How To Write A Speculative Application: And 5 Big Ideas

Why must we wait for the jobs that excite us most to come to us? How many times do we stumble upon a job that looks great but whose deadline is mere minutes away? Or read avidly through a description we’re loving to get to the bottom and see they expect to receive applications by February 2014. 

It’s dispiriting. It’s passive. 

But does it need to be? Can’t we go to the organisations we most love and advertise ourselves to them? There’s almost an entire industry of nonsensical metaphors encouraging us to do this. If you see a bull, they tell us to grab it by the horns! If there’s a bullet hovering in front of you… we’re encouraged to bite it! If you see (or even recognise) a grindstone, we’re advised to put our noses to it. It makes very little sense but we get the point, we can go out there and make things happen ourselves, be the captains of our own destiny.

However, we can quickly lose confidence, surely companies would just advertise the jobs they need and won’t be open to speculative offers? What if they don’t reply or what if I’m not successful? Well, even when applying for regular advertised jobs, only one person succeeds. The odds are always pretty tough. 

But what we don’t consider is how impressive a speculative application can be, how much that bull likes having its horns grabbed, how much the bullet enjoys being bitten. Get out there, cross a rubicon or two, find some feathers and get ruffling! Here is how…

Who do you like?

This is where the exercise gains importance beyond its stated goal of finding you a job. It forces you to think and search for who you’d absolutely love to work for. It helps you see patterns, envisage a future you want, show you what is important, and highlight areas in your skills that you might need to bolster to get to where you want to go next. 

Think about whether you’d like to work for startups, or maybe companies tackling the environmental crisis, work for innovative food & drink companies, work for B Corps, or charities, NGOs, or fully remote companies, there are so many options. Though if you want a handy list of the 100 best companies of 2022, check out our Escape 100 list for 2022.

What are you asking for?

If you don’t know exactly what job role you’re offering, or what skills you’d like to use then make sure you define them. You don’t want the company to have to put much thought or effort into imagining where they could fit you in, this will just put them off. Come up with a recognisable and well-defined job title, project or particular aspect of the company you’d like to work for and explain exactly how you could help. Even if you have a recognisable job title such as ‘marketing manager’, ‘operations executive’, or ‘HR professional’ it is worth showing where you think you could help them out and how you would do it. Point out the problem and show how you could be the solution. 

Energy and passion

This is your USP as a speculative applicant, passion and engagement are very important for purposeful organisations. However, don’t just assume your enthusiasm is solely implied by a speculative application, get across just how and why you love the cause.

Research

This is vital, as it is a speculative application you can not just follow a job description or outline your skills in a general way, you will need to convince them that they need you.

Get on their website and gather as much information about the area of work that you specialise in as possible. Look back at past campaigns, their Linkedin accounts, look for their news coverage or simply how their website and brand look. This is possible no matter what area you work in, immerse yourself in what they’re doing and consider what could be done better, or what opportunity they aren’t taking. 

CV 

Your CV for a speculative application can follow the same rules as when applying for an advertised role. Want more CV advice - look here.

Big Ideas

As there is no live role being advertised, the speculative application allows you to be - and demands you be - as creative and attention-grabbing as possible. You have to impress. If anything, this necessity often gets you to raise your application to a much higher level. Alongside your CV and a short cover letter why not consider doing something truly eye-catching. As there are such a variety of job roles we can’t get too specific here, but let’s have a look at 5 ways you could make a real impression on your dream company. 

5 ways to stand out with your speculative application



Create a product

You’ve looked at their website and work, and you’ve spotted something you think you could improve on. Now is the time to go and show it. Rather than simply talk the talk, go out and build something, bring them something tangible that shows your skills. This doesn’t have to be a physical product, think about your particular role and consider what you could build that showcases your talents. It could be drafting policy, conducting research, something physical, or it could be designing something. Consider what would be most impressive to this company. 

Write a blog post

If you’re in marketing, content, communications, or anything creative, you can show them your skills rather than just tell them. Go to the effort to write a brilliant article to demonstrate just how engaging and interesting your writing is, and explain how you could grow their audience and engagement. Consider writing in their brand voice, or if you are suggesting a new way of communicating, then ensure you explain this clearly. 

Provide feedback on a feature/campaign

If you’ve identified a problem or an area that you believe you can improve then demonstrate this. Providing feedback on a feature, product, service, campaign or similar can be slightly risky as it’s important to get the tone right. However, if you can demonstrate what you liked about the campaign, and how you think you could improve it, then this can be a strong way to show what you could bring to the company. 

Redesign their homepage/website

The website is absolutely vital for every company, all visitors to it make dozens of different decisions and assumptions about the brand almost instantly from surfing their website. Organisations know this. If you’ve got an eye for design, or some skills in Tech, why not go ahead and provide them with a demonstration of how you believe their homepage should look, explain why you’re making the modifications you are, and show how this helps to better communicate who the company are. 

Bring in new customers

If you’re in a sales or a business development role and you think the company could do more such as target a different audience or use different channels, go out and do it. There could be nothing more impressive than bringing new customers or a new strategy to provide more customers/users/clients. Proactivity is highly thought of in sales, go and out and wow them with it. Alternatively, you could draft a cold email campaign to generate new leads and acquisitions or draft a campaign around a new product or service they have to demonstrate how you would promote it.

And finally

The main takeaway is to try and STAND OUT. Do something different, go a little beyond the call of a normal job application. The process can be really enjoyable, far more rewarding than simply seeing how many generic CVs you can send out in one day. If you like it, then there is nothing stopping you from taking this approach into advertised roles as well. Just because it may be a necessity for speculative application doesn’t mean you can’t also knock their socks off when they’ve posted a job advert. 

If you enjoyed this why not read Should I Quit My Job And Do Something New: Part 1 which focuses on career changes and becoming a digital nomad and part 2 which looks at the startup route. For a deeper dive on How To Craft Your Personal Story For A Career Change read here.