When trying to land your dream job, there are many factors that come into play. Depending on the job, you may have to get into a specific school and a specific program to even be competitive. You also might find yourself in a market that is full of people just like you, so you are trying to find out how to make yourself different than the other thousands of business or engineering students that are getting ready to hit the workforce. What if there were one factor that made you stand out more than others?
Scenario One
It’s your senior year of college. Time is running out. All your friends are landing jobs across the country and you are starting to panic. The job market is saturated with students just like you and you don’t know how to make yourself more than another online applicant. As time seems to be running out, you begin expanding your search for jobs. Now you’re moving outside of your college town and hometown and across the state. You then start to think about all the places you thought you might like to live someday. You start searching for jobs across the country. Now, without even meeting your potential employer, you must sell yourself as a top candidate for your dream job.
Scenario Two
You and two-hundred other applicants show up to test for a job with only a few open positions. As you flip through the test, you realize that the last section of the test is an essay.
Both scenarios were real scenarios for most students. Finding out that you have to write an essay will either make you feel sick to your stomach or make you feel like you were just handed the chance to rise above your competition.
Writing is not just answering a questing on paper. It is one of the most effective ways to demonstrate your ability to think critically and communicate well. It is also one of the most common vetting tools used in the job market. On paper, being a smooth talker, a sharp dresser, and all the theatrics that go along with a job interview are put aside. This is your chance to project yourself into words. You have time on your side to carefully think about your word choice. You can outline your thoughts and change your answers.
As employers are expanding the breadth of their applicant pool, essays, specifically explanatory and discursive essays, are becoming a more common method used for vetting top candidates. Many people think that to master essay writing you have to be a human thesaurus, but what employers actually want is clarity of thought, fluent writing, and critical thinking. You must be able to organize thoughts and express your ideas in a coherent manner.
Whether you are working on an online essay as part of a job application, an admissions essay to the school you think will give you the best shot at your dream job, or hand writing an impromptu essay while testing for a job, learning to command the written word will set you apart from your peers and could very well be the factor that projects you into the academic or professional program of your dreams.
