New Trends in CV Writing

A paper for careers professionals produced by a group calling itself the Career Thought Leaders Consortium has suggested amongst many other things some new developing trends in the use of CVs.

Apart from some interesting comments indicating for example that 50% of hiring managers no longer read covering letters and have an "almost-universal dislike" of functional CVs, there are some interesting tips that you may find useful when compiling your CV:

• It is still vital for the CV to make a strong impression "above the fold" i.e. in the first half page 
• 'Hybrid resumes that combine an amplified profile (the “functional” component) with abbreviated reverse-chronological detail on jobs can work for those with less experience, employment gaps, or other challenges.' Translated into more normal English, this basically means: Skills-based CVs can still work for the groupings mentioned.

• For online CVs it is becoming important to ensure a good match of keywords between any person specification and the CV text, e.g. by using software like Wordle
• It can be useful to include endorsements in the form of brief testimonial statements. LinkedIn recommendations can provide a useful source of quotes for testimonials.

If you are looking to try some more innovative approaches to CV writing, there are some emerging ideas suggested in the full report. You could look at producing a CV in a series of ten 140 character tweets as a #twesume on Twitter, an infographic CV in the form of a diagram, a popup CV that appears on your website, or a pocket resume that you can leave at networking meetings and careers fairs on the back of a business card.

Perhaps what needs to be added at this point is that many of the Career Thought Leaders Consortium are US-based and it may take some time for the likes of twesumes to establish themselves this side of the pond.  But in a situation where candidates are routinely urged to put out large numbers of CVs, it is easy to see that there may be a need to go for more innovative approaches.

Please let us know whether you have heard of any of them being used in the UK (and with what result) by adding a comment below.

Using Social Media To Find Jobs - Start Now!

Recent articles in "Graduate Recruiter" magazine emphasise that it's never to early for students to start sussing out possible employers using social networks.

Employers are actively seeking to meet potential employees through the likes of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn in increasing numbers and increasingly early in your academic career.  There is even a new buzzword for this trend - Recruitment 4.0.

Statistics quoted in "Graduate Recruiter" show that:

• 89% of employers surveyed plan to recruit staff via social media - up massively from the current 8.2% who already do.
• 55% will increase spending on social recruiting while a third will cut back spending on more traditional methods (jobs boards, agencies, etc).

Fascinatingly, a separate survey indicates that 25% of employers using social media to find employees want to make contact with first year students and 14% even look to contact students who are still at school.

It's not quite a case of apply as soon as you start your studies, but clearly digging for employers on Facebook and elsewhere and following their tweets is a strategy that could pay off later on down the line.

Using Social Networks to Advance Your Career

Here you can find some information about using LinkedIn, Delicious and Twitter, the main social networks Careers Advisers at the University of Cumbria have found useful for careers purposes.

We don't currently use Facebook. Although Facebook can be used for careers purposes, we tend to feel that Facebook is more of a leisure facility. There are also reports that employers sometimes reject candidates on the basis of their Facebook profiles.

On the other hand My Space and YouTube have been successfully used by musicians and performers trying to make themselves better known.

LinkedIn

www.linkedin.com is becoming the most important social networking site for students and graduates who want to advance their career opportunities. A recent survey at the London School of Economics showed that, although students were initially more aware of Facebook, many have turned to LinkedIn as the main way of extending their career and professional network.

LinkedIn is a sort of Facebook for professionals but as such there are some major differences:

• Because of the professional context, there is no place for the frivolity that can be found on Facebook, such as drunken photos or dating activities
• You cannot link to any other LinkedIn subscriber unless you do actually know them, or know someone who knows them
• You can however look for jobs, research company details and the career progression of the people that work for them. You can also ask for personal recommendations from people you have worked with.

A helpful introductory video is available at: http://learn.linkedin.com/students as well as a number of pdfs which our students can access on the Blackboard virtual learning environment.

You’ll see that much of the above material is heavily US influenced, but there are already 24 million LinkedIn accounts in Europe and there are plenty of people from the University of Cumbria you may find it useful to link to when you create your account.

Delicious.com

http://delicious.com is the ultimate resource for “useful links”. Following the massive rise in the number of careers websites over the past decade it has become very popular with University Careers Services looking to organise weblinks that are likely to be useful for their students.

The University of Cumbria is no exception and we have collected the links we feel may be useful to you at http://delicious.com/skillzone

http://delicious.com/skillzone/nursing will bring up all the sites that are likely to be relevant to potential nurses, while http://delicious.com/skillzone/cv will bring up all the sites that have been tagged “CV”.

Of course this is just the start of the story. You can also look for more links on Delicious outwith our skillzone area. You can open your own Delicious account and use it to start storing your own favourite “useful links”. There are a number of tutorials on www.youtube.com that will help you do this. Another similar resource is www.careerstagged.co.uk from Careers Group London.

Twitter

Twitter isn't just about celebrity gossip. As well as telling us what Stephen Fry just had for breakfast, Twitter has become a very important source of information about job vacancies and careers information.

Examples of some currently active job feeds are http://twitter.com/EducationJobUK or http://twitter.com/charities_jobs

University of Cumbria LISS-Careers follows a number of useful job and information feeds at http://twitter.com/uoccareers We also subscribe to an automatic daily newspaper, the LISS-Careers Daily at http://paper.li/uoccareers The result is a "mash-up" of stories produced from our tweets and those we follow, including items tweeted from this blog.

You don't have to follow any twitter feeds to be able to view them all on http://twitter.com Twitter can get complicated but it's easy enough to start up your own account so you can follow tweets and tweet yourself. www.youtube.com contains plenty of beginners' and advanced tutorials on using twitter for those who want to get more involved.