i’m a deli assistant!

woo yeah 5 years at Uni = me doing the washing up for 8 hours a day (not including the time at the end of the day when i do it for mum and dad as a token of my thanks for them still caring for me at the age of 23!!)

it’s not all bad though i get free lunches and out of date meat that might make me properly sick.

woohoo and the government wants 50% of the population to spend 20 grand so that they can be like me!

madness!

if this doesn’t make you want to go out and find the job you want now you’re probably a bit unbalanced.

i might sound bitter but i’m not. i’m doing what i want i’m writing and i’m being creative. and noone pays you to be creative until you’ve actually done something and got people’s attention in the first place.

i just read ann’s blog and i love the chinese saying

“you can’t become chubby with just one bite”

i suppose it means either ‘if you’re fat it’s your fault cos you’ve been a bit of a heffer and scoffed all the sweets on several occasions’

but it can also be taken to mean ‘if your desire is to get fat then you’ve got to work at it and keep eating!’ well that’s what i’m doing and that out of date meat might be dodgy but it’s definitely making me stronger.

I’m applying for the national and local newspapers and everything in between.

Here’s what to do:

1. Read the paper where you’re applying to work and get a feel for it.

2. Telephone the paper and ask for the name and job title of the person who deals with work experience applications. This is where you will address your application and it will give you bonus points.

3. Send a letter of application (including dates of availability) and a “journalism” CV (one that shows relevant experiences/achievements that will show you’re a good candidate).

4. Include with your CV cuttings of your published work. If you have none write a review of a film/book/tv programme/concert or write a comment piece about a subject that has been running in that newspaper.

Good luck! Maybe I’ll see you on the other side.

PS. While you wait for a response keep busy writing. I like to watch football games and write my own match report and compare it against the one that is in the paper the following morning for tips. At the moment, though, I’m writing a sit-com and you never know it might mean I can skip this tedious stage out!

Hello!

I’m depressed. I graduated with a 2:1 nearly 3 months ago. I still don’t have a job and I’m claiming JSA. :'(

A quick synopsis of my plight so far goes as follows…
I’ve never really known what I want to do as a career. Recently, though, I have decided I like writing and I think I’m good at it, so I’m going to pursue it. There isn’t exactly an abundance of jobs floating around at the moment, however, so I’m applying for work experience.

This whole situation wouldn’t be so depressing if I had been more pro-active while I was at University – making full use of the available contacts and opportunities.

Hello there!

It’s been a while and I know you’ve missed me, unless you don’t know that you’ve missed me but, don’t worry, you have. To get you up to date: it’s summer, I’ve graduated and I need a job… so I need a CV!

I’m actually on my way from York to Newcastle today in order to get my CV checked for the second time (yes, I require a second time and I didn’t even think it was that bad!). The service provided is so good that I’m willing to travel 90 miles up north especially (in a stinky coach sat next to a stinking bloke ‘cos I’m skint).

Yes – CV. It’s important. I keep hearing that “doing one well is vital!” so I’m going to try and quickly convince you that it is. So if I do manage to persuade you, or if you didn’t ever need persuading, my advice is: the Careers Advisers have lots of experience and a very good idea of CVs so GO TO THE CAREERS SERVICE AND GET IT CHECKED!!

If you don’t you may (I want to write ‘will’ here but I realise that isn’t strictly true (although it’s definitely more accurate than ‘may’!)) miss out on jobs without them ever meeting your smart, lovable self in person! And if that isn’t quite the case (that is, you being lovely) I suppose you miss the opportunity to attune for your bumbling buffoon-like interview personality with a superb written account of your boudless abilities (I’m sure)!

By the way, I had the lovely Nadia, an avid blog-reader, as my Careers Adviser and she helped me thoroughly, so here’s a shout out to her blog-styley! I am assured, however, that all the advisers are equally smart and lovable.

Right. Now that I’ve made my play at getting you to go to the Careers Service, I can give you a bit of advice, so that you don’t turn up looking like a right moo, which would have helped me.

I realise I’m stating the obvious here but a CV is all about selling yourself.

You have to be arrogant and show-off even if that doesn’t come naturally (I find that getting my Mum to write bits for me helps in this department). For example, you may have got a 1st with commendations and awards and all sorts of platitudes coming out of your belly-button ‘n’ ear-hole ‘n’ elsewhere. However, if all you write is a summary of the awards you received, it seems, the people reading your CV will not understand that you’re a brilliant person who they need to employ instantly. You have to instead say something like “I performed remarkably well throughout the three years of Newcastle University’s very demanding Environment course, exemplified by me being voted biggest-brain in the big-head competition“. Well not that exactly because that sounds rubbish and anyone with commendations coming out of their ear-hole would write something way better!

Making the most of experiences and achievements that are relevant to the job you’re applying for and saying directly how they are relevant is also important.

Again, you have to spell it out because the people who read them are themselves buffoons (I’m positive about this!!). Although if you manage to get called for interview that attitude isn’t conducive to getting employed, which I hope you do do and I give you all the luck that is physically possible for one person via a virtual connection to give!

This covers the basics to what I found out the first time I went about my CV, I most certainly wouldn’t follow what I say word-for-word but the rudimentary ideas I missed are here. Just go see a Careers Adviser! 🙂

By Nicky Noo-Noo

Hello

I have not written a blog for a while as I have been inundated with coursework, field trips and more coursework. But that is all sorted now, just my dissertation to complete, which would be going well, if the weather would stop raining.

I am currently re-writing my CV as I am hoping to apply for jobs within the next few weeks. I am looking for jobs via recruitment websites and the careers service which have been most helpful.

For your CV layout I would recommend the following sections:

1) Education, a brief description of the skills you feel you have gained from your degree, followed by a summary of the modules you have taken that would be relevant to the job you are applying for.
2) Work experience, a brief description of the skills you feel you have gained from your work experience.
3) Additional skills and possible memberships.

I would also suggest that when entering dates for your education, you say Sept 2005-present, for example, so that the interviewer can ask you what you did between June to September

As the Easter holidays approached I found myself beathing a heavy sigh of relief in the fact that there was uni free month ahead of me. After putting off much of my work for the holidays I found myself having a nasty shock upon my return to the city.

Having let my work load build up I have been left with an email inbox bursting to the brim, a mountain of assignments and to top it all off I’m out of printing credits. Could my day get any worse (well only when I tried purchasing credits online). Note to self, NEVER AGAIN!

Knowing I still haven’t even looked at my work, I found facebook and twitter to be far more engaging and to an extent rather mind stimulating.

I did however do something useful with my time over Easter, attending the annual conference of FEJS (Forum for European Journalism Students). Such a great week, I wouldn’t know where to start!

Look out for my blog about the conference, but for now I better make some sort of dent in this work.

I think I’ve wasted at least 10 minutes more of my life there, good work!

Well, wish me luck! x

I wish I had more of an update for things I have achieved so far this year in terms of choosing my career, but as per usual I’ve just confused myself and am back at square one. Never mind, I know my “dream career” (if such a thing exists) is not going to suddenly appear to me and it just takes experience and practise to find something suitable.

I am going to China in September to teach English. I know I don’t want to be a teacher forever, but it’s a good stop-gap: I’ll make some money, get some “experience”, gain more independence, improve my Chinese and so on. No reason not to go!

After a year, I am considering the 1-year Graduate Diploma in Law in the hope of becoming an Immigration Lawyer. It’s quite a long slog though, and very very expensive. After I do some research talking to various firms and solicitors who are specialists in immigration, I’ll have a better idea (thanks to the staff at the careers office for helping me find suitable links!)

So, we shall see what happens! Good luck to me 🙂

Yes, I am blogging and, therefore, contemplating my career over the Easter holidays. Turns out it’s been on my mind a fair bit recently, which some might take to be a good sign. I take it as a growing annoyance. But anyway, contemplating I am.
Having made a much needed visit to the Careers office a couple of weeks before the end of term, I have acknowledged something I’ve been trying to deny and ignore out of existence for a while now: I want to be a journalist. There we go, the truth is most certainly out, with the help of a kind careers advisor. I have been carrying this idea around with me since producing a supplement for my local paper when I was fifteen, but have been desperately resisting the desire to write for a living in favour of searching for something more “attainable and realistic”, for these main reasons:
1. I have been fazed by the level of competition in the industry.
2. I’ve been questioning my ability in the writing department following said competition.
3. For the reasons above, I hadn’t bothered trying to gather any valuable experience. (Ok, I’m not going to pin it down to all of the above, I’ve partly just been lapping up the uni experience a bit too much to get myself organised.) And,
4. I am a little bit silly.
But better late than never. And so here I am, trying to figure out the best way to start getting my foot in the door, or a big toe at least! The careers adviser has sent me a few useful links, and I’ve been reasearching how other people from Newcastle have made themselves into successful journalists, and trying to decide what type of journalism interests me most. After a year of empty promises to myself, claiming I would attend Courier meetings, I finally swallowed my apprehension and showed up, and have managed to churn out an article for them. Hopefully more to follow there!
Easter will be spent trying to come up with a corker of a dissertation topic (I’ve been told a couple of glasses of vino will help get the creative juices flowing!) and hounding some local newspapers for work experience over summer. If there’s one thing I’ve realised, it’s that the actual DOING instead of THINKING ABOUT DOING is much easier. Now I’m finally applying myself nothing is as daunting as it seemed.
Hope you’re all having productive (and stress free!) time off 🙂 J

As a second year English Language student, who currently has very little idea where my degree is taking me, and more to the point where I WANT it to take me, I thought this may well be a good place to start…
I’m realising I can’t delay the inevitable much longer, and need to address the ever nearing prospect of life after uni (eeek!). What exactly do I do with my degree when all I know is that, put plainly, “I love to write”. Is a masters the way forward? It would certainly buy me more time to arrive at a decision…Or would experience in the world of work be more beneficial? Having toyed with these two options for the past few months, changed my mind several times, and made no progress whatsoever, I have finally come to a conclusion. I need to get some advice. And so to the careers office I am going to go. Yes, I’m aware a sensible and well organised person would have made this wise decision a few months ago, but you could say I’ve been burying my head in the metaphorical sand for quite some time. The good news is: I’m finally ready to start digging my way out in order to figure out some kind of idea about my life after uni. It’s not as far away as I thought!
Should a revolutionary light bulb moment occur I will blog it, and should I just be pondering what the future holds, I’ll blog that too…For the moment, it’s back to seminar prep.
Thanks for reading 🙂

It has been a while since I have written a careers blog, admittedly partly due to the immense amount of work which I am presently doing for my Masters, but also in large part due to the fact that I simply don’t want to have to ponder the prospect of beginning my career in the current economic climate if I can possibly avoid it .

Of course this is hardly a realistic solution to any problem, so ponder I did….

Thinking about this matter somehow put me in mind of a career path long forgotten, when I was avidly studying Robert Frost’s poetry for A Level English Lang. Lit. and, in particular, a little four stanza number entitled ‘The Road Not Taken’ which begins:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth…..

At present I see four main roads open to ‘vocationally’ geared Masters students such as myself:

1. Work in Industry
2. Another Masters
3. PhD
4. Work ‘in the area’ and pursue further study

and a decision will soon need to be made as to which road will be taken.

At the moment the clearest and most-trodden route for an Engineering Geologist is the one in to industry and a placement related directly to my Masters degree:
Sadly this path is presently obscured by the unseemly undergrowth of the recession. Whilst it is clearly always a sensible option to apply for jobs and graduate schemes throughout the year and to keep on good terms with potential employers, it is becoming increasingly apparent (by direct admission of many of the major companies) that the Geotechnical sector is reducing its intake indefinitely.

It must, therefore, be considered prudent to invest some more research time in further career ideas, and other possible paths to take.
So what about doing another MSc? More in the next instalment….