Hi! I’m Abby, a second year English Literature student also doing a work placement with the Careers & Student Opportunities team.

I went along to the Make it Local day last week in Temple Hall, where a variety of employers were available to give me careers and CV advice based on their experience of hiring graduates. I spoke to five employers about my career aspirations and my current CV…

I spoke to:

• John Inglis – The Army
• Robert Wallace & Stephen Smith – Guided Solutions
• Emma Kilpatrick & Vicky White – Brook Street
• Paul Collingridge – The Collingridge Consultancy Ltd
• James Calverley – NFU Mutual

Quite a few of the employers gave me similar advice about my CV, focused on switching around the sections on education and experience, so that my work experience would be further up my CV. This make sense because recruiters only have a limited time to look at CVs and therefore putting my most relevant experience first means employers will have an easier time finding it.

Also a couple of the recruiters suggested that I should expand on the examples that I had given for the skills I had gained in previous experience, and gave me tips on how to phrase this.

In addition, some of the recruiters suggested that I should tailor my degree more towards the kind of career I want to go into, as my CV is currently more general. This definitely struck a chord with me because I can see how being specific and clear about my goals would be interesting to an employer. I feel that this advice will be easier to put into practice when applying for graduate jobs directly – because I can tailor the CV to be relevant to each specific role.

The reason I am doing my work placement with the Careers & Opportunities team is that I am interested in becoming a Careers Adviser. For this reason, all of the recruiters I spoke to were interesting to talk to; they were all recruitment specialists or managers with recruiting experience, and as a Careers Adviser it would be important for me to know what recruiters look for in students and graduates. So, even though some of the employers were not representing organisations I would target for graduate jobs, they were still able to give me some insight into the sector I am wanting to go into – and it was interesting to hear a little bit of information about how they got into the job they are currently in.

For example, I spoke to John Inglis who is responsible for recruiting, nurturing and mentoring health professionals within the British Army. This is somebody that I not would normally have spoken to, but John was really friendly and helpful in offering advice based on his experience of the career that I want to go into. I think this is something other students could consider; getting advice from a wide range of employers gave me a bigger pool of information to base my CV edits on.

The event overall was really effective with a positive, busy atmosphere. A reasonable number of students attended, so there were plenty of people talking at the same time, but not too many as to cause long queues for the recruiters. Although it was intimidating introducing myself to the recruiters, I am glad that I went as it has given me some tips about how I can improve CV and highlighted companies that I had not previously heard a lot about. Hopefully taking on board the advice that I was given will improve my chances in the future.

I think this event would be extremely helpful for students as you get a really clear idea of what employers want. It would be particularly helpful for students in second and third year who are thinking about life after university. In addition, it would be very useful for students who are interested in going into recruitment or PR as you can ask questions particularly relevant to these career paths. However, it would still be interesting for anyone who would like to get advice on their CV from employers regardless of their chosen career path.

I would give this event 8 out of 10 as it was extremely interesting to talk to employers. I would say that it can at first be overwhelming talking to recruiters. However, members of careers team were extremely helpful at suggesting people that it would be useful to talk to, and anyway – we have to talk to them eventually, right?

 

Abby McMurdo is a 2nd year English Literature student at York St John University