How not to apply for an Internship – 4

Imagine you wake up one day only to find that the small number plate that you had outside your hostel room is disappeared – a very minor incident you would think. Now imagine there is a new postman in the area who has come to deliver your eagerly awaited interview call letter – the letter has your name on it and your room number as your address. The problem is that the postman is new and all the rooms look exactly the same – how would he know which room to knock on? He randomly knocks on a few, asks for the intended recipient of the letter, receives the answer in negative, gets frustrated,  leaves, and returns the letter to origin stamped “Address not found”.

I faced a similar situation when I was trying to find a resume or two to make examples of how to or rather how not to write CVs. I went to the folder where I had downloaded the CVs that I had received in response to the web development internship at Internshala. This is how the folder looked –

I just could not locate the students’ CVs that I was looking for. Most of them were named as “CV”, “Resume”, “MyResume” etc. – I bet that, looking at the picture, even the student who had applied to this internship can’t tell which one is his or her CV.

This again is a turn off for a recruiter. As a candidate you are not making it easy for me to find your CV at a later stage for future internship opportunities. Also it takes exactly 5 seconds to give your CV a proper name (<your name>_<your college name>.doc could be a good way) – how much effort is that? If not much, then why give the employer the impression that you are not a serious candidate. The devil, my friend, lies in the detail and its paying attention to these small details is what may help you stand out amongst the rest!

Hope this helps.  Have something to say, ask, critique or know of an internship opportunity that you would like others to know – post it right away! If you like what you read here, please do tell another friend.