Today we continue our tips on effective searching for a job using jobsites and other online resources.

Tip #2: Sign up to the site to make full use of its functions

Jobsites are much more than a big collection of vacancies. They’re also packed with clever tools and additional features that allow you to maximise your chances of success when searching for a job. For example, some allow you to save adverts that are of interest to you, making it easy for you to compile a shortlist. Others offer email notifications for new adverts posted in your professional sector.

To be able to use these things when searching for a job, however, you usually need to register for an account (which should be free of charge!). Given that these features can really help you as you are searching for a job, this is definitely worth doing, even if it takes a couple of minutes of your time to fill in all your details.

Tip #3: Come up with good keywords

Jobsites often have lots of filters that allow you to narrow down your search based on things like industry, location and date of job posting. However, when searching for a job these filters still often don’t lead to sufficiently narrow results. This is especially the case if you are willing to move to other parts of the country and are therefore searching for jobs right across the UK.

One of the best ways to further narrow down the results when searching for a job on a jobsite is to develop a good set of keywords. This is an especially effective strategy if you have very specific criteria. For example, if you know how to use a specific, specialized software package (i.e., not MS Office!), then using its name as a keyword will likely allow you to find relevant jobs to you much more quickly.

So have a think about what keywords would be most effective as you are searching for a job, and also get inspiration from the texts of the adverts that you do find. Soon you’ll have an advanced keyword strategy that will make searching for a job a much more fruitful process.

There’ll be a couple more tips on searching for a job using a jobsite at the end of this week!

Over the last couple of weeks our blog has been looking at how to choose a university from the offers made via the UCAS system. There’s one key group of UCAS users, however, who may well not be at the stage of having received offers, or even submitted their application: PGCE candidates.

Until a year or two ago PGCE candidates had their own separate system for applying for a course. Now, however, it’s all run through the UCAS system. And although the system opened for PGCE applications in late November, PGCE courses tend to be open for vacancies for much longer than undergraduate courses, especially the ones for secondary school teaching.

So, if you’ve been thinking about a career in teaching, there may well still be time to put in a PGCE application. That said, the applying process isn’t just a question of filling in a few details on the UCAS system and picking your course. Unlike many graduate courses, you will almost certainly be interviewed for a PGCE course, and they are likely to pay close attention to what you put in your personal statement when preparing to interview you.

So, before you register for a UCAS account, keep these pointers in mind.

Before you submit the application:

Get relevant experience working with young people

This is an absolutely fundamental thing that you need to do before you make a PGCE application. The key thing that PGCE admissions officers need to know is: Can this person cut it in front of a group of 5/12/16 year olds? If you don’t have any such experience to talk about on your personal statement, it’s imperative that you go and get some. Volunteering at a local youth group or contacting a local school for a work shadowing experience are your two best bets for getting this exposure at short notice.

Make sure you understand the challenges of the teaching profession in the UK

Again, the PGCE admissions officers need to know that you’ll be able to survive in the UK school environment. They’ll work this out both through your interview and what you say in your personal statement. So when you’re getting your experience of working with young people, think about issues such as: How do teachers handle the needs of diverse groups? What adversity might they face in the classroom? What is expected of teachers in terms of workload?

Putting your application together:

Convey your personality with your statement

Your personal statement for PGCE courses is designed to convey who you are, your outlook on the importance of education, and what you hope to achieve through teaching. In other words, it’s about putting down what genuinely motivates you to be a teacher, rather than trying to put in a formulaic set of things that sound superficially impressive. Your interviewers will see you through you if you can’t back up what you say in your statement.

Don’t overlook the importance of small details

Attention to detail is important when you’re a teacher. And so if you haven’t taken the time to make sure your statement is polished and error-free, it simply suggests that you don’t have this necessary attention to detail. Proofreading and checking your statement before you send it may be the very last thing that you want to do after spending a long time on writing it, but it’s undeniably worth it.

The final part of our FAQ on picking a university looks at the question of your insurance choice. With all the agonizing that goes into picking a university for your first choice, the insurance for many ends up being an afterthought. However, it’s worth thinking over this choice carefully, as in the event that your grades fall short you want to make sure that you’ll still be going to a place where you’re happy.

What things should I think about specifically when picking an insurance choice?

Essentially the factors that you put into choosing your top choice are the same ones you should apply to your insurance choice: the type of city, the type of campus, the quality of the course, the overall reputation of the university, and so forth.

The extra factors that come into play for the insurance choice when picking a university are the offer grades and whether or not you are holding a second offer that will measure up to your expectations. The insurance offer is called that for a reason: it’s there for you if something goes wrong and you don’t get the grades you thought you would. If your insurance choice is as competitive a university as your top choice and you’re applying for the same course, you’re not so likely to be insured against anything if you don’t make your grades. So unless you’re sure that you’re going to make your offer (say, for example, that you’ve been predicted AAB and your offer for your top choice is BBC), it’s worth picking an insurance choice that is more likely to take you.

The other thing to consider when picking a university to go in your insurance choice slot is whether or not it’s a course you truly want to do. It’s not unusual for people to have put down a course or two when applying that was just making up the numbers on the UCAS form. If you did this, and you find yourself having one offer that you truly want to take and the rest falling into this category of also-rans, it may be worth considering whether or not in the event of not meeting your conditional offer for your first choice you’d be better off waiting a year to go to university and applying for a new set of courses that you may prefer. Remember that you’re obliged to take your insurance choice if you meet the offer (assuming you didn’t meet your top-choice offer), and so you can’t just assume that you’ll be able to not take up the offer and go through clearing.

Should I pick an offer even if I’m not sure I’ll get it?

This is one of the most difficult questions of them all, and the answer to it depends entirely on your individual circumstances. It may be that you are a naturally pessimistic person, and this is clouding your judgement of your chances. It could be, however, that you have a point. If so, there’s nothing wrong with putting the offer as your top choice, so long as you also have an insurance offer that you’ll be able to meet and happy to take up should you need to. The people to speak to to help you solve this one are the people who know your academic potential the best, namely your teachers and/or parents.

We kick off the week by carrying on with our FAQ on picking a university from your offers. Today we’ll be addressing some queries that many students have related to who they should turn to for advice if you’re in a quandary about picking a university.

Who are the best people for me to speak (and listen) to when I’m making a decision?

Unfortunately there’s no one simple answer to that question. It really depends on the different groups of people you could feasibly turn to, how much you feel that they understand your interests and needs, and how knowledgeable they are about higher education and picking a university.

In difficult times we always turn to friends, and the situation of picking a university is no different. These are the people who probably understand you and what you want from life the best. However, friends in your age group may also have another thing in common with you: they’ve also never been to university, and so won’t be giving advice based on first-hand experience. So get input from them, but don’t use them as your only source of advice. If they happen to have older siblings who’ve been to university, they may be able to give you more of a direct account of the university experience.

Family members are another key group of people to consult when picking a university. Where your friends might be tempted to make you pick the same university as them so they have a buddy there, your parents are more likely to keep you grounded by focusing on things like which course seems to offer the best career prospects and so forth. That said, the generational divide can make some of their information out of date. What might have been a hip place to go when they were young may now have fallen on harder times, or a place people discounted twenty years ago may have now surged up the rankings.

The other main group of people to talk to when picking a university are your teachers and/or careers advisors at school. They should have a pretty good overview of the university scene, and hopefully will also understand your academic needs better than most others. Unless you go to a very small school, however, it may well be that as a source of advice they are spread quite thin between all the other people in your year group. They’re also possibly less likely to know the social you so well, and therefore will be in not such a good position to judge whether you’d be happy in a big city, a rural campus etc.

What we can see, then, is that there are many different people that can help to advise you in picking a university, but none of them are perfect. Collectively, though, they should cover all angles of the question, so the best thing to do is understand what they can contribute to your decision-making process and get input from all of them.

How much attention should I pay to what I read on forums and social networks about a particular university?

Anonymous of the Internet is the one person we left off the groups you can consult above. He or she can be a tricky character who you need to be careful in dealing with. While you can get some really important insights from him or her, you also have no idea of their motivations, their preferences, or even whether or not what they say is factually accurate. Like any form of online review, what you’ll find when it comes to discussions of universities online is that the commenters will either be wildly enthusiastic or very negative–these being the two feelings that motivate people to put effort into writing about something.

This means that it’s best not to look at online opinions in isolation. Instead, look for trends in what people are saying about a course or university. If the student union Facebook page is packed with enthusiastic comments, the trend would suggest the university is a fun place to be. Lots of students complaining about a course on a website, on the other hand, would suggest there are genuine issues with that course, rather than there being just one disgruntled student among a big majority of happy ones.

Earlier this week on our blog we gave you a couple of job shadowing tips to help you get the most of and work experience opportunities you are given while you’re still in school. As we mentioned last time, job shadowing is a great way of getting inspiration for your future study and/or career options, whether in the form of making you move towards a specific working area or making you realise that you’d be happier working in an environment that’s different to the one you did your experience in.

So, without further ado, let’s have a look at our final three job shadowing tips.

First up in today’s job shadowing tips relates to getting on throughout the day. It’s likely that you’ll be given some tasks to do to keep you busy throughout the day. If you find yourself a bit unsure as to how to proceed, don’t be afraid to ask someone. They’ll appreciate your honesty and should be more than happy to clarify any questions you have to ensure the job is done properly. Be a bit careful with this though – if you find yourself wanting to ask about every single little step of your task, you’re probably worrying a bit too much about it. It’s important to remember that the others in the organisation have their own jobs to get on with too, so don’t necessarily have lots of time to spend with you going over each small detail.

Following on the previous of our job shadowing tips is what to do if you complete a set task. If you find yourself in the position where you don’t really have anything to do, it’s okay to ask whether there’s something you can help with. This shows initiative on your part, which is something that future employers and university admissions folk alike will love to see. This will also mean that you might get some interesting new jobs to do, giving you a better sense of how the organisation runs overall and perhaps providing you with the opportunity to develop some new skills.

The last of our job shadowing tips today is something that you can do when the experience is over, and this is to write down what sorts of jobs you did, what skills you think were developed or strengthened, and what you learned in general. This is not only because as time goes on you might forget some of the details, but it can also help you build your confidence and demonstrate to you how much you actually got from the job shadowing experience.

One thing that a lot of students do in the years leading up to the end of secondary school is to get some experience job shadowing. You might even find that your school has a week where this type of experience is mandatory. If you’re lucky, you’ll get to shadow in an area that is especially interesting to you, although not everyone has this experience and for some the time spent job shadowing can seem a bit tedious. However, even in this case it’s an experience which provides you with some insight into the goings on in a professional work environment, and perhaps more importantly, it helps build up the experience and skills that will help you land a spot in university or get a job. You might even find yourself asking someone within the organisation to provide you with a reference a little further down the line, meaning that you should do as much as you can to impress them when you have the opportunity. So today we’ve got a few job shadowing tips to make sure you have a positive experience, and can really make the most of it.

The first of our job shadowing tips is about demonstrating that you’re taking the experience seriously. To do this, it’s important to dress in a professional way. This means blouses or dress shirts and tie, smart skirts or trousers and even a jacket if appropriate. This may seem like a simple thing, but it quickly shows the people who work in the organisation that you’re respectful of the workplace and of them, and that you’re looking to get the most from the job shadowing experience.

The next of our job shadowing tips is to show up on time, and even a bit early. This is important every day, but especially so on your first day. If you’re not completely sure where the office or building is located, you can scope it out a couple days ahead of time. Again, this gives a really positive first impression which shows that you’re taking the experience seriously.

Third and last in the job shadowing tips line-up for today is to be polite and respectful to everyone in the organisation, from the cleaning staff to the reception to the senior staff members. Remember that there’s a good chance that staff members will speak to one another after you’re gone, and if you’ve not shown everyone your complete respect it may make its way to someone who may be providing a reference or completing a report on you for your school.

Check back in later in the week for more quick and easy job shadowing tips!