Rather than preach … and oh can I climb on my soapbox … let me give you concrete examples of the value I attribute to the job announcement.
Yep, I know, you THINK you read it.
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Lesson 1: What is the real closing date?
Consider the case of OhIAmBrilliant student who makes it a practice to keep abreast of all new jobs and apply to them in a timely fashion.
Yep, she spots a very hard to find job under a different job series than would be expected. This job was advertised for a social media specialist in the 0301 job series. (know your job series will be in another lesson)
She prints it off, saves the announcement, marks her calendar to apply on Monday after the weekend since it doesn’t close until Wednesday as marked in the OPEN PERIOD statement. Oh what a brilliant weekend she will have dreaming about this perfect job that she certainly is a perfect candidate to fill.
OhIAmBrilliant has failed to completely read the announcement and missed the sentence a few paragraphs in that says “Closes on Wednesday or when the first 50 applicants are received“.
OhIAmBrilliant won’t have the opportunity to even apply for this great job because the first 50 applications were submitted as soon as the job was announced.
If only she had read the announcement carefully when she first spotted it!