We have been blogging on and off in the careers team for about ten years now and over time our blogging energy has ebbed and flowed. Before we had this blog, we posted on what we called the postgraduate careers blog, which was created for postgraduates at the university. We archived that blog in 2013 but the content is still public. This week I’ve been re-visiting posts that colleagues and I wrote in the past. It is a bit like a diary – sometimes it makes me cringe and at other times, I think, “wow, that’ still relevant ten years on”.

So here are six old posts I thought it worth sharing again:

Why you should leave your career plans to luck

This was one of my first posts and it is about planned happenstance, which is a careers theory, which is relevant to modern careers. It is about how we can all plan our careers to some extent but how for many people, the next career move is also about being opportunist in proactive ways when unexpected things happen. read more

Depending on what jobs you are applying for, you may be asked to take a psychometric or aptitude test at some point in your job hunting.

We want to offer you a chance to get an instant testing practice to get you ahead of the game and help with you future job applications.

Tests are often only one of several selection tools used by an employer in assessing your suitability.

They are designed to test how your abilities in different areas such as verbal, numerical and logical reasoning.

Research shows that practice can help improve your performance in tests and we can help you with that.

The Careers website allows you free access to a range of psychometric tests: numerical, verbal, logical reasoning, as well as a personality questionnaire, a situational judgement test and Assessment Centre Exercises. read more

Everyone is talking about using social media for job searching and conveying your employability to potential employers. LinkedIn is recognised as a more appropriate and professional tool than many other social media platforms that students and graduates can use to articulate and convey their employability. However any spelling and grammatical errors or over-generalisations about your skills, experience and abilities could put off potential employers and damage your job prospects.

There are many over-used buzzwords that students and graduates use on their LinkedIn profiles to emphasise their employability. Stating that you have a specific skill or quality without providing examples of experiences which gave you opportunities to develop and improve them, runs the risk of them being perceived by potential employers as being too general and lacking substance. read more

Are you a Salford graduate or final year student? Are you looking for that first step into your dream graduate job?

Then…

Graduate Gateway is for you!

Graduate Gateway is a FREE 5-day professional development programme for Salford students and graduates aiming to develop their employability skills and will also help you to feel confident when preparing yourself to face the jobs market and company recruitment processes.

Today is the last day of National Careers Week, I hope over the course of the week you have found lots of useful tips on the @CareersWeek twitter feed as well as the #NCW2014 hashtag. Our final post of National Careers Week, by my colleague Alex, focuses on the Salford Advantage Award. The Award is our employability standard and a recognition of how all your co-curricular activities have helped you to develop key employability skills to aid your transition into either further study or work.

Next week it’s National Careers Week (3^rd March – 7^th March), so I wanted to give you a little insight into what we do as careers advisers and as careers services.

My colleagues and I (within careers services) come from all walks of life, with different qualifications, knowledge, experiences and skills under our belts, which makes us the human equivalent of the Swiss army knife if you will, with everyone playing to their strengths to help you make the most of your time here at Salford. We’re here to embolden you to make informed choices during and beyond university, which will future-proof your career prospects and in turn benefit the economy and wider society.

You will find that anyone working within careers services shares a passion for what we do, a strong desire to help people get on and realise their potential and a strong belief in promoting social inclusivity within education and work.  We also have in common, a keen commitment to our own on-going professional development so that we can stay abreast of key issues and provide you with impartial information, advice and guidance. Take a look at my colleague Fiona’s post on who university careers advisers really are. read more

Flickr CC. http://www.flickr.com/photos/61423903@N06/7172836245/

Last week I chaired the Employer Q&A panel at our Acoustics, Audio and Video Engineering recruitment fair.

The panel itself consisted of 9 speakers, including managers, acoustics consultants and a senior recruitment consultant from broadcast recruitment specialists, Christy Media Solutions. In addition, we were incredibly happy to welcome back, four University of Salford Alumni, to talk about their career trajectories. The Panel members represented various companies including: Sandy Brown, WSP Group, SRL Technical Services Ltd, Dolby Europe Limited, AtoV, Ramboll and URS Acoustics.

The benefit of hosting a relatively smaller Industry Insight talk or employer panel was that the setting felt more intimate, questions were put forward with ease by students and staff, the conversation flowed and the panel certainly didn’t hold back in terms of offering sage advice and tips for final year students and graduates. read more

This is a guest post from Katherine Hackett from i-to-i on how TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) can help bolster your CV.

Graduation is imminent and you’re due to leave the student bubble that you’ve been living in for the last three years. Worried about the daily grind?  Scared that no-one will give you a chance to worry about the daily grind? Growing youth unemployment and expensive student loans driving the fear? Well, don’t worry because there is one graduate market crying out for employees…

With over 1 billion people learning English worldwide TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) is an increasingly popular way to spend a year or two. It’s also the sort of job that sees you spending your weekends lounging on an exotic beach or visiting ancient temples. But, how can TEFL help to boost your CV and your chances of employability back home? Here’s how: read more

Just came across this great Infographic tweeted by @uoccareers and retweeted by @SueSpence0. It’s a great insight into those tricky interview questions. What’s the thinking behind some of the questions employers ask, what qualities are they looking for?

What’s the strangest interview question you have ever been asked?

Source: SuperScholar.org http://www.superscholar.org/intelligence/

Flickr CC: ransomtech. Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic. (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0). http://www.flickr.com/photos/ransomtech/8554833126/

What do we mean by ‘failure’? It’s all very subjective; one person’s definition of failure can be another person’s success. Does the word conjure up memories of GCSE or A-Level results, driving tests, relationships, 80s outfits and hairstyles, low marks for late assignments, poor performance in group tasks, a failed enterprise, unsuccessful job interviews etc.

In the Internet age, the word failure has even taken a life of its own by way of memes for the words #fail or #epic fail, where people can make sardonic comments mocking or ridiculing people for inappropriate dress, falls in public, bad parking, incorrect grammar and misplaced apostrophes.

Even Big brand companies such as Starbucks, Snickers, HMV, McDonalds, Waitrose, Gap have scored spectacular own goals with ill-advised marketing campaigns and hashtags on Twitter. read more