All About Job Adverts, When To Apply And The Success Rate

Jobs in Kenya come to you in different ways. You’re good and trusted friend can decide to forward you a job vacancy at their firm. You might be a member of a professional body who regularly send job vacancies to their member’s i.e. ICPAK for accountants or IHRM for us in Human Resource.

However, for most of you out there the only way to know a job exists is through the Daily Nation Newspaper or through Career Point, Brighter Monday, Kenyan Jobs and other wonderful Kenyan websites all offering the latest Kenyan jobs and vacancies ( Some copy from Career Point, but thats a topic for another day)

As a job seeker have you ever asked yourself how vacancies come to be? If you do understand then it will completely change the way you make  job applications and hopefully raise the chances for you to get called for an interview.

Let’s take a scenario of your average Kenyan company who have a vacancy for an accounts assistant.

Regardless of the way you got to know of the job vacancy many candidates assume the company just decided to contact Nation Media yesterday for the advert. Shock on you my dear sister/brother. The job advert has gone through alot of stages.

I will take you through the various stages of the recruitment process.

Most Kenyan companies have independent departments. The Chief Accountant is in charge of finance, the HR manager handles HR, and then you have the MD or General Manager depending on the complexities of the company.

Now, when a vacancy arises in finance it’s the work of the Chief Accountant to inform the HR of his requirement and the candidate he has in mind. Maybe the accountant wants a CPA Part one or even section six, aged 25 and below, tall, skinny, fat…whatever are his or her requirements he or she furnishes the HR with the details.

This is where it gets interesting. If you had sent your CV to the company earlier on even when no position was advertised the HR manager might decide to call you for an interview and save the company time and money if you have the relevant skills and level of expertise. At this point it upto the HR to make the decision. On the other hand if you had sent your CV to the finance manager or chief accountant and he likes your CV it would be advantageous for you since you might be the only candidates he recommends for an interview. And as you and I know it’s very easy to convince someone when the competition is drastically reduced.

Lesson number one. When sending blind applications don’t send to the HR rather the department you have an interest. But for Gods sake, dont apply to the MD. These top dogs have alot on thier plate and the last thing they want is distration.

Assume the company has no CVs in their database. The HR Manager can ask staff members to forward CV’s from their friends and the interviews follow. Lesson number two. 50% of Kenyan jobs are filled this way. You won’t see these jobs adverts at Fridays Daily Nation  or even here at Career Point etc. Learn to network and keep your ears on the ground. Loosely translated, networking is what Kenyans refer to as kujuana and it works like magic.

If the first two options don’t work then the company decides to advertise for the post either through the websites or Daily Nation.

For a job Candidate this is not the best option. From a HR position I can tell you a simple job advert will attract all manner of applicants. One accounts assistant job will attract applications not less than 2,000 (more so when the aplications are through email). Some are qualified, some have the right qualifications but few have the right combination.

Faced with such many applicants the HR manager gets creative. He might just decide to read the first fifty applications and everything else gets tossed to the dust bin or deleted for email applications. Lesson number three, Make your applications soonest possible. By the time the recruiter or manager goes through the 75th application he or she is already bored and more so if he gets qualified candidates with the right skills along the way. So you who wait for the last cut off date to make applications despite your impressive CV may not have your application even opened thus losing out on the job. My advice, make application the soonest you get to know of the advert. (Some lazy HR managers do the reverse, they wait untill the closing date and start shortlisting from the last to the first)

The reason why I said newspaper jobs or vacancies known to all are not the best is because of the level of competition. The whole of Kenya has seen the advert. And this is where you’re CV and cover letter counts. At the end of the day these are the only two documents representing you. It’s important then to make sure the two are selling you proper.

Don’t be like many candidates who just remove their usual cover letter, edit the companies contact details and add the REF PART. You need to pay attention to your key skills making sure it’s a match with whatever the employer is asking.

What are you’re thoughts? Comments Below.

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