbnb founder Brian Chesky saw Nina Mufleh’s application, his enthusiasm knew no bounds. The applicant applied speculatively for a job on the accommodation portal and published an online résumé that was visually reminiscent of the Airbnb user profiles. There, the applicant explained in great detail why she wanted to work for the company.

Of course, applicants do not have to program a complex website right away. It is often enough to adapt the application to the corresponding corporate design. A friend recently applied to a market research company and used the company’s website to design their cover, resume and cover letter. The corporate colors and parts of the typography were adopted and even the slogan was tailored to the individual. He received an invitation for an interview.

An unsolicited application can often attract a lot of attention – but that’s nothing compared to the approach that career coach Raghav Haran uses recommends. His tip: Instead of trying to get an interview with pages of application documents, applicants should submit their own project that matches the advertised position.

Such a “pre-interview project” could look like this, for example: Anyone applying for a position as a sales representative could sell some of the company’s products on their own and record the successes, including the chosen marketing strategy, in a document. For a design position, the applicant could do some concept art beforehand and explain how he/she came up with it. “Do the job before you get the job,” Haran summarizes the idea that has been described in detail.

In career networks like Linkedin, they are one of the most popular functions: references, i.e. short letters of recommendation from former employers and colleagues. They increase the credibility and highlight other previously unnoticed qualifications of the profile owner. As on the profile pages, job seekers can also make a good impression in the application. Simply ask some of your ex-colleagues for a short three-liner that highlights your greatest strengths from their point of view. You can then place these references in your CV, for example.

Even if it comes across differently in many job advertisements: no employer expects the jack of all trades. Every applicant can improve somewhere and acquire new skills. But that’s not a bad thing.

On the contrary: Applicants can use this supposed weakness to their advantage if they make it clear to their dream employer in their cover letter what they want to improve in the future. You would like to have even more knowledge of using a software program or a foreign language ? Do you still need a special management seminar or do you think speech coaching would be useful? Then write that down in the application. Anyone who is open to further training earns additional plus points from the staff.

This article was updated on July 12, 2023.