Employability, Research and Professional Development

         In order to be more successful when applying for placement year vacancies ERPD students were required to do five tasks. These were- develop CV’s, write a Cover letter for one of the organisations, do a psychometric test to better understand ones learning and working habits, create a BrandME poster and attend a cv/cover letter review appointment in Purple Doors. I would like to discuss these parts separately.

         I developed my CV last year when I was applying for part-time jobs in Portsmouth. Although I thought that my CV was alright, after a meeting in Purple Doors I did a lot of minor changes to it- changed layout, expended in more detail about my previous work experience, added new ‘other skills’ section. In my case this was the easiest part of this assignment.

         After third ERPD lecture I started to work on my cover letter. I followed guidelines and used tips that lecturer told us about, for example- found small details about company and wrote about them in my cover letter, discussed relevant skills that I have gained in my previous jobs and tried to talk about my unique selling points. Purple Door meeting was quite useful too, I had a chance to talk about my cover letter in more depth with other people (peer mentor, staff assistant) and hear their opinion and thoughts.

         After all what I mentioned before, I would like to say once more- review appointment was very useful and I will book at least one more appointment to improve my cover letter even more.

Most difficult part for me was BrandMe poster. I feel very uncomfortable when talking about myself and I was not sure how to structure my BrandMe presentation so I decided to do it a bit differently. I shared a story about how I decided to study abroad and how it has been going so far. I talked about my strengths/ weaknesses, past experiences, other people thoughts about me, my biggest successes and failures. By doing this I did not have to talk about myself directly, I talked about my past experience and what have I learned from them. Furthermore, I saw this presentation as a job interviews imitation and I think employers would appreciate different approaches and thinking ‘outside of the box’.  

         Although I enjoyed doing psychometric tests I did not find them very useful when writing my CV, cover letter and BrandMe poster. But I gained some useful information. I have always thought that my learning style is a bit chaotic and ineffective at times, but while reading my test results I thought about ways to improve and become better student in general.

         After completing these tasks I feel more comfortable/ confident when talking about myself.

I have gained some insight on how employers look at CV’s/Cover letter’s, I have received wonderful tips how to stand out when applying for a job and how to leave good first impression without actually meeting your employer. I believe that all this has prepared me for job hunting in the near future.