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Getting an internship after you graduate May 15, 2012

Posted by Andrew Falconer in : Marketing, Publishing, career profiles, employability and skills , add a comment

Internships have traditionally been targetted at penultimate year students but increasingly graduates are seeing them as a useful means of gaining professional experience. Indeed The Careers Group has a specific internship programme open only to graduates.

At a recent conference for employers, the benefit of having a graduate internship was stressed by Middlesex University alumnus Abdul Ahad who undertook an opportunity with Dennis Publishing. Abdul had already undertaken paid positions in other organisations but decided that he needed a career, not just a job.

In this video Abdul explains to an audience of employers and professionals why he found his graduate internship so valuable.

Thinking about changing your course? May 3, 2012

Posted by Kirsti Burton in : Finance, The Careers Group Blogs, further study and training , add a comment

Originally posted at QM Jobs Blog

At this time of year  it is normal to feel anxious about your progress.  Exams are fast approaching and you may feel that your current course is not the right one for you. Perhaps the reality of your course did not meet your initial expectations? Or perhaps you chose your course because of parental pressure?

What should you do?

Why do you want to change course?

1.  You are struggling academically.

Talk to your tutors. There may be extra courses you can take to help improve your grades in certain areas. They may be able to resolve your problems by giving you extra help.

2. You feel a different course would be better suited to your career.

Come to see us in Careers (WG3 Queens’ Building) to talk about this. Most jobs are open to students from all degree backgrounds. Employers look for candidates with the right skills, experience and motivation for the job and are often they are less concerned about the subject you studied. Employers also value work experience. Think about getting some work experience in the career area you are interested in. Not only will this be valued by future employers, but it will also help you decide whether it really is the right career for you.

3.  You do not enjoy the subject area

Think carefully about why you don’t like the subject. If there is just one aspect you do not like, you may be able to change modules while staying on the same course. Have a think about what aspects of the new course you particularly like. Remember that rather than changing courses completely you may be able to take a joint honours course.

If you remain certain that you want to change course there are several things you should do:

How do you change course?

1.  Speak to a tutor and some students from the course you wish to change to.

This will give you a good insight into what to expect from the course and will help you to justify the change to your department.

2. Make an appointment to go and speak with your academic adviser.

You should have been allocated an adviser  (a staff member in your department but not necessarily someone who teaches you) at the beginning of the academic year. This is the person to discuss this with.

3. Visit your student finance centre. Remember that there may be a financial implication is you change course. The Student Loans Company may reclaim money if they feel you have been overpaid. You should discuss this with your Local Education Authority (LEA).

If you still wish to change course:

1. Go and speak with The Head of Department for the course you wish to join.

There may be conditions attached to the change. Some courses have prerequisites and you may need to take additional modules or undertake additional skills training in your spare time before you are able to register. You may also need to apply again through UCAS.

Remember that if you would like an impartial chat about your options, or are worried about how your change of course might affect your intended career, book an appointment with one of our Careers Consultants.

Our Careers: Charity administration April 23, 2012

Posted by TCG Info in : Our Careers, career profiles , add a comment

Kings College London careers adviser Emma Baker continues our series of posts about our former careers.

After graduation, I wanted to travel and spent two years working in temporary administration jobs between trips abroad. I eventually decided it was time to get a ‘proper’ job. I wanted ain HR job for a charity as I didn’t want to work for a commercial organisation and I had enjoyed the HR related module of my degree.

I knew that lots of charities advertise with the Guardian so I started looking for jobs on their website. It soon became apparent that as I didn’t have any HR experience, I was going to have to start as an administrator. Many of the jobs were advertised through agencies that specialise in charity work so I contacted three that I thought would be able to offer the kind of work I was looking for. I sent them my CV, where I put my temporary jobs at the top to demonstrate my experience in administration. All the agencies wanted me to go and meet them to talk about the kind of roles I was interested in and I found I had to be quite assertive about only being interested in HR as I think they would have put me forward for any admin job to get their fee!

Two of the agencies started sending me details of jobs they thought I would be interested in and I agreed to have my CV sent on to the companies. One of the agencies just didn’t get in touch and I found I had to keep ringing them to remind them I was still looking. I was shortlisted for interview with a few charities. It seemed that competition was much tougher for international aid charities than for less popular UK based ones. I found going to the interviews a really good way of getting a feel of the culture of the charities and there were a couple that I didn’t think I would have enjoyed working for.

I was eventually offered a job as HR Administrator for a national charity supporting people with addictions. Although some of the administration I was doing was repetitive, I really enjoyed the HR work and in particular the training and development work. I had a great relationship with my manager and he made sure that I had plenty of opportunities to try new things including delivering some training. The charity also paid for me to do a training qualification. After a couple of years, I felt I had enough experience to apply for a more senior role as a Training and Development Officer.

Powerpoint kills good presentations April 19, 2012

Posted by Andrew Falconer in : Skills and Competencies , add a comment

A good presenter should not need powerpoint or any visual aids. A good presenter should be able just to talk at the audience. Both of these statements are, thankfully, wrong. A few weeks ago I blogged on how to make wonderful presentations and commented briefly on the use of visual aids.

A presentation can be taken to a whole new level with the right visual impact. People learn in different ways. Some people need writing or imagery to make sense of a subject. A good presentation will combine speech with effective visuals.

There are different applications you can use, each with their own pros and cons. You do need to consider the equipment available to you though and make sure your files are compatible. For example, prezi requires the use of flash – something that can be restricted on work computers.

Powerpoint

Powerpoint receives a lot of negative comments, probably because people have had to sit through tedious presentations that have failed to use it properly. Done well, powerpoint can be a powerful tool to add to your presentation.

There are thousands of free templates available online for use. These usually provide a range of slide styles that you can customise. For example, if you are presenting to a potential employer it might be useful to customise the colours to reflect the corporate identity of the organisation. The template has to match the occasion – professional, informal, complex, quirky.

Animation in powerpoint is more than just the page transitions. With a bit of self-learning, you can create different effects that will highlight your content.  In addition to audio, you can embed youtube video so you don’t have to switch from powerpoint to your web browser. There are many external applications that you can use to further enhance your presentation – for example Perspector will add 3D shapes to your slides.

There are so many web tutorials available to coach you through different aspects of powerpoint and how to avoid pitfalls. Once you have finished you can upload your presentation to slideshare and add an audio commentary to make your presentation available to everyone.

Open Office “Impress” is a free open source application similar to powerpoint. It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of the Microsoft product but does keep getting better and better. Well worth investigating.

Prezi.com

A web-based alternative to powerpoint, Prezi is becoming popular although perhaps not in all board rooms. The style is much more fluid, informal and perhaps organic compared to the structured approach of powerpoint. There are times where I would use prezi over powerpoint, but vice versa too.

Because prezi is web based you do not have to panic about losing the file on the way to that important interview. However it does give you the option of downloading it for use off-line too.  There aren’t so many templates to get started with but the option of starting from scratch gives you much flexibility. You can also embed images and video much more intuitively than with powerpoint.

Flash

Prezi is Adobe Flash based. Flash gives so much scope to those creating visual aids for presentations. However it does require a level of technical knowledge that may be beyond the interest of occasional presenters. Companies will often contract out their presentation design to firms that will use Flash to create an impressive animation.

Apple Keynote

I love what I have seen of Keynote. It takes powerpoint to a new level. There is however a compatibilityy issue and if you use Keynote for a presentation make sure they have the right hardware to run it on.

To give you an idea of its capability: (how can you not be impressed?)

It is important to be realistic though. These videos have been made by professionals and typically you would not be expected to make presentations at this level. These presentations may also be stand-alone and are the whole presentation, not a visual aid to complement your talk.

However spending time to develop your visual aid skills to enhance your presentations. There are many tools with a variety of benefits, some that may be compatable with powerpoint. Visual aids can add so much value to your presentation. With some time you can ensure that your audience need not suffer death by powerpoint.

The CV journey April 9, 2012

Posted by Kirsti Burton in : The Careers Group Blogs , add a comment

Originally posted at QM Jobs Blog

You have painstakingly prepared your CV or application form and clicked send. You imagine an employer receiving it, perusing what you’ve written and then emailing you back. You wait. You wait. You hear nothing.

Sound familiar? It’s a common experience and a frustrating one. So too is the experience of sending in an application form you have spent hours over, then receiving a rejection almost immediately.

So what’s actually happening to you CV or application form once you click send? We’ve done a survey amongst a small sample of employers to get the inside perspective and combined this with known trends in recruitment to bring you the following insights.

Once you click send…
Your CV or application form lands in a (probably very) busy recruitment team. It will join a large number of others awaiting screening. It’s unlikely that someone will look at it straight away.

If this is the case, why did you get a rejection reply so quickly?
That’s where technology comes in. The employer may be using screening software to sort applications and reject automatically those that do not appear to meet key criteria (e.g., academic results, technical knowledge and employability skills). This software is being used in more and more cases, although not all. None of the employers in our survey were using software for the first stage screening. However, all are using specialist software to store and process applications through the recruitment process.

Aren’t employers missing some great applicants by automating screening?
That may well be happening, but with large numbers of strong applicants and pressure to reduce recruitment costs, that may be a risk worth taking. To avoid being the one who gets missed, make sure your CV contains terms which directly link to the competencies and qualifications needed for the role. These will match the search terms in the software and make your selection more likely.

So it’s just about matching some key words really?
It’s much more than that. The full content and presentation of your CV and application matters a great deal. As one recruiter fed back to us “I believe candidates do not feel that attention is paid to their CVs…This is not true… some do spend the time both at screening and throughout the process to read the CV fully.”

Impact matters.
How long do you imagine a recruiter will take to read your CV fully? A trained eye may view it for 60 seconds (or less!). You need to make an impact in that time. The same goes for application form questions which are often competency based. “We … read through the answers to the competency based questions to look for good examples that the candidate has given and score these”. So it’s not just about having an example, but having a good and clearly set out example (e.g. of team working) to make sure that your evidence can score as highly as possible.

Is it only Human Resources who read my CV?
No. Our survey showed that people from the business line (i.e. those working in teams you may join) are also involved both early in the selection process and, of course, later if you proceed through to interviews. They will be sent copies of your application materials and have read them, so expect to be able to back up what you said!

What happens to my application once it’s all over?
“If the candidate is successful then the CVs, application forms and any other information about the candidate will be passed over to HR to store in their personnel file. If the candidate is unsuccessful, their details are stored separately to the main database as we sometimes find that candidates may come back to us in future to be considered for other positions. All candidates are informed that their details will be kept on file for future vacancies.” This survey response is typical of many employers. A couple of points to note. Firstly, remember that a previous application may be looked at if you apply to the company again. Be consistent. Secondly, when successful for a role, your application information will be kept on file and could be referred to at any point, so think twice about being ‘economical with the truth’ in your content.

Read more in the Wall Street Journal about the journey of a CV from a US perspective

Group Exercises for Assessment Centres April 9, 2012

Posted by Kirsti Burton in : Selection Process, The Careers Group Blogs, employability and skills , add a comment

Originally posted at QM Jobs Blog

Group exercises play an important role in assessment centres because they allow recruiters to see how well you perform and communicate with others as part of a team. The most common type of exercise is a group discussion where you need to tackle a given topic with other candidates, whilst being closely observed by the assessors. Here are some things they will be looking at:

Your Contribution to the Discussion

How You Interact with Others

How You Helped the Group

At the same time, the employers will be looking out for negative behaviour which can impact the group as a whole. Be sure you avoid:

If you want to know more about group exercises and assessment centres, visit our website or drop by our office to pick up some resources. You can also make an appointment to talk about your assessment day with a careers consultant. Just come to room WG3 in the Queen’s Building or give us a call at 020 7882 8533 to book a session.

Raluca – Maria Cherejir

French and Politics student 

Our careers: Occupational Therapy April 5, 2012

Posted by TCG Info in : Global Careers, Languages, Medicine and Healthcare, Our Careers , add a comment

Careers Adviser Vinny Potter had an ulterior motive for wanting to become an occupational therapist. He continues the “our careers” series of posts.

As a child I was very immature about my career choice. When I was 5 I wanted to “be a millionaire” because then I could “go round the world in a speed boat.” When I was 10 I wanted to make a lot of money “building beds for hospitals” because “the man on the telly always says there is a bed shortage in the NHS.” Fortunately I grew up and when I was 17 I had a proper idea of what I wanted to do. I wanted to be an Occupational Therapist. Was my decision based solely on mature forward thinking and careful career planning? No. As a hormonal 17 year old teenage boy I wanted to study Occupational Therapy because “The course is 97% female and I can meet lots of girls.”

Getting into the job was relatively simple after the first step. I just filled in the UCAS form, wrote a personal statement and due to a shortage of Occupational Therapists nationally at that time, as soon as I was accepted for a place, I was then on a path straight towards a job in the NHS.

Fortunately despite my wayward reasons for choosing the course, it suited me very well. I was very fulfilled by the knowledge I was really helping people. Occupational Therapy is not necessarily about getting people better, but is really about increasing people’s function and independence. Having such a large impact on the quality of life of patients was a major plus. I enjoyed the problem solving aspects of the job as well as the fact that I could apply my knowledge of anatomy and use my hands to make splints and other functional equipment.

There were some downsides though (as with every job – none is perfect!). I found some of the responsibilities of the job very stressful and I often worried about patients after I left for the day. The balance of the job was also not what I expected. The amount of paperwork, not just writing copious medical notes, but also recording activity data took up a huge amount of time, leaving much less time for actually treating patients. I also found it to be far less creative than I was led to expect.

As with many graduate jobs, the first couple of roles I had were more boring and more stressful than the ones which came after. I tried out different roles and managed to get promoted quite quickly. I moved into a specialism which I enjoyed a lot. I was quite happy that I could stay comfortably in the profession for the rest of my career.

It was at this point when my wife put a spanner in the works and got a job overseas. In my time living in Pakistan and then Cameroon, I moved further away from Occupational Therapy and took an a huge variety of different jobs including English Teaching, Disaster Relief, Emergency Planning, Project Management and eventually to my current role in Careers. Who knows where I might end up in another ten years.

Finance Industry Insight: what is interdealer broking? April 2, 2012

Posted by Kirsti Burton in : Finance, Finance & IT, The Careers Group Blogs, city jobs , 1 comment so far

Originally posted at QM Jobs Blog

In careeers you get to find out about new areas of work and new job titles all the time. These come about because of the way industry has to respond to the rapidly changing world.  A friend of mine is a Social Media Monitoring Officer. These jobs didn’t exist a few years ago! Sometimes it can be hard to find out about what particular or specialist job involves, because there is so little information out there. One question we had recently was about interdealer broking. This is what we found out:

Interdealer broking is about bringing buyers and sellers together to execute a transaction.  In this field there are two kinds of broking: electronic broking and voice broking (human brokers).  With the electronic broking the most common deals are FX-transactions ? these are foreign exchange transactions.   It?s easy to buy and sell on the FX market.  For more complex products, you need a person to negotiate before an agreed transaction can be reached.  In these instances voice broking is used.  For example, if two banks were to trade with each other the interdealer voice broker would transact the bond based on instructions receive from the traders at each of the banks.

Due to the recent financial crises there is a lot of new legislation around transparency, which the industry will have to adapt to, as well as greater obligation to transact through electronic mediums.  Technology evolving rapidly also means that the broking industry has to constantly adapt.

Jobs: Top 5 web platforms to get noticed on March 27, 2012

Posted by Andrew Falconer in : Selection Process, employability and skills , add a comment

Do you know your plaxo from your digg? Is Facebook still “where it’s at”? Non-plussed about Google +? These questions are hard enough when keeping track of your social life, but need a lot of thought before being used as a job-hunting tool.

With so many different web platforms to choose from, which are more effective for raising your profile and getting noticed by a prospective employer? The difficulty is that these platforms change, develop, grow or collapse. Putting all your eggs in one basket is probably not the best solution, but focusing your efforts on one or two and having a stand-by is more realistic.

First of all, why bother? Well I have already posted on why it’s worth bothering about LinkedIn but it’s worth looking at the issue more generally. According to Jobvite, in the USA nearly 90% of companies are planning to use social networks to find job candidates, up from 83% a year ago. This trend, I suspect, would also been seen in the UK. Social media tends to be cheap, very easy to target and fast.

When you’re thinking of social media you need to think about your target market. What do they use? Not every industry will use the same sites, and different sites are more popular in different countries. Do your research.

So our Top 5…. (more…)

Going digital – The future of working in marketing… March 22, 2012

Posted by Kirsti Burton in : Marketing, The Careers Group Blogs , add a comment

Originally posted at QM Jobs Blog

Are you interested in working in marketing? Marketing has moved far beyond billboards, magazine ads and radio and television commercials. Like everything else the marketing industry is getting increasingly digital and data-driven.  Marketing is all about finding the target audience and increasingly, like you reading this now,  marketing has moved online. Advertisements can be found cleverly woven into blogs, social media sites, emails and text messages.

What does this mean for your future jobs?
As marketing becomes more and more focused on digital content, the marketing industry is looking to recruit people who have experience and a clear understanding of the potential of digital marketing. Being able to understand and target your particular demographic via Facebook, blogs, and Google searches is now a crucial skill for many marketing roles. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a fancy name for where your website ranks in Google searches. Companies of all sizes are spending a lot of money to ensure their website ranks high and grabs visitors.

Digital marketing also gives marketers endless data to analyse and use in order to target their key audiences. Google Analytics for example,  can tell a business who looks at their website, what they looked at, for how long and when (among many other details). Marketers use these details to target their campaigns like never before.

How do I get digital marketing experience?
The plus side of digital marketing is it’s not just for the big brand names. Companies of all sizes are using Google Adwords or Facebook ad campaigns to get their businesses recognised. Google Analytics is free for any website. Any organisation or person can create a Facebook, Twitter or blog. Employers will be impressed if you’ve done any online marketing for clubs, societies or events. If you are working part-time at a shop or restaurant you can always ask them if you can help with their social media or website.