Lesson 19 - Getting a job

Northcliffe House - my workplace from September!

So here it is. My blog is 1 year old today, and if you read the very first entry you will see that I aimed to share my student lessons through my final year of university, with the hope that by the time my blog reached 1 year old, I would have found myself a job. Well, I’m pleased to report that I fulfilled my aim of finding employment and was offered a position at The Independent on Thursday 18^th August. HOORAY!

While this blog entry is called “getting a job”, I’m afraid I can’t offer anything but vague advice from lessons I learnt on my job hunt. I’d love to have come up with a magic spell that will make employers instantly want to take you on, but I’m still working on that.

Above all, I would say that making valuable use of your university years is crucial to making your CV stand out from a pile of generic others. If you can show that you have done stuff other than your degree and sitting in the pub then you’re onto a bit of a winner. Being a part of clubs and societies proves you can work well in a team as well as strive for success. Essentially, it demonstrates to a potential employer that you’re not what is sometimes portrayed in the media: a lazy student.

On the actual job hunt, use every resource available to you – university careers advice, job websites, recruitment agencies (that’s what I did) and, in this day and age, having contacts in any sector applicable to your skills can be the key to success. Unfortunately, if you really want a job, you can’t afford to be too picky either. Apply for anything and everything that you think you could turn your hand to. The job market should pick up in a few years, so doing a job that isn’t your dream until that time comes ensures that you are gaining valuable real-world experience as well as earning money.

If you get to that crucial interview stage, make sure you know your CV inside out. If an interviewer asks you about any aspect of your CV, you should be able to talk about it with confidence. After all, if you don’t know this stuff about yourself, how can they ever expect you to pay attention to detail in the workplace? Be confident about your abilities and make sure you can justify everything you say.

Unfortunately, a lot of the current job market comes down to luck. If you are more than qualified for a job, but another candidate has an edge on you, it doesn’t mean you are completely unemployable. It just means that someone else was more suited to that particular job than you were. You’ve just got to trust that a job that you are suited to will come along eventually. Don’t lose faith with job rejections – focus on the positives, not the negatives, as cheesy as that sounds!