Monday 5th December, 2016
Curriculum Vitae (CV)
Thinking about CV's, there is no right way to do a CV as it can vary between employers and occupations. Everyone has their own technique when it comes to it, the CV design can change depending on who you're talking to. People looking through CV's spend 10 to 15 seconds looking at it and it is likely that the CV will not be seen by the director but by the PA instead.
Important things to include on a CV are; name & contact, education, work experience, abilities & interests and referees. Something that was made clear was how referee's aren't references, just a point of contact for employers to create communications with them to create a reference. Within this session we were shown the exact layouts or examples there of for us to follow when creating our own Curriculum Vitae's. Not putting your picture on the form was new to me as I've seen many examples of CV's including a persons picture - good to know people don't hire based off of looks.
Going onto the part specifically about education, if you're applying to a firm thats quite broad in terms of employment opportunities such as design firms with specific roles. Having a specific list of accomplishments in education can help employers determine where you would best fit in their company - which can also be attained by listing the skills you have gained through your time in education as well. So applying that to myself would be noting down what I have done during my time in University with my Process and Production modules as well as activities done during Innovation Week also being a useful reference of skills gained.
The last thing that I learned from this part of the lecture, that I didn't already know, was knowing to tailor the CV to each place applied to for employment. I saw that it was a good habit to get into to make yourself try and stand out from the crowd of applicants trying to get a job with the firm. So, making the CV and cover letter to match different for each firm is important and vital to furthering your chances with a possible future employer. A good example of this was given in the lecture itself, using the YCN/RSA brief as a reference point, if you were applying for a position in the Fedrigoni company then a good idea would be to use their own paper or something of high quality before sending it off.
With the rest of the lecture touching on copyrights, patents, trademarks and intellectual property/intellectual property rights it gave another level to the industry that I had never before considered as deeply. Considering the topics of law and knowing what can and can't be used, where, how and when you can patent a design and such was all interesting as I could see it becoming relevant in my future.
The final and most important tid-bit that I took from this lecture was to contact firms to come to the final year show and leave plenty of time for response so that they can come to it. It only has pro's for doing this and I can see it benefiting multiple individuals on the course to move forwards in their careers after completing their curricular education.
