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Ever thought about a career in the railway industry?

Once upon a time it was every little boy’s dream to become a train driver when they grew up. Trains were seen as exciting, fun and glamorous. But then the world changed, and rail travel lost a little of its sparkle. Nowadays you don’t hear nearly so many young folks talking about how they dream of a career in the railway industry.

But you know what? The railway industry is a great place to work. The government is investing in upgrading lines, and even building fancy high-speed ones. And more people are travelling by train than ever before. All of this means there are jobs to be had in the sector.

And it’s not just jobs driving the trains, either. The companies and organizations that collectively make up the British rail network form a mightily big and complex operation that requires a hugely diverse set of skills. Yes, there are plenty of jobs to be had on the front line of the sector; but there are also just as many behind-the-scenes positions that are just as likely to involve marketing and sales as they are laying track or fixing engines.

So whether you’re looking for an apprenticeship, a graduate position or a career change, and whether you’re into the arts or the sciences, the rail industry has many exciting opportunities. Here are some of our top picks of them:

Customer-based roles

Rail operators need to maintain good relationships with their customers, meaning they invest a lot in people who work with them. Although you’ll most often see this in the form of train conductors and other onboard staff–incidentally, these are often the starting-level positions from which you can progress to training as a driver–there are also thousands of people who do things like man and run customer-service lines, design and maintain company websites, devise marketing campaigns and conduct research into passenger habits.

Project management

A lot of work in the rail industry is project based, meaning project managers of all different specialties are required to ensure that things like station upgrade projects and new IT systems run on time and on budget.

Engineering

The rail industry always needs engineers of all different types, so if you’re interested in working as an engineer this is one of the best places to work. Mechanical engineers are needed for the construction of trains, while electrical and civil engineers are sought after for the construction and maintenance of track and stations.

If you’re not planning on going to university, there are also plenty of positions within this sector. The people who do the hands-on working of inspecting and fixing track and signals have to perform their job accurately and efficiently, and they’re paid handsomely for doing so.

The freight sector

When most people picture a train they think of something with a buffet car that carries passengers between cities. But there’s a second, equally big side of the railway industry: the freight sector. Every day goods worth millions of pounds are transported across the country on trains. Without them, the country would grind to a halt. This sector offers just as many opportunities as the passenger sector, so if you’re interested in a career on the railways make sure you check out the options here and not just with the passenger operators.

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After GCSE revision and results comes choosing your A Levels

Finishing your GCSEs feels like a real weight has been lifted off your shoulders. However, in the summer months after you’ve finished with your GCSE revision book and completed your exams, you may find a couple of nagging doubts weighing on you. One of these is what your results will be. This is completely understandable, but come August you’ll finally get your results.

The other little thing that can gnaw away at people after GCSE revision and exams are over is the question of what A Levels (or BTECs or other qualifications) to choose for the next school year. Some people really fret over this, and rightly so: it’s a big life choice to make.

But you shouldn’t let it spoil your summer, and the fact that you have to make a choice doesn’t mean it is one that you need to worry about making. Instead, with the right attitude it’s a decision you can make calmly, comfortably and in your own time.

Look back at the final months of GCSES

A starting point for helping you tackle the question of A Level choices is how well your GCSE revision went. Quite often people find their relationship with some subjects changes completely when it comes to the crunch of doing those final GCSE exams. Subjects that they had loved for the last two years can start to seem a bit boring, while others unexpectedly become a joy to revise for or all the bits about them that didn’t make sense before all click into place. So don’t just assume you’ll go on to study the subjects that you had in mind before you started your GCSE revision; reevaluate what you thought of all your GCSE subjects based on how you felt about them over the last couple of months.

Look more into the content of A Level subjects

Another way of helping you decide about A Levels is to look forward to what the subjects will involve. Now, you may have attended talks by teachers at your school, or open days at local colleges, or you may have even got advice from parents and older siblings or friends. But one really good way of finding out what a subject would have in store for you at A Level is to look at the study materials for it. On our site, for example, we’ve got some great A Level revision guides. Have a look at them. If the topics they cover really capture your imagination, then it’s a good sign you’d enjoy studying that subject at A Level.

Don’t be rushed into making a final decision

The final piece of advice we’d like you to keep in mind is that you don’t have to make a final decision right now. If you’re feeling anxious about one of the A Level choices that you’ve already made, take it as an opportunity to see that you don’t have to study that subject when the new school year starts, rather than seeing everything as a done deal. The time off from studying that you’ll have over the next month or two now that GCSE revision is over will give you the chance to get some perspective on the provisional A Level choices you may have made earlier this year. If that time away makes you think differently about some of those choices, act on the feeling by looking into your options and talking it over with friends, teachers and family rather than burying it down.

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Coming up on Getting-in: new GCSE revision guides, new A Level revision materials and a whole lot more!

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Summer job interview fails

When the sun’s out and studies are over for another academic year, who doesn’t dream of a couple of months of kicking back in the sunshine, lazing around with friends, and perhaps taking the odd trip away or holiday?

Unfortunately, for many students these dreams are dashed the moment that they check their bank balance. Even for the most frugal students, it’s likely that the old account is looking pretty bare. And for those who didn’t really keep track of their spending throughout the year the numbers on the bottom line of the statement probably look pretty high; but sadly the chances are they also have a little minus sign next to them.

So, a part- or full-time summer job soon becomes a must for most students. Nothing too stressful (after all, the main objective is just to make a bit of money to then put to use on enjoying the summer, perhaps paying off some of that overdraft if possible); perhaps something involving serving customers, stacking shelves, packing things in boxes or fielding sales or customer-service calls. This sort of work is a breeze to come by, right?

Well, think again. The issue here is not that this sort of work isn’t available. Rather, it’s that taking this sort of attitude leads many students to think that all they’ll need to do is show up to the job interview and the only question they’ll get is “When can you start?”

But for pretty much any job (perhaps with the exception of payment-by-results cold calling, where the staff turnover is so high they can’t afford to be picky), the person hiring you wants to know you’re reliable, motivated, and will follow instructions. You might think they’ll assume you’re fully capable of the job simply because you get good grades at a well-known university, but the chances are they’ll probably want to see these things from you with their own eyes. So if you don’t demonstrate these things at interview, you’re not going to get the gig.

Here are some of the biggest howlers that people make when they’re going for an interview for a summer job. Avoid them at all costs!

1: Being late for an interview

If you can’t keep good time on the first occasion they’ve asked you to do so, why on earth should they think you’d be able to do it on a day-to-day basis?

2: Failure to follow instructions

If they ask you to bring a passport and national-insurance number to the interview, do it. And if they tell you the dress code for the interview will be smart, wear something formal. The message you’re giving off by not paying attention to the instructions they’ve given you is “I probably can’t be counted on to do what I’m asked to do,” something that no employer ever likes.

3: No clear idea about availability

The majority of summer jobs are in places that operate outside of standard business hours–supermarkets, bars, call centres and so on–and as a result they have big, complex staff rotas. It’s essential that they are able to fill these rotas with the names of people for each shift, and so in turn it’s crucial that they know exactly when you’d be willing to work. They don’t want a vague or noncommittal answer about whether you can work on Friday evenings due to you possibly wanting to keep it free sometimes to do stuff with your mates; they just want a definite yes or no.

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Need to resit your uni exams this summer?

If you’re currently at university you’ll have probably noticed that one of the big differences between undergraduate exams and the ones you did at GCSE or A-Level is that you get your results back much more quickly. Whereas sixteen and eighteen year-olds will be sweating on their grades all the way until August, most universities will send you your summer exam results in less than two months, and in some cases in just a couple of weeks. This happens largely because unlike GCSEs and A-Levels university exams are all marked internally, meaning the whole process can be carried out much more quickly. That said, a small part of us does also wonder whether it could also be that the lecturers are just as eager to get marking out the way so they can go off on holiday as you were to get the exams over with.

While the upside to getting your results more quickly is that you don’t need to spend the summer fretting about them, the downside is that in the event that you failed anything the chances are that you’ll have to take resits, which typically take place in August and which you’ll need to pass in order to be able to progress onto the next year of your course or be awarded your degree.

While some students–typically the ones who knew the fail was coming due to their “lifestyles”–are relaxed about the whole thing, other people find the prospect of resits quite stressful. But while this is a completely understandable response, if you take these steps you should be able to approach the ordeal calmly and with the confidence that you’ll pass second time round.

1) Get in touch with lecturers for feedback

Although not all universities or departments will be prepared to give you feedback, it’s certainly worth asking for some from your lecturers in case you do. Hopefully they’ll be happy to talk you through what went wrong last time, giving you a real head-start in preparing yourself for the resits.

2) Ask your coursemates for help

Talking things over with your coursemates will also make the process less stressful, both baecause they’ll be able to help you to put things into perspective and give you tips about the way they successfully handled the exams. If you think that you’re lacking in terms of the materials you need to prepare for your exams, they may also be able to lend you books or revision notes.

3) Plan for next year based on what went wrong last time

Unless your resit is for a final exam, then you’re going to be returning to your course next year, and that’ll mean more exams on the same or similar subjects in the future. Assuming–not unreasonably–that you’d prefer not to have to do resits again, take this opportunity to think about what might have caused you to fail this time round. Was it that you took a module in something you’re not suited to? Then consider changing your course options for next year. Did you find when you came to revise your notes weren’t very good? Then take more care over your lecture and seminar notes next year. Could your failure have been the result of too many late nights and not enough time in the lecture hall and library? For this last one, we probably don’t need to tell you what you need to do next year…

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Preparing your last-minute university application

Although the summer is upon us, it’s in fact certainly not uncommon for people to still be looking to apply to university with a view to starting when the summer ends. For both undergraduates and postgraduates there’s still time to get on a course for this autumn.

But you’ll have to be quick. And more often than not what slows people down in getting their last-minute application in on time is the writer’s block that comes with having to produce a personal statement. So we thought today, for the benefit of those of you in the process of firing in an eleventh hour university application, we’d provide a quick rundown on getting yourself ready to write your personal statement.

The thought of writing a personal statement generally sends shivers down people’s spine. And it’s no wonder, given what the task demands: producing a short document that eloquently puts across the case for you being accepted onto a university course. It’s a challenge that immediately raises dozens of thorny questions, amongst them: What should I include? How positive should I be about my achievements? How do I avoid sounding boastful?

Like so many things in life, however, what can sound like an impossible task becomes a lot simpler if you break it down into smaller pieces and attack it in a logical way. It helps enormously if you start the process of producing your personal statement by focusing on what to include. This begins by thinking about the broad areas that admissions officers will be interested in. Generally speaking, these can be broken down into the following broad areas: your motivation for your chosen course, your current studies and additional study you have done relating to your chosen course, relevant work or voluntary experience you have carried out in preparation for the course, and your hobbies and other interests. Exactly which ones of these you write the most about depends on a combination of how much you have to say about these areas and the nature of the course you are applying for.

Now that we’ve identified these main areas, the next step is to start listing the information relevant t you for each of them. So, using those different areas as your main headings, start brainstorming bits of information. These could be things like details of your most recent job, aspects of studying your subject that you’ve most enjoyed, books related to the subject that you’ve read recently, and so on. At this stage of the process, your main goal is to have a big stash of these experiences to draw on.

And once you’ve amassed this information, your next step is to start being selective about it. One of the big errors students make is that they try and pack in every single thing they have ever done, making for a statement that leaves no room for discussing your achievements in any real detail. So, identify the most relevant and impressive things from each category; these will be the things that you talk about in your first draft of the statement.

You’re almost ready to start writing, but before you do you need to devise a structure to your statement. The personal statements that fall flat are the ones where the writer simply throws information at the reader in no logical order, jumping from work experiences to hobbies and then onto their studies in the space of the same paragraph. The way to avoid this is simply to use the headings from your earlier brainstorming as paragraph headings, with the majority of the information you give about each individual area being contained in the same paragraph. Although there’s some flexibility in terms of what order the paragraphs come in, generally speaking it’s best to start off with one relating to your motivation.

So once you’ve identified the experiences and achievements you want to talk about, and have also worked out in what order you’ll talk about them, you’re ready to start writing. This is of course the stage that most people try and put off. Don’t worry, no one likes to write about themselves. But it’s important to get over the feeling of self-consciousness as soon as possible. The best way to do this is to keep in mind that anything you write can be deleted at the touch of a button, meaning that if you’re not happy with your first efforts it’s simple to banish them forever. Most writers find that they get it wrong the first time, but in the act of writing something they’re not happy with they work out a way of saying what they actually want to say. So those first faltering attempts to write your statement will actually be hugely helpful in getting you towards your end result!

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Three misconceptions about clearing

As invigilators call time on the last A Level and BTEC exams of the academic year, many students’ thoughts turn towards the summer. For others, however, the uncertainty that they have about their next educational step after the summer is over means that rather than thinking about the long, sunny days ahead, there’s only one thing on their mind: clearing.

As the final chapter in the UCAS application story, clearing is the last opportunity for people who want to go to university in the next academic year but either–as could be the case right now–they don’t have any offers or haven’t put in a UCAS application yet, or–as could be the case from mid-August–didn’t meet the offers they accepted and were ultimately turned away from their initial unis of choice.

Perhaps because clearing is so frequently used in the same sentence as words like “last” and “final,” people seem to associate it with a sense of panic and last-ditch efforts. Indeed, there are all sorts of misconceptions about what clearing is about, and these often unnecessarily put people off it or make them go into it with confused ideas. So we thought it was high time to put some of these to bed, so people can see clearing for what it really is: a chance to get a place on a course through dealing more directly with the universities and with less waiting.

Misconception #1: Clearing is only for people who failed to get the grades

This simply is not the case. All sorts of other people go into clearing, from people who didn’t apply for a course until after 30th June to people who, having realised they were selling themselves short with their initial five course choices, decided not to accept any of their offers and wait and see what was on offer through clearing.

Misconception #2: The courses on offer through clearing are of a lesser standard than those available at the start of the UCAS application cycle

While some of the top courses in the country will be already full and won’t appear on the clearing lists, even if some of the people with offers for them don’t get the grades required, there will still be plenty of other courses available on clearing that are at outstanding universities and/or are at the top of their respective subject tables. Among the many reasons for this being the case is the fact that not all of those bright sparks who initially get onto these courses will get the grades required, and rather than run the courses with fewer students the university will put those places into clearing.

Misconception #3: If you go through clearing you won’t have time to make an informed decision based on getting to know the course, the university and the city where you’ll be studying

Although things move fast in clearing once the A Level results come in, they generally never move so fast that you won’t have time to find out about the course, the university and so forth. There’s so much information available about courses and universities online nowadays that there’s little chance you could pick a course without first getting an in-depth description of it and the university that offers it. Moreover, when you go through clearing you get the chance to speak directly to the people who run the course, who will be able to give you even more information. This is something that the vast majority of people who accepted an offer earlier in the UCAS cycle will have had. So you could even argue that clearing gives you more of a chance to learn about what you’re signing up for!

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Going on holiday with your friends after exams?

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Ending Year 12 and planning for life after secondary education

As the sun sets on another school year, some students in secondary education find themselves reaching the end of one important stage in their lives, and eagerly begin to look forward to the next one. Those who are fighting their way through their final GCSE exams will no doubt be optimistic about moving onto their studies at college or sixth-form; and those leaving that level of study will in turn be already letting themselves get excited about the move onto university or the world of work.

However, this doesn’t mean that those who aren’t reaching one of these milestones shouldn’t have good reason to think about their futures. In particular, if you’re reaching the end of Year 12 of the first year of AS/A2 right now, it may be tempting to think that the upcoming summer break will simply be a question of downing tools for a few months, with more of the same to follow from September.

And while you’d be right in the sense that the day to day of the next academic year will be quite similar to the last one–if a little more stressful due to it being your final year at the secondary level–this doesn’t mean by any stretch that it’s not worth looking towards the future. Because while your next move may be more than a year away, you’ll be a whole lot more ready for it if you start putting in the planning for it now.

If anything, the summer between your penultimate year in secondary education and your final one is probably even more important than the one you’ll enjoy when you finish those final exams a year from now. Why? Because if you look into your future now you’ll be prepared to make good, informed decisions; if you just leave things until the last minute you’ll probably discover that the place on your dream course is already full, or that you should have applied for that great training scheme three months ago.

So, if you’re looking ahead to your final year of school or college, you should definitely also be looking beyond that as well, and in particular asking yourself these questions:

University, training or work?

This is the basic question you should be addressing now, rather than heading into the next year without a clear idea. This is not just because you’ll feel all at sea while your friends are talking about getting UCAS statements ready when you’d not even thought about university until that point, but also because if you don’t have an answer to this question months before you leave college or school the chances are you’ll miss the pick of the opportunities from any of these options and just end up with the scraps.

Where should I be doing this?

This is the next logical question to ask yourself. And by ‘where’ we’re not just speaking geographically. If you’ve decided on university, you’ll need to think about both what course to study and at which universities; if you’re thinking about work or training, it’s likely you’ll be staying closer to home, but you’ll still need to decide exactly what industry or field you want to be in, and in turn what options there are for it in your area.

How can I prepare for it?

This is the question that many people forget to answer. It’s all very well and good having a set idea about what you want to do, but if you don’t have a clear idea of how to turn that idea into reality–whether that’ll be through getting accepted onto a course by virtue of having the right work experience, or getting your CV and cover letter ready in time for application deadlines–then ultimately you’ll still end up in the same place as those who’d made no plans at all, only it’ll be even more frustrating for you–at least those who didn’t make any plans didn’t have any expectations! So once you’ve decided what you want to do, get researching the practicalities of how to get yourself on the right track to do it.

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A couple more tips for international students

Last week we blogged a couple of times about how international students who are coming to the UK to study here from September–are you guys excited about coming over yet, by the way?–can best prepare themselves for the academic side of life here. We trust that all you international students since then have been avidly watching English-language documentaries on YouTube and swotting up on your English for Academic Purposes and study skills books….

Today we have a couple more tips to round off your preparations for what will no doubt turn out to be a great year or period of years studying and living in the UK. But today’s tips are very much more about the living part than they are the studying. Because although one of the key reasons international students come to the UK is because its universities can provide them with a world-class education, it’s also true that they come because doing so will offer them a unique cultural and social experience.

That said, from time to time some international students find life in the UK a little lonely or alienating. Nine times out of ten this is because they either miss life back home–whether in the form of their country’s food, their friends, or a any number of other things that haven’t made the journey to the UK with them–or they don’t feel comfortable in or familiar with their new surroundings.

Making sure these things don’t happen and cause your time as an international student to be spoiled is a simple matter of putting in a bit of groundwork before you head off to the UK, and then following up on it when you arrive.

Tip: Use social media to your advantage

Just a couple of years ago, starting a new life at university was, even for domestic students, a step into the unknown when it came to who you’d be living and spending your time with. Universities could send you brochures with pictures of your new accommodation, but they couldn’t give you direct contact with your new house and course mates.

But now things are completely different, thanks for the most part to the growth of social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. In addition to the groups set up by the universities themselves for their courses, accommodation and student unions, on which you can exchange messages with other new students at your university, there are also many other unofficial groups as well, often catering to your particular nationality. So if you think that once in a while you’ll want the chance to hang out with people who share your native tongue and will be able to share your take on the more unusual aspects of UK student life, there’ll almost certainly be a Facebook group bringing you and like-minded people together.

Tip: Do your research on the town or city where you’ll be living

Almost as important as getting to know your future fellow students is getting to know the city you’ll be living in. Again, the internet allows you to go way beyond what the university’s brochures can tell you, and it’d be crazy not to make use of it. So get on Google Maps and have a look for restaurants that serve food from back home, and take a stroll around your future neighbourhood using street view. And also get googling to find out what opportunities there are for you to continue with your hobbies and favourite activities (or even pick up new ones) in your new home town. Knowing exactly what things there’ll be to do before you arrive will help make your transition into your new life a whole lot easier and less nerve wracking!

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