The first lecture back after the new year was a self-volunteered one, for extra information about my CV. This was presented by Jonathan Sands, from Elmwood Studios, whose humor and mix of information proved really resourceful to me and allowed me to make a lot of changes to my CV and points that I'd retain for future use.
At first my CV was very boring; with little colour and more information based, however after retaining lots of information from Jonathan it seemed better to incorporate myself and my own personality into the work. For this, I included my own piece of work that I used for an older project which was a portrait of myself (this would then allow the employer to see what I'd look like) and I found this to be a much more creative point about my CV and that it would look much better and would stand out from the crowd, which is what the idea of the lecture was about.
The points given to us were simple - the time constraint that the people reading the CV's are under are minimal, so they need to stand out - hence the pop of colour I gave the CV to begin with. The main point (design your CV and make it look interesting) I really took from this lecture and applied it to my own work.
A employer would prefer:
- Good ideas
- Craft Skills
- Intelligence
- Nice person*
- Interpersonal skills
*Quite an important one - you'd like to be able to go out with these people too as you spend a lot of time with them
Further more, we were given lots of tips how to best approach someone when applying for a placement. You'd ideally want to address the person who ran the business by name, and not just as "sir/madam" (this implies you've done your research and are genuinely interested in doing your placement with them)
Jonathan gave us examples of work he'd loved that had been sent to him, particularly work that was physical, the idea is to never underestimate the power of getting something through the post.
- Show some interest, make us smile
- Make a visual portfolio; visual projects and information
- Progress work would also be great to see how you got to your point
- Always listen and pay attention
Jonathan's lecture captivated his work perfectly; though some projects would be considered slightly uninteresting to us to view at a lecture he made them interesting and unique and made us all laugh, which is what I wanted out of this lecture. Overall I gained a lot of information and completely re-vamped my CV because of this, and it would prove the most beneficial lecture about my placement year that I've had so far.
"I choose this is the best place to work and it is"
