Workshop: CV writing skills.

Review

The final workshop in the series was dedicated to the writing and production of higher quality and more effective CVs and covering letters. This was achieved by focusing on avoiding common mistakes, cliches and pit-falls. We were given sample CVs and covering letters of varying quality to critique and analyse and asked to rank them in order based on how good we thought they were.

At the end of the session the group mutually decided which were the most important criteria for creating an effective CV, those criteria were:

• CVs must be succinct yet cover enough relevant information.
• Information on the CV must be a truthful and honest representation of yourself.
• Make sure to utilise all relevant experiences, drawing from different areas to demonstrate key skills.
• CVs and covering letters that are tailored to a specific role or position are more likely to be more effective than a ‘shotgun approach’.
• Be sure to include up-to-date contact information.
• To only include relevant information for the application.
• Include covering letters (where required).
• Covering letters must show interest and be a short summary of why you are applying and what you can offer.
• Be certain (I have, I can, I will).

We believe these criteria will make a CV more effective and more likely to be remembered when it comes to consideration for the position applied for.

Opinion

I found the session to be useful and engaging as I have written many CVs already in my life (with varying successes). Being given advice from people within industry on how to stand out and make become more employable in today’s job market is a useful skill to have.

Career

I feel that this workshop will help me in my career as it will hopefully make the transition from education to full time employment much smoother and will hopefully lead to me being more successful when applying for jobs in the future.

Workshop: Careers Café.

Review

The second workshop in the series offered us, the current students, an insight in to life after university in the form of a question and answer session involving a panel of graduates who were all either in employment or involved in post graduate education. Two members of the panel were enrolled in post graduate research, one in teaching and another in the behavioural studies of wolves, the remaining members of the panel consisted of ex-Biomedical science students who had since found work in the microbiology labs in a local hospital. The session focused on making the transition from university in to the workplace or further study, each graduate highlighted the key skills that they required and needed to demonstrate to potential employers and advice on how to gain and demonstrate these skills.

Opinion

I found the workshop useful to me as it was interesting to hear the views and the experiences of people who were in a similar position to myself and that had successfully made the transition from university via a number of different routes of entry. It was useful to hear first hand about applying for masters degrees as I had previously found available information to be unclear and sometimes misleading. I also found it encouraging to see the success of previous Bangor University graduates.

Career

I believe what I learned in the workshop will be of use to me when applying for jobs as I will personally be taking a post graduate masters in the coming academic year, as did some of the students on the panel. I found the advice regarding funding and searching for post graduate positions closely linked with potential jobs particularly useful.