In the last blog I talked about personal statements and university applications. This time I’ll focus more on job applications and CV writing, this is something you’ll almost definitely use at some point in the future. And trust me CVs are a tricky one to get right and not least because they have a bit of an odd convention when it comes to length…
A CV should always have full pages and realistically you don’t want more than two pages or the person reading it will probably lose interest. For a “Scientific CV” (you’ll use this if you’re an Engineer/Chemist/Physicist etc) one page would probably be too short as your CV needs to include any relevant training/lab experience/practical work you’ve done and this can take up quite a large amount of space. If you were writing a “Creative CV” (you’ll use this more for jobs in Art/Media/Graphic Design etc) one page may be sufficient as these CVs are typically accompanied by a portfolio of some kind to show off some of your work. For other types of CV it’s a little more flexible, however, if you think you’ve covered all of the bases and expressed yourself well but you’re sitting at one and a half pages then you need to decide whether you can cut a few little bits out to get down to one page or whether you can add more detail and build up to two pages. I’d personally recommend aiming for two pages as that’s a nice full CV and you’ll have shown what a well-rounded person you are.
For me, the hardest part of CV writing is knowing what’s actually relevant! On my first few CV drafts I was always being told to add more extra interests and sell myself more but in my head I couldn’t see why a prospective employer would want to know that I play bass guitar, for example. The main thing to remember about CVs is that it’s all about the transferable skills. Take playing bass guitar for example, I didn’t just pick up the guitar and know how to play it, I had to learn and practice and that takes DEDICATION and PATIENCE, also I had other things to do whilst learning bass guitar such as school work so to fit all of those things into an evening I had to be a GOOD TIME MANAGER. Suddenly something that I thought was pretty irrelevant to my CV was providing me with three different skills and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Another part of the job application process is interviews. Some people love them, some people hate them. Personally, I’m pretty much on the fence when it comes to interviews; I’ve had some interviews which I’ve thought were fantastic and other ones which were… less fantastic. The question that will almost always come up in an interview is “tell me a time you’ve demonstrated…” this will then be followed by a skill such as “good time management” or “the ability to overcome adversity”. These are pretty much the bread and butter questions of any interviewer so it helps to have thought through some of these before and have a rough idea of what you’re going to say. If you freeze up in the interview don’t be afraid to stall a little with something like “Oh yes, good time management, let me just think on that for a second”, that way you’ll have time to think of what to say and it’ll sound much more composed! Also, don’t try to make something up; at best you’ll end up looking a bit stupid, at worst it could ruin your chance of getting the job.
Whilst you’re on placement you’ll most likely have some studying to do outside of work hours. Next time I’ll provide some tips on how to juggle a full time job as well as hitting the books.