Jobs adverts: The instructions?

Anytime a Kenyan company announces that they're looking to hire, they'll be instructions on how to apply even if nothing more than a sign that says, "Inquire within." Often, they'll want quite a bit more - CV, cover letter, samples, etc. There's a delicate balance involved in deciding just how completely to follow those instructions. 

Here are a few of the important steps.

To begin with, it's important to remember that, whatever the instructions are, they exist for at least two reasons, only one of which is to gather the information the people doing the hiring think they need for deciding if you can do the work. There's another reason, that's at least as important.
It's a test.

Whether you're able and willing to follow instructions is an important thing for anyone to know before deciding to hire you.

There are plenty of bad reasons to ignore the instructions. I can only think of one good one: You only want the job if they're so desperate to hire you that they'll overlook your unwillingness to follow instructions.

In essence, ignoring their instructions turns the test around: Now, you're testing them.

You might think that knowing that they were desperate would give you an edge - in salary negotiations, for example - but I think you'd have a much bigger edge if you went at it the other way around: Follow instructions scrupulously, make the absolute best case that you're the person they want to hire, wait until they actually offer you the job, and then play hardball - on salary, or whatever terms and conditions matter to you. Once they've decided you're the number one candidate you're in a much better position than if you've already got strikes against you for ignoring their instructions.

Here are a few bad reasons for ignoring instructions, with suggested alternate steps to take:

You don't have what they want (no CV, no references, no samples, etc.)

The solution in this case is to come up with something. If you don't have a CV, write one - a crappy CV may get you dinged, but no faster than not sending one if they asked for it. If you don't have references, find some - coworkers or classmates aren't as good as someone who's supervised you, but they're better than nothing. If you need samples, make some again, crappy samples won't get you dinged any faster than no samples will (although, if you can't come up with good samples, maybe this isn't the job for you anyway).

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