Michelle Coulson

As a rule of thumb, after you have submitted your application, if you have not heard from the recruiter or hiring manager in two weeks, you should send an email to follow up. If you’ve spoken to someone, wait 1 week and contact them as a follow up. Post interview, you should send a nice follow up message within 24 hours. Then send another follow up email if there's no response in 1+ weeks.

Using keywords to optimise your CV can improve your chances of landing an interview. Where to include these keywords? - Job Titles Look at the different variations of your job title. Ensure that the job title on your CV aligns with the terminology of the company you are applying to. - Skills Brainstorm the language you use to describe both your hard and soft skills, ensuring it speaks the company's language. - Experience Spell out your years of experience. For instance, if the job requires three years of experience in X, make sure to explicitly state in your summary that you have this experience. Knowledge & Qualifications - Make sure you’re explicitly using the terms from the job ad—don’t come up with your own terminology.

Instead of sending 50 applications a week, send 5-10 and spend 20-40 minutes on each one, personalise the cover letter, tweak your CV (slightly) and take the time to stand out for the RIGHT Reasons!

Sending in applications to every remote job you see that somewhat fits your experience and interests can hinder your success. You should be intentional about how you approach your job search and applications. - Be clear on your best fit role and your top industry of interest. You should first do a self-reflection to compare, contrast, and clarify which career path (or which next step) you are most confident in pursuing. If you still have many options for roles or industries after reflection, it means that there is more more reflection to do.  - Build a list of your top companies within your target industry. This way, you are actively staying focused only on the companies you know you would be happy at.

Cover letter is a great way to explain your lack of direct experience and to still convince the company why you are right for the job. For example you can include something along the lines of: “Despite not having used Salesforce, as your job ad specifies, I have used similar CRM systems such as Hubspot and know, having picked up new systems quickly in the past, I won’t have any issues navigating this. I hope that my experience and 100% match for the other job requirements will be taken into consideration in spite of this minor knowledge gap.”

If you're looking for a remote job, I would suggest to use remote-first job boards such as Himalayas, Jobgether, No Visa jobs e.g. as opposite to traditional job boards. To be efficient and effective with your remote job search, come up with a list of ‘Remote job boards’. Choose 5-10 job boards that align with what you’re looking for and add to a job search spreadsheet. Set up search alerts for all. Set up search alerts on 3-10 of the job boards with the job titles/ sector you’re targetting. Book time in your calendar. Allocate at least 1 hour once a week to check 3-5 job boards where you cannot set up alerts. Save them all to your job search spreadsheet then block out time at least once a week to apply.