SOURCE: The Telegraph

Be concise

The list of personal interests will tell potential employers something about yourself. But they’re not only looking at the content of this section – they will especially pay attention to the way you present it. Since personal interests are a lot less relevant than education and employment history, this section should never be used to pad out your CV. Don’t include more than five items, or you will come across as a waffler.

Don’t mention boring hobbies

Watching TV for at least two hours a day doesn’t mean you’re not suitable for the job of your dreams. It’s a perfectly sound way of relaxing. But mentioning it on your CV doesn’t make you look good. Neither do train spotting and philately, by the way. It’s irrelevant that you like to spend you spare time this way, but it does make you look uninspiring. If watching TV is all you do with your spare time, it’s best not to include a personal interests section at all.

Avoid dangerous hobbies

Okay, you’re not going to come across as boring if you mention that you’re an avid kickboxer, freestyle rock climber, member of honour at your local swingers club, and the proud owner of five Dobermans. You may think that it’s good to be honest and that these hobbies might spark conversation during the job interview. Truth is, you’re probably not going to make it to the interview. Potential employers will fear that, sooner or later, you will end up in hospital thanks to your dangerous hobbies.

Show that you’re a team player

If you’re applying for a position within a team, this section is a great opportunity to prove that you’re a good team player. Include hobbies such as playing a musical instrument in an orchestra, playing a team sport or cooking for friends. A list of solitary activities such as reading and cycling will give the opposite impression, unless you reword them. It doesn’t hurt to mention that you’re an active member of a book or cycling club.

Emphasize that you’re not a geek

If you’re applying for an IT job within a large company, it might work in your favour to show that you’re interested in a wide variety of subjects such as the arts, photography, music or that you volunteer for Scouts. The company might value well-roundedness.

1. Tell them what you’re looking for

The first way to create a CV that is focussed on the future, is by mentioning your ambitions in the profile at the top of the first page.

For example:

• I am an intelligent, innovative engineering graduate looking for a trainee job.
• I am a proactive, highly creative, intelligent postgraduate looking for a position in which I can keep satisfying my curiosity and develop my excellent writing skills even further.

2. Mention your most recent position first

In order to create a clear time line, it’s helpful to order your employment history by date rather than by industry. Start with your most recent position, as it is more relevant for head hunters and employers to know where you are now than where you were 5 years ago.

3. Be more elaborate about recent experiences

It’s a waste of space to go into detail about positions you held over 10 years ago, but head hunters and employers will be very interested to see what your current and previous job entail exactly and what skills you have developed at these positions.

4. Don’t leave any gaps

It’s important to be accurate about your employment history, but you should always avoid leaving gaps. If you have had some time out or a large number of irrelevant jobs over a relatively short period of time, summarize that period together with a more relevant job that you held before or afterwards.

Download Now: CV template (.doc)
Download Now: CV template with dummy data (.doc)

Tim is right. In a time of job uncertainty, the disparity in salaries among graduates is exceptionally high. Many graduates coming out of university are getting jobs paying £18-20k while many others are earning closer to £50k after just a couple of years of working. It is only fair that a progressive tax policy ensures that those able to, pay more . The ~£3,000 tuition fees constitute a far larger piece of disposable income for those on lower incomes, who in many cases contribute far more to society in public sector roles such as health care.

SOURCE: The Guardian

About 60,000 of graduates, accounting for 28% of university leavers got jobs in the public sector in 2007/2008. Of these graduates, about 75% were women. Typical jobs in the public sector may include doctors, teachers and nurses. These public sector cuts will do nothing to help issues for the amount of graduates in employment six months after university. An estimated 20,000 graduates are yet to find work six months or more after university.

SOURCE: Channel 4

Charlie Bull claims that most graduates got jobs last year and further analysis indicates that those jobs required degrees. Despite this, no statistics are offered to support this claim. Certainly from the experience of GraduateEmployment.org it would be surprising if indeed ‘most graduates’ are in jobs requiring degrees immediately after graduating. Charlie wisely advises graduates to be best prepared for graduate schemes in researching schemes, perfecting their CV and preparing for interviews as best as possible.

SOURCE: Channel 4

Source: Independent

Graduates are now being warned that a 2:1 or above is essential

A shortage of graduate jobs has increased competition for placements leading employers to demand higher grades of classifications than ever before. The Association of Graduate Recruiters discovered that 78% of graduate employers are now asking candidates to have at least a 2:1. This is following a 7% reduction in graduate employment opportunities.

A survey of 200 graduate recruiters found that 80% said they would be refusing to interview candidates with a 2:2 classification or below going forward into 2010/2011. This compares to 67% last year. In reality competition for top graduate schemes has always been intense and recruiters receiving hundreds or thousands of applications have always favoured with high classifications to eliminate candidates. This simply reinforces the importance of working hard and attaining a good degree.

SOURCE: Telegraph

Change your Facebook Profile Picture

If someone goes to Facebook to search for you, or comes across your profile in Google, make sure your profile picture is decent. That means don’t have your arm around some guy with a bottle of with a bottle of wine in the other, but rather a photo you would be happy for your mother to see!

Increase those Facebook security settings

Facebook security has come under intense criticism over recent months. Improvements have made it much easier to understand what content you are sharing online, but the recommended settings reveal too much. The recommended privacy settings can be seen below.

It can be seen that Facebook actually recommends that one’s status, photos and posts are visible to everyone, meaning any potential person deciding whether to give you a job can see a lot of information! They will be able to see all of your status updates, including the ones where you moan about work! We therefore recommend you changing your Facebook privacy settings to look as below.

Check your old Tweets

Use Twitter? Make sure you haven’t tweeted about anything you wouldn’t want a potential employer seeing. If you really have been a bad person and have tweeted a lot of things you don’t want someone in particular seeing, you can make your tweets private until you have secured a job.  Do this by going to settings and ticking ‘protect my tweets’. Oh and again, don’t forget to change your profile picture if it’s inappropriate.

Linkedin

If you have been telling the truth on your CV and job applications then you won’t have much to worry about. On the other hand if you have exaggerated one or two previous placements, and you have a Linkedin profile then you will want to make sure that they all match up. There is no point making up an amazing internship on your CV if a recruiter can log into Linkedin and discover that all that time you were actually working in a newsagents.