Professionalism starts with a spellcheck

When you spend days on end looking at CVs, after a while there is very little shock value in what you read. I've encountered the students who have managed to spell the name of their university incorrectly. That mind-numbing sensation when browsing another 'hard working individual' is a constant. And yet this afternoon I encountered a CV which perfectly illustrates how a candidate shoots themselves in the foot and would see their application discarded before a recruiter has even got beyond the first paragraph. Frankly it is a bit of a shocker.

I'll ignore the fact that this person has left an e off the word 'severe', and gloss over the upper case A in Active, and address the bigger problem. If you choose to begin your engagement with an employer by offering a professional profile, you better be damned sure that you can spell the word 'professional'

Hire me please, I'm a Peroffional

Professionalism starts with a spellcheck, Then read through your applications to check for spelling or grammatical issues that a spellchecker has not picked up upon, As an extra safety measure, ask somebody you trust to cast their eye over your documents. There is nothing professional about sending a CV that begins this badly to an employer, or in this case to a Placement Office.

First impressions are king. Candidates with a Peroffional Profile will not find their applications progressing very far. 

The Keano Test

When applying for jobs, we invariably provide employers with our telephone numbers. I put my contact details on a CV, and my students do likewise when they are hunting for placements. The important thing to remember that once you have given that information to an employer, a recruiter could at any time attempt to speak to you. The question is are you ready for that call?

There is a story circulating in the media today, of a footballer whose answerphone message essentially lost him the chance of a transfer. Around the time that Budweiser ran their infamous 'Wassup' campaign (see the video below if you're not familiar - be warned, it is infectious!) the then Sunderland manager Roy Keane was looking to sign Robbie Savage from Blackburn Rovers. Savage, known for his flamboyance, had recorded an answerphone message based upon the catchphrase from the ad, and it is safe to say it did not endear him to his prospective employer.

Here is an extract from Keane's book

Like it or not, first impressions count. Before you submit applications, make sure that your contact details lead a recruiter to the professional person they want to hire, rather than the person who wants to amuse their friends and acquaintances with a gimmicky answerphone message. Why waste your time crafting a strong application if on the first point of contact, you give a recruiter reason to throw you onto the rejection pile? An employer might not use Keane's choice language, but as they live and die on their ability to hire the right sort of people for their organisation, it wouldn't be hard for them to think 'I can't be hiring that person' if greeted by an unprofessional message.

If you plan to be successful in your placement search in the coming year, you'll need to adapt to the requirements of the professional world. Excellent communications is one aspect of that. Now go check your voice message to ensure you would not fail The Keano Test.

Good things come to those who wait

A few months ago I wrote an article imploring students to not give up on placements. It was mid-April, exams were coming up on the horizon and understandably focus was on revision rather than application forms. The message of that article was succinct - it's not too late to get a placement, and it is something that I've been repeating on Twitter ever since.

I can understand the mindset of a student, who after months of trying and getting nowhere is prepared to throw in the towel and turn their back on placements. But if I could bottle resilience and sell it, I'd be considerably richer than I am now. During the months of May, June and July, I've had 77 of my students secure placements. That is during months where some people will have thought it too late to get a placement and not bothered to look for one. I don't want to say I told you so but..... well, you know what comes next!

During July alone which is a month when you may expect the well to run dry, more than 30 of my students have secured placements. From interactions with colleagues in other universities, it is a similar picture. July has been a busy month with lots of successes to report. It is the healthiest I've seen the placement market since the Lehman Brothers fallout in 2008 and with what are potentially green shoots of recovery in the economy, there is reason to be optimistic that next year will be even better.

The message for students preparing to embark on their second year at university, combined with searching for a placement, is be ready to play the long game. Many of my students who have secured their placement in recent days have been going hard at it since last autumn and are finally getting the fruit of their endeavour. How we react to setbacks and disappointments is important. You can fall at the first hurdle and give up, or you can learn from the experience and clear it at the next time of asking. Good things can indeed come to those who wait.

Resilience, determination, bloody-mindness. They aren't necessarily the competencies you are asked to expand upon when applying for placements, but they are qualities that many of my students have exhibited in abundance in their search for work experience. It is great to see so many of them now being rewarded for going the distance.

Started a placement this week? Spread the word

July is here and up an down the country hundreds of students are coming to the end of the first week of their placement. Although a number of those on my courses got things under way in June, the start of July has seen a lot more placements commence. If you are one of those people reaching the end of a long first week on the job, well done, you've nearly made it and can turn that alarm clock off this weekend before enjoying what appears to be a glorious sunny couple of days.

Spare a thought though for your friends and classmates who have not been hard at work this week. I'm talking about the people from your course who haven't managed to secure a placement for one reason or another. Maybe they've not had the rub of the green and missed out on roles. Maybe they didn't really think about doing a placement for whatever reason. Maybe they applied for a few roles, were unsuccessful but then gave up. Now, having thought about them, why not get in touch, and give them a few words of motivation. Tell them about the first week of your placement. Give them an idea of what you've already been exposed to. This isn't a case of rubbing your success in their faces; it is a question of inspiration and helping them to get with the programme.

Yes it is July, and yes lots of jobs are already filled, but if your friends believe that it is too late to get a placement, I beg to disagree. In the first 4 days of July, as many students on my courses have secured a placement as managed in the whole of July 2012. We're talking about double digits here, not just one or two. And with plenty more interviews in the pipeline and a number of employers contacting me this week with fresh opportunities, I'm expecting numbers to increase further still.

So when you enjoy a beer or glass of wine this week to toast the end of your first week of placement, be a good friend and tell your mates all about it. It's not over for them yet, and a friendly bit of peer motivation may be just what they need to resurrect their placement search.

Opportunity Knocks

If you've just completed your first year at university, well done. Mission accomplished. Now what are you going to do? There was a time when this represented a 3-4 month holiday, catching up with school friends and earning a bit of cash to redress the balance of your student overdraft. I can certainly recall spending my summer vacations picking up whatever work I could to cover the cost of impending sunshine holidays.

Times have changed somewhat now however. Sure, there will still be trips to the Balearics filled with mischief, and unsociable hours spent working replenishing the pet food aisle in supermarkets, but for the undergraduate intake of 2012, the summer of 2013 also means the start of the great placement search. Traditionally the investment banks and professional services get their student recruitment underway from 1 July, but it appears that IBM have stolen a march on them and have already opened up for applications for their industrial placement schemes. See for yourself with the links below

Image via CrunchBase

Business Placements 

Finance Placements

Human Resources Placements

Information Technology Placements  

Marketing Placements 
Software Development Placements 

Scotland Based Placements

So what are you going to do this week? Will you be stuck glued to your TV set willing the rain to go away so you can watch some tennis at Queens Club? Or will you put on your placement hat and start working your way through the IBM CV, articulating your adaptability, self-determination, effective communication and initiative inside 150 words?

A word of advice for you before you proceed. The IBM CV Template is very different from an CV you've previously used. I strongly recommend that if you plan to get ahead an make an early application to IBM, you get your application checked out by your Placement Officer or Careers Advisor before you press send. Don't be fooled into thinking it is the summer vacation so they won't be at university - in most cases they will be, and likely in a position to offer you more time than they will be able to when the new term begins in the Autumn. Make sure you take advantage of this.

The Summer of 2014 seems like a long way off right now, but believe me it will come around quickly. If you've any plans for undertaking a placement (and you really should!) there is no time like the present to get the ball rolling.

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We've come a long long way together

Cover via Amazon

If you are a student who has been looking for a placement since the autumn and not yet secured one, you're probably a little bit fed up by now. You've made dozens of applications, endured those pesky online tests, maybe come up short a couple of times at assessment centres or just missed out in interviews. If this sounds very familiar, you have every right to feel disheartened.

With the end of year exams fast coming up on the horizon, you may even be thinking about throwing in the towel and giving up on the placement dream, feeling understandably bitter at the hours and days lost without reward. Nobody likes being told 'thanks, but no thanks', particularly if you're getting that Bill Murray Groundhog Day sensation of deja vu.

So if you've had enough of placements, I sympathise with your frustration. But before you call it quits, I just want to let you in on a little stat. I was going through my placement spreadsheet (supergeek!) from last year to see when my students secured their roles. What month do you think it was that was the most successful in terms of numbers? Well, I can tell you it wasn't any time before Christmas. It wasn't January. February? No. It wasn't March or April either. The single most prolific month for my students in securing placements during 2011/12 was May.

Check your calendar folks, we're not there yet. You might well have been doing this now for more than 6 months without reward, but I urge you to stick with it a while longer. Every application made, every interview taken, every rejection email received will have made you battle hardened and ready to strike gold. Whereas earlier in your placement journey you may have lacked interview experience, you'll now be more confident in answering questions and presenting yourself to companies as someone they want to employ.

If you give up now, all of your efforts to this point will have been in vain. I can't promise that if you keep going you will be rewarded for your endeavour, but just as my students couldn't see where their placement offer was coming from last year, yours could be just around the corner.

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Today was a good day

In every job I've held, there have been good days and there have been bad days. I'm approaching my 7th anniversary of working in the placement industry and the reason why I generally approach my desk every day with a spring in my step is because on the whole there are more good days than bad. Today was no exception. Today was a good day.

Things started off with a packed inbox. One of my courses had a deadline for what is usually a very popular placement opportunity. A few days ago I was sitting on just a couple of applications. Clearly word had got around and when the deadline passed in total I had 33 applications to send to the employer. Quantity is not as important as quality, but I was delighted with the standard of CVs and covering letters that had been submitted. A big box ticked for all the groundwork laid in the autumn term through lectures and appointments.

This afternoon I hosted an employer who was presenting to a class of students who I help to find placements. The employer founded a games company following their own placement year and got the business off the ground while still at the university. Some 7 years later, the business is now 60+ employees strong, producing games played by millions of people around the world. Not forgetting his roots, the employer returned to the university, as he has done every year since graduating, to present about the business and inspire the next class of students to apply for placements, whether in his company or elsewhere in the industry. As much as I back myself to sell the benefits of placements to my students, there is nothing quite so effective as hearing the success story from someone who had sat in the same lecture theatre from the same course not so long ago, and gone on to build their empire. I'm expecting lots of appointment requests from this class in the coming week as a result!

On my way home from work, I was greeted with a message from my guest blogger who informed me that they had received two graduate job offers this afternoon. Knowing how much hard work and dedication has gone into applications, preparing for assessment centres and interviews, along with the string of disappointments that have gone their way in recent months, I can't begin to express in words how pleased I was for them. Success earned the hard way, and thoroughly deserved.

And then this evening came the small matter of the first #PlacementChat of 2013. What started as an idea a few months ago and had humble beginnings with just a handful of participants has blossomed into something on a much larger scale. Tonight I was joined by recruiters from several companies, fellow career and placement professionals, career bloggers, RateMyPlacement and an incredible number of students all wanting to ask questions about placements and internships. Information was sought about interviews, assessment centres, placements, how to answer particular questions, and in return the participants received advice from professionals and the chance to network. What began as a hashtag on my notepad is evolving into a melting pot of opportunity, where placement stakeholders interact through social media in a way that they weren't necessarily doing so before. 

Today was a good day. Here's hoping for many more to come. 

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A helping hand?

For the last ten years or so, The X Factor has been essential Saturday night television. Every Autumn we see hundreds of wannabes lining up to audition for their five minutes of fame. I can't say that I follow the series religiously but will admit that my guilty pleasure is watching the early shows so that I can enjoy some good old-fashioned car crash tv. For the first few weeks, it is less about those with talent and more about the talentless, who egged on by family members proceed to embarrass themselves to a huge television audience.

A supportive family can sometimes make the difference to a student when applying for placements. A lift to an interview or a little advance for a train fare can provide that little helping hand which enables a student to focus on the task ahead and be successful. However, there can be well meaning interventions that are less helpful, and which are more akin to the blind love shown by a mother to their tone deaf daughter on The X Factor.

I am of course referring to parental input into CVs. Now I'm all for having someone check your spelling and grammar before you press the send button, but when it comes to the content of your application, the best people to go and see for advice will be in your placement or careers service. There will be exceptions of course, for example your mother may work in recruitment or perhaps your father is a consultant at the company you want to apply to. However, for the most part, they will probably not be able to add significant value to your CV.

It is therefore a source of frustration when students come in for appointments but do not want to take on board the constructive criticism that is offered to them because a loved one has already given them the thumbs up. My colleagues and I do not pick up on things that could be improved simply because we are pedants. I look at CVs, applications and covering letters every day. I talk to employers to find out what they are looking for, and this is reflected in the advice provided and in the handouts I produce. I will offer an objective view and tell you what needs to be said rather than what you want to hear.

Does your sister work in recruitment?



You are not obliged to take on board everything we say, but in the same way that Simon Cowell (generally) knows more about music than your family, the Placement Officers and Careers Advisers at your university are best placed to provide meaningful guidance as you embark on your search for internships