But how hard can it be to write a CV?!

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On Wednesday I went to a workshop organised by North East CILIP on CV writing, ran by Donald Lickley from Sue Hill Recruitment. The event took place at Northumbria University.

My current boss suggested the event to me (are they trying to get rid of me already?! Joking...) and since it was free and work would pay for the train travel I thought why not? I realised once I moved back up North and began job hunting in earnest that my CV was in a total mess. I'd gotten so adept at application forms and working on how to make them perfect that I'd neglected my CV for a long time. It's very rare that organisations ask for CVs these days, but when I did come across a job that asked for a CV I was completely stuck as to how I would tailor it to their requirements in the advertisement.

When I ran my session at Library Camp North East, somebody said that they use a skills based CV rather than a career based CV and I really wanted to know how I would go about making one of these. Donald's session was very informative and worthwhile and I'm glad I attended. Despite taking loads of advice from my uni careers office and taking advantage of examples and templates they had, Donald's session made me realise that I was making a lot of common mistakes that people make on CVs. For example, particularly in the library profession, we tend to focus a lot on the day-to-day processes at work and our CVs can end up looking like quite a mundane list of small jobs we do, rather than selling our skills to a potential employer.

With a skills based CV, it is easier to tailor your CV to a job application because you can link your skills and experience to a particular person specification. This obviously means that you may have to edit your CV considerably every time you apply for a job that asks for a CV, but from a personal perspective I would much rather do this and send off an excellent application rather than run the risk of not getting shortlisted because my CV is too generic. Another advantage of a skills-based CV is that your chronological list of jobs is kept very short and comes underneath the section where you list all of your skills. One of the reasons I thought my CV was messy is because up to now, there are three periods in my life when I have had two jobs at the same time. This made my CV quite lengthy and anybody just glancing at it and not paying any attention to the dates could make the assumption that I am a job-hopper or cannot hold down a job for very long.

The way you structure your information on a skills based CV would look something like this:

• Name and contact information at the top
• Short, personal profile. Think of it as an 'abstract' of the rest of the information on your CV. About 4-5 lines to keep it concise. I really struggle with writing these and find it's best to write it at the end once you have completed your CV.
• Skills - if I were tailoring this to a particular specification for a particular job, I would probably borrow the terminology and headings from the employer's specification to make it as easy as possible for them to read. Be sure to give names of specific software/systems you use but avoid 'in house' jargon that only your workplace uses. Also, be aware that some of the people involved in the shortlisting process (such as HR professionals) may have no idea about libraries or about the particular skills you have so try not to assume that the employer will know all of the terminology you use.
• Career/employment history - short, bullet points just detailing the organisation and your job title. It's recommended that you only list the jobs from the last 5-10 years of your career. Your skills section will be the part that proves you are right for the job, you don't have to say that you worked in a sweet shop when you were 16! (Unless you're only 18 and that is the last job you had, in which case carry on!)
• Education/qualifications - most recent first. If you're a graduate or postgraduate there is no real reason to list all of your A Levels or GCSEs unless specified on the job advert. E.g. certain places may need you to prove you have a C or above in GCSE Maths and English. If anything like this is specified in the person spec, put it down!
• Further information/hobbies/interests - Be careful with this section: only mention things that might be relevant to the job. E.g. perhaps you are involved in the running of a local choir/theatre group/morris dancing group etc. so have experience of managing the finances or something that has given you skills and experience that fit the job description you are applying for.

Another advantage of a skills-based CV is that you could even forego putting in dates that you got your qualifications so as to avoid potential age discrimination if people think you are 'too old' or perhaps even 'too young'. Of course this is not supposed to happen, and we never put our exact ages on CVs or application forms because of the equality act, but I've spoken to a few people that worry about the fact that the dates they were at school or university gives their age away. People's subconscious bias are at work when they are shortlisting and if you feel uncomfortable putting that you left school in 1978 or that you got your GCSEs in 2007 and you are worried they may think you're inexperienced because of your age, just leave the dates out. In some cases this is not always possible, particularly if you are applying for jobs that require safeguarding measures and need to know what you were doing and when, but for your CV you are well within your rights to be selective with the information you provide. If a potential employer did ask for this information further down the line though, you would have to provide it. The skills based approach may not work for everyone and you may prefer to stick to an original career based CV, but I am happy that there is another option out there that will suit my circumstances better.

Donald also advised that, with CVs, we are tempted to put full details about where we live etc. but this is not always necessary. As long as there is an email address and phone number this is sufficient for potential employers to be able to contact you. If they need a postal address they can phone you to ask for one. Again, this is not supposed to happen, but Donald mentioned that he has known of people not being shortlisted for jobs because employers have assumed that the applicant lives too far away and therefore might not be willing to travel. You would think that someone applying for a job in a different town or city from where they live would mean they are extra keen, but who knows what goes through the mind of those people shortlisting.

And that's half of the problem...if employers receive 100 CVs for one post and only have half a day to shortlist, how much attention do you think your CV is going to get? Probably less than 30 seconds according to Donald. For this reason, it has never been more crucial to fill your CV with the most relevant and up to date information about yourself and ensure that it is easy to read and that the key 'selling points' will stand out. Some further key tips:

• Keep it concise - no more than two pages of A4. Three at an absolute push if you've had a particularly glittering career.
• Font - use the same one throughout and don't go smaller than 10 or bigger than 12 when it comes to size. Use a font such as Arial or Times New Roman. NO COMIC SANS.
• Format - keep it very simple and try not to mess on too much with margins or other fancy formatting in Word. It may mess up if you send it to somebody using a different version of Word or if you're on a Mac and they're on a PC. 
• Don't include information such as date of birth, marital status or a photograph of yourself. Apparently the latter is common practice in a lot of countries in mainland Europe but it's not necessary in the UK.

It can be tempting to think: 'how hard is it to do a CV?' and up until I went to university, I would have been the same. However, since I started seeking help from various career advisers and attending CPD events through work, I've realised how crucial it is to stay up to date with things like this and ensure you're always learning from best practices when it comes to job hunting. In my lifetime the job market has never been more competitive and I always pick up at least one new tip or piece of advice when I attend sessions such as the one the other day. A big thank you to North East CILIP and Donald Lickley for running the session.

First impressions

I'm two weeks into my new job and I'm really enjoying it so far. My first day was also my birthday and my new colleagues had bought me a cake and cards, which was very generous of them. I made sure I shared it with everyone during the afternoon tea break!

This post is going to be very short and sweet, since I only have my first impressions to go on, but I feel like I have learned a lot in a very short space of time. Currently, I'm making instructional videos that will be placed on Blackboard to teach staff at the college how to utilise all of Blackboard's features. This is part of what we call 'Blackboard Boot Camp' to give tutors the chance to train themselves up on Blackboard before the Blackboard audit later in the year. If a member of staff is not using Blackboard to even a basic standard by the time the audit takes place, they will have to undertake further training to 'upskill', since the college is placing more and more focus on e-learning and new technologies. I've learned how to use Camtasia Studio 7 to make these videos and discovered that trying to record voice narration over said videos is more stressful than you would think - especially when there's a lot of building work going on that gets picked up on the recordings! Having to listen to your own voice played back again and again is also a strange experience. I've not always been the most 'techy' of people and learning how to use new software sometimes feels a bit daunting to me, but I've really thrown myself into it. My manager and colleagues are very supportive and encouraging and I think we'll all learn from each other, especially since my role is fairly new. In a way, we're all learning as we go and nobody knows what the outcome will be in terms of the work we're doing this academic year, since it's never been done at the college before.

Students, inductions and self supported study

Once term starts again, I'll be delivering library inductions to students and working shifts in the LRC a few times a week. It's going to be busy and manic in September and October but I think I'm going to really enjoy the varied nature of the role. I'll also be working alongside another colleague to liaise with tutors and create online courses for Blackboard. The college wants at least 10% of Level 3 courses to be delivered solely online as part of a Self Supported Study (S3) initiative, so that students have to work through that particular module/topic independently of tutor-led classroom sessions and all of the content will be delivered through Blackboard. Being a distance learner myself, I think I'm going to find this part of my role very interesting and after reading the reports from the pilot online courses that were ran last year, I'm looking forward to seeing what the student response will be once they are completing these online courses 'for real'. I'll be blogging more about this side of my role once the work is underway and I have more to say.

Views of Middlesbrough College, taken by me!

The future of this blog

When I first moved back 'up north' I wasn't sure how long it would take me to find work, let alone a library related job, so I'd decided that the overall focus of my blog would be around job hunting and keeping my hand in all things library and information related if I didn't manage to get a job in that field straight away. The job at the college came up at exactly the right time, as well as my weekend job at the University of York, so I've been lucky that I have no gaps in my work experience. I am still going to keep blogging around the themes of job hunting and employment issues, studying towards a professional qualification and generally being a new professional. I'll also blog about e-learning and various aspects of my role at Middlesbrough College and also my opinions and experiences of the wider library and information profession. Watch this space!

New job!

It's been a while, and lots has happened. I've got a NEW JOB which I'm starting later this week. I'm going to be working as a LRC Digital Facilitator at Middlesbrough College and I can't wait to start. The role is fairly new and I'll be working with their VLE (Blackboard) and helping college tutors make the most of the resources available. I will still keep up my blog, since I am technically 'trying to be a librarian'. I'll still be studying towards my MSc and I'll be learning so many new things in my new job so I think I will benefit from being able to blog about my library related adventures.

For the purpose of this blog post, I thought I would blog about the interview for my new role. The most stressful interview experience I've ever been through!

The interview

The brief for the interview was to prepare a 10 minute presentation to demonstrate how I would utilise a VLE and other e-resources to deliver a course entirely online. The subject matter could be anything we wanted, so I decided to imagine that I was creating an online history module for an Access course and the topic was Britain in the 1980s. For those who know me well, this is my favourite period of history and the period I focused on for my undergraduate dissertation, so I already had an awareness of a lot of the e-resources that were out there containing material for this topic.

After I'd gotten over the initial panic of realising that I would have to deliver this presentation to actual people (I'd never had to do anything like that for an interview before) I got to work trying to learn as much as I could about VLEs. As always, the library community on Twitter was an invaluable resource for me and I was able to exchange emails with a few people who already work with VLEs who gave me some excellent advice and tips. I was directed to a website called CourseSites where I could sign up for free and create my own Blackboard modules and see what facilities were available on Blackboard. This was great, as I was able to create 'pretend' course information and then use screenshots in my presentation. I was able to use my experience from studying myself (particularly my distance learning course) and asked around people I knew who had completed Access courses to ask about their experience of VLEs and what could have been done better by their college.

I also got a lot of help from a friend of mine who teaches in FE and she helped me put my presentation in the context of an FE environment and link to the current learning objectives that FE colleges are looking for from their course content. Since I've never worked in an FE college before, I found this so helpful and I think having knowledge of what they expect from tutors really helped me sell myself in the interview.

I decided to use Prezi rather than PowerPoint to deliver my presentation as I HATE PowerPoint. I'd never used Prezi before, so having only a week to learn how to use it and prepare all the content was somewhat ambitious, but I figured that a job that is all about e-learning and new technologies involves learning about new stuff all the time. Some people advised me not to take on too much with trying to learn a new technology in such a short space of time, but after looking at various tutorials about Prezi made by people such as Ned Potter, and having seen Prezi in action several times, I knew it was the best tool to use for my presentation. I kept it simple, and actually found it fairly easy to use, which I think is the key with Prezi. Even a simple one is much more effective than a PowerPoint presentation in my opinion. For those who are interested, here is my Prezi!



One of the Padlet images in the presentation is taken from the following Prezi, I hope this is OK and I won't get in trouble! As you can see, copyright law is not my strong point. 

On the day, I was so nervous and had actually been ill for a couple of days beforehand, which didn't help. On my arrival at the college, I accidentally got taken to be interviewed for an A Level teaching position (argh!) but once that was cleared up, I was taken to the right place to deliver my presentation to the panel. This was then followed by an interview and the rest is history!

A new start

So after a long month of waiting for my DBS clearance and sorting out all of the documentation etc. I will be starting my job this week. I can't wait to start and I think I'm going to really enjoy working at the college. It'll be interesting to work in a different type of institution to what I'm used to and will be an excellent addition to my CV. I'm looking forward to getting stuck in.

I will blog more about my new role once I've settled in. In the meantime, I would like to thank everyone on Twitter who got in touch before my interview and gave me loads of good advice. I cannot emphasize enough how grateful I am for all of the great contacts I've made over the years and for anyone out there who is still job hunting, take advantage of the great resource out there in the Twittersphere. Those librarians love helping people, including each other!

Pace and Purpose, the National Careers Service and the importance of using your Uni Careers Service.

From anecdotes I'd heard from others, I was anticipating that the job centre's 'Pace and Purpose: Individual Skills Programme' was going to be The Worst Thing Ever. On the contrary, I was pleasantly surprised by the whole experience - although some aspects did seem slightly pointless.

There were only five of us on the course and from the outset you could tell that everyone was hating the fact that they'd been forced to attend and we were all acting a bit defensively. We were a bit of a random bunch: me, a 19yr old girl who had A Levels and had worked in a bank and done a number of other temporary jobs, a personal trainer who had a degree in nutrition, an older guy (probably late 50s) who had been a machine operator for 23 years before being made redundant and a woman who had no formal education as she'd never finished school but had successfully ran her own business (shops selling baby clothes, accessories etc.) before the recession until times got tough and she stopped to take care of her autistic son. Our tutor was a really nice guy and he empathised that none of us really wanted to be there, we all had other stuff we could be doing and we just had to jump through the hoops and tick the boxes that the job centre wanted so we could happily go on our way. He understood what it was like to be in our position; he'd worked as a quantity surveyor for 30 years before being made redundant and had retrained to teach adult literacy, maths and IT. The saddest part was that he was actually going to be made redundant as the company he worked for had ran out of funding for all the tutors. I hope they don't end up sending him on the course! The group immediately relaxed a bit once we realised that he was on our side.

Probably the most pointless part of the course - for someone educated beyond GCSE - were the literacy and maths tests. I understand that these need to be done as some people tell a few white lies to the job centre and imply that their maths and literacy are better than they are, but if people can prove they have GCSEs or A Levels or a degree, it seems like a waste of resources to make EVERYONE do them. But, as Dave the tutor said, we must jump through the job centre's hoops! We then had to update our CVs, so we had one to fit the template that the job centre likes, and spend what seemed to be an endless amount of time filling in booklets and forms to prove that we could successfully fill in an application form, do a covering letter and think about our skills and short and long-term career goals. There was a lot of duplication of information and the idea of filling in an application form by hand is ludicrous in this day and age, but apparently the job centre likes a lot of paperwork. However, I'm being slightly cynical here as someone who is IT literate. The older guy on our course had never used a computer in his life, so part of these exercises were great for him as Dave the tutor helped him type up his application form and covering letter so that he now has saved templates to use if he needed to apply for jobs online. In a way, I feel lucky that I'm confident with applying for stuff online and I do 99% of my job hunting on the internet. I can imagine that having limited IT skills would greatly affect your confidence and make you feel that you had no chance.

We also had to sign up to the government's Universal Jobmatch website, which I must admit I'm not impressed with. The search facility is rubbish and there doesn't seem to be a way that you can easily narrow down your search and I actually found a vacancy still up on the site that I knew for a fact had closed some weeks before. Slightly annoying. However, I must do what I need to get all that lovely free money.

The best part of the two days was a presentation we had from someone from the National Careers Service. She was a properly qualified careers adviser and had loads of great tips for job hunting in the local area for people with all types of skills and abilities and for searching a wide variety of sectors. We also had to do some personality tests as part of this, which interested me because of the work I did for the Librarians and Personality session at Library Camp London back in March 2013. An added 'fun' part of the personality test was that it linked you to a type of animal. Mine was a Clown Fish and here is the description of this personality 'type':

Clown Fish are energetic, creative and busy fish and ENFPs usually share these qualities. Clown Fish live amongst anemone but don't feel their stings due to a clever coating on their skin. ENFPs too are often thinking of new and clever ways of doing things, preferring variety and action to peace and quiet.

I'd have much rather been a lion or panther but, then again, Finding Nemo is one of my favourite films and the description above seems pretty positive so I'm fine with being likened to a Clown Fish. I was very impressed with all the information from the National Careers Service and I've discovered that there is a weekly drop-in session held every Friday at Thornaby Methodist Church where a qualified careers adviser from the National Careers Service is on hand to give you advice on CV building, job searching, interview techniques and more. Another great bit of advice is that there is often additional help and advice available from charities such as the Five Lamps, if you're local to the Thornaby or Stockton area. They can help with funding towards courses and also help you apply for jobs or volunteering opportunities and offer financial assistance for setting up your own business. For those who aren't local to Stockton or Thornaby, it is still worth investigating your local National Careers Service branch for helpful tips and advice and possible local charities that can help with funding. They are independent from the job centre and anybody can use their services, not just people who are unemployed. The one in Middlesbrough is on Borough Road near the Army Recruitment Office.

The search continues...

This week, I'm still on the hunt for jobs and I have another application form to send off in the next few days. This is for a proper library job in a sixth form college, so it's a job I would really love to do. Fingers crossed!

Later this week, I've also booked to do a mock interview with the careers adviser I used when I was at uni. The great thing about uni careers services is that alumni can usually use them for up to 2-3 years after they graduate and I can't stress enough how current students or recent alumni should take advantage of this service while they can. I got loads of help with doing application forms and my CV while at uni and without this help I never would have secured my graduate trainee job months before I graduated - meaning the pressure for job hunting was off and I could concentrate on my academic work. If you're reading this as a current student I strongly recommend that you give you uni careers office a visit. Even if you're thinking that your CV is fine or that you don't need any help because chances are, you probably do. It's so competitive to find jobs these days, particularly if you're searching for a graduate job, and any free advice or help from experts should never be turned down.

Onwards and upwards!