Mistakes were Made: Applying for My Dream Job

Oh boy, did I screw up.

I've been drafting and re-drafting this blog for a while now. Whenever I had a spare second or remembered a classic blunder from those early applications, I'd make a note. Write a paragraph. I was all good to go & shoot this baby off into the universe. I had a nice little intro about how I was totally unqualified for the first position I ever applied for and...

Then I saw it.


My. Dream. Job.


I think every museum professional has that one place they'd drop everything to work at. Perhaps it's where you did a traineeship. Perhaps the collection really suits your interests. Perhaps it's somewhere you loved visiting as a child. I'll let you imagine what mine is. Only days before had someone asked about my aspirations and I replied offhandedly, "Work at [Insert Dream Here]." Days later, that throwaway comment had become a tangible possibility.


When I first saw this position advertised, 1% of me didn't want to go for it. I didn't want my fantasy to be crushed by the brutality of recruitment. Fortunately, the other 99% was already typing away at the keyboard and ticking off points on the person specification. Wanting this to be the best application I could muster, I tried to take no risks: I contacted double the number of referees I needed and sent draft after draft after draft to anyone who'd read it. I even took my rather bulky laptop on a train so I could work on this application on the go.


Two weeks and lots of anxious museum dreams later, I was ready to press submit. Although I tried to remain pessimistic about the role, I couldn't deny how hard I'd worked on polishing off my application. As much as I focused on the critiques, I couldn't ignore when proofreaders said I looked like a great candidate. Could this really… happen?

All that was left for me to do was copy and paste my application into an online form & press submit.


Huh, that's weird.


The text isn't pasting for some reason. Perhaps I forgot to press Ctrl? ...nope, it's definitely on my clipboard. I'll re-highlight the text & give it another shot.


Why's it only copying half my text? The word count was hugeee; I know I haven't exceeded it. What was the word count agai - Oh.


"Character count".


Oh no.


The seemingly limitless space I had to sell myself was, in fact, quite small.


It's hard to explain how I responded when I realised my critical error. I think I swore loudly before entering some sort of editing trance. More than half of my work. Had. To. Go.


I skimmed the text for shorter synonyms. Chopped out strong but waffly examples. Shortened each heading I'd lifted from the person specification. The headings won't matter, right? It's not going to look like I'm deliberately omitting criteria, right??


I felt more like a student than I ever did during my undergrad, chopping and changing an essay the day before the deadline. After maximizing my time writing this application, I'd left submission to the last minute.


Writing this now, I feel some sort of weird shame. I think putting everything into words is releasing my pent up emotions about the position. I need to remind myself the whole thing wasn't a total shambles: I filled out several boxes and only screwed up one. Revisiting my submission with calmer eyes and it doesn't read as diabolically as I imagined. No one who sees my application will even know about my last-minute crisis: the worst I'll be is a weak candidate.


It's just... When you want a job so badly in a competitive sector like this, it feels like you can't make any mistakes.


I'll learn from what happened: whenever I see "word limit" on a future application I'll triple check I've not misread "maximum characters". I'll also create a hard rule to finish my applications 48 hours before submission, rather than 24. Although I had enough time to edit, if I make a similar mistake in the future, I want to have more time to deal with it. Foolish errors come easy when you're panicked. And I know this isn't the only job out there: already, I've found a similar vacancy that would do me fine. It's just a bummer that I could have done better.


I'll let you know how the application goes.

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