Q1 recruitment season is coming: make sure your application stands out

With 2010 approaching fast, the financial services industry is starting to finalise graduate recruitment targets for 2011.

Many banks generally begin the full-time hiring process in January and February with applications closing late March or early April. Applications for Macquarie Group's 2011 graduate program (Melbourne), for example, open early January 2010 and close 5 February.

As usual, competition for graduate placements will be fierce. One graduate recruiter says his firm received many hundreds of applications for the 11 available positions for 2010 and expects this level of competition again for 2011 places.

While brains and achievements will help the cause, most graduate recruiters warn graduates to cross every 't' and dot every 'i' to give an application a winning chance.

"Lack of attention to detail, such as the wrong bank name in the cover letter, and basic grammatical/spelling mistakes are regular errors that will count against applicants," says David Holden, recruitment manager, Pacific Rim human resources at Merrill Lynch.

Should you be considering a tilt at Macquarie's graduate program, the in-house advice is that your cover letter is the window to your application and therefore it must make the right impression.

CV length is also critical. In the US, the standard length is a miserly one page. However in Australia, employers such as Macquarie prefer a maximum of two to three pages.

"Resumes should be long enough to include the fundamentals: contact details, education, employment history, awards and achievements, and any extra-curricular activities which may be relevant," says the Macquarie spokesperson.

Addressing your correspondence to the wrong company is another mistake, which won't help your cause. "This is quite a common occurrence when candidates are sending multiple applications to various companies," he adds.

Other errors include failing to specify the area of the business which you have a specific interest in exploring.

Holden, who has seen literally thousands of graduate applications over the past two years, says: "Display your understanding of the part of the business you are applying to. This demonstrates understanding of and enthusiasm for our business."

Another killer is talking up academic skills to the detriment of extracurricular interests. "It is very important for most organisations to see examples of a candidate's outside interests such as sporting/philanthropic pursuits and participation," adds Holden.