Blog - Page 8 of 1361 - Leaving School

The two main types of CVs

Getting a new job is a key new year’s resolution for many people. Searching new websites for job postings, following the social media profiles for companies you want to work with so you can hear about new opportunities and perhaps even setting up some job shadowing days are all great steps you can take to improve your chances. But the most important thing that you can do to achieve this goal is to get your CV in order. One thing to be aware of is that there are different types of CVs, so it may be worth thinking about which type will better suit your needs. Today we’ll highlight two main types of CVs.

The first of the two main types of CVs that we’ll talk about is the chronological CV. This is a CV where you list all of your previous job experience in, as the name suggests, chronological order. This is a very common type of CV, and is quite likely what you already have. The chronological CV has got some definite advantages. It’s fairly easy to update with new experience, and you’ll use the same CV for various types of job. However, this type of CV does have some drawbacks as well. Depending on what kind of job you’re looking for, the chronological CV might contain details that just aren’t relevant to the position you’re applying for. However, leaving those positions out to focus on more relevant positions may leave your potential employer wondering what you did for a certain period of time.

This brings us to next of the two main types of CVs – the skills based CV. This CV doesn’t list all of your jobs in chronological order. Instead, you focus on the skills that were required of you in different job roles. You should start this type of CV with a skills profile, where you write a few sentences highlighting some basic experience and why you’re looking for a role in this area. You’ll then have to consider what broad categories of skills are particularly relevant to the jobs you’re applying for, such as education, administrative or customer service experience. You then highlight the experiences that led you to develop skills in those areas. This type of CV is great because it lets your potential employer quickly see the skills and experience that you have. This is especially important when many people are applying for the same position and prospective candidates need to be narrowed down quickly. There are some drawbacks to this CV though. Depending on whether you’re applying for different types of jobs you may need to create slightly different versions of this CV, which can be a drag. It’s also perhaps a bit more difficult to create in the first place. This is where the Internet and the careers advisor at your school or university can be really helpful. Have a quick look at how to do this type of CV online, and then have a go at creating one. Make an appointment with your careers advisor and take in a copy of what you’re written. They’ll be happy to give you some pointers on how to improve on what you’ve done.

You may also wonder whether you can mix the two main types of CVs. Well, this depends. There will probably be chronological elements to a skills based CV. For example, if you’re listing all your jobs where you developed administrative skills, you’ll do this in chronological order. And you can start off your chronological CV with a skills profile, and you’ll probably make some separations, maybe between education and work experience.

So take the new year as an opportunity to consider whether your CV is really providing you with the best opportunities, or whether one of these two main types of CV would better suit your needs and help you find the perfect job.

Tagged careers |

Easy adventures for gap year ditherers

If you’re currently on a gap year, you may well be reading this from some far-flung corner of the world as you take a breather from the life-changing travelling and/or work experience. Alternatively, you could be in the final stages of getting ready to head off on an adventure in the new year.

But then again, your gap year intentions might not have yet panned out as intended. While you were still in your last year of school, you had all sorts of grand ideas about the amazing things you’d do. Fast forward to December, and you still don’t have anything sorted out.

If this is the case, perhaps it’s time to get your gap year back on track. First, let’s start by having a think about what’s gone wrong with your planning so far. Very often the causes of a gap year fizzling out are either that your thoughts so far have been too vague, or alternatively too ambitious.

The remedy for both causes of these gap year woes are pretty much the same: keep things simple, and pick one specific thing and stick to it. Now, while embarking on a backpacking odyssey is one great way to spend a gap year, unless you’re willing to improvise all of your itinerary this option does require quite a lot of prior planning.

So, in the spirit of keeping things simple, perhaps the best option for a simple-to-organize yet highly rewarding gap year experience is to decamp to one place–which in practice means a work or volunteering gap year. You’ll be able to come home with a bagful of great memories, stories and skills, but the whole process of making it happen is much easier to achieve.

There are loads of different great gap year working or volunteering opportunities, but here are some ideas to get you thinking:

– Conservation work: there are loads of different organisations that offer conservation volunteering packages for gap years. Just remember to thoroughly check out the credentials of the company you go through before you commit!

– Teaching: You can either go down this route on a volunteer basis, or alternatively get paid for it. Teaching English is one particularly popular way of teaching abroad; check out tefl.com for an overview of where you could go.

– BUNAC: These guys have been helping gap yearers get work in Canada, New Zealand, Australia and other countries for decades. They’ll sort out your visa for you, and then when you arrive help you with the job hunt and search for accommodation.

And one last piece of advice: don’t make the mistake of dithering over what to do if you find yourself torn between two or more options. Remember that if more than one adventure fires your imagination, whichever one you choose you’ll have a great time, so the sooner you get your gap year adventure arranged the sooner you can start having fun!

Posted in Gap years | Tagged Working abroad, volunteering, gap years |

Things to do over the holidays

As the holiday break approaches and you’re gearing up to spend time with friends and family and thinking of things to do over the holidays, the last thing you might want to think about is the future. Then again, if you’ve got lots of family dinners coming up perhaps any sort of distraction is the way to go! Either way, the Christmas break can actually be a really good time to get ahead for next term or for life after university. There are lots of things to do over the holidays that can help you get just a bit ahead of the game, and since you’ve not got any deadlines for these things, they can be done without any deadline pressure.

If you’re looking for things to do over the holidays, you could think about how to get ahead for next term. One suggestion is to start on your reading lists for your upcoming classes and modules. This may not sound particularly exciting, and by no means are we suggesting that you read everything, but getting a little bit read ahead of time will help you to understand the course and its structure when it does begin, allowing you to enjoy it more. Getting a head start also means you’ll be in a much better position for your coursework and exams, as you’ll have done a good chunk of reading already and will just need to revise that material. If you’ve not got a reading list yet, why not check out what your lecturer has published? This material can give you some extra insight into what to expect in the course. Don’t forget to check their bibliography as there might be some relevant material here too.

Another suggestion for things to do over the holidays is to start thinking about what you’ll do post-studies if you’re in your final year of school (and aren’t planning to go to university or do other further studies) or of university. You can start checking out the job market to see what kind of opportunities are available and what you might be interested in doing. It could well be too early to actually apply for any of these positions, but you can start working on your CV so that you’ll be ready to go when it is time to apply. Again, there’s no pressure to get this done now but it’ll make your life that much easier down the line.

It goes without saying that if you have exams coming in January, you’ll probably be revising for them. But even if you don’t, you can take inspiration for things to do over the holidays. Organising your notes (and yes, this does mean some revision) can help reinforce the material that you’ve learned, some of which you may have been forgotten. If you’ve not got exams, you might think that there’s no point in doing this, but often there’s a lot of overlap between the various modules in a given programme. Doing this can help remind you of interesting points that maybe you had thought were worth looking into further, or of material that might be particularly relevant for another class.

And of course, when thinking of things to do over the holidays, remember to have some down time. Chances are the last few weeks have been fairly stressful. It’s definitely a great idea to get ahead a bit, but you should also take some time just to enjoy being free of work for at least a short time.

Tagged job applications, revision, careers, study skills, christmas, school holidays |

Three things to think about when setting up your own business

The idea of setting up your own business can seem like an impossible dream, especially for people who don’t have a huge amount of professional experience. The way the world is presented to us through TV and newspapers tends to make us think that, with the exception of a couple of hip young web gurus, setting up and running a business is something that only middle-aged people do. But this is simply not the case. With the right motivation and skills, young people can set up businesses that change the world. However, that doesn’t mean that setting up your own business is simply a matter of being able to see yourself as the guy or girl who sits in the CEO’s chair. Any business needs to be based on a clear vision and the right skills. So, while setting up your own business is within the reach of young people, before making it happen you need to address these three main points:

1)Do I have a clear idea of what my business would do?

Having a vision of what your business is going to do, such as what product or service they’ll offer is absolutely vital. A vague wish to make money off of something isn’t going to get you very far. Think about your own interests and whether these can lead you to any ideas for setting up your own business. If you don’t have a real enthusiasm for what it is you plan to do (whether because it is intrinsically interesting or because you can see the contribution it makes to the community), then setting up your own business is going to be an uphill struggle.

2) Do I have the skills of knowledge to create a business in the area I’m interested in?

However, an interest in something is not on its own a strong enough foundation on which to build a business. While it is definitely important, you also need to know how to deliver the product or service you are offering. To give an example, you may love nothing more than a visit to a spa, but that doesn’t put you in a position to be able to offer good massages. The lesson to draw from this, however, isn’t that you could never set up a business in your area of interest. Rather, it’s that before setting up your own business you need to get the right training or work experience that will put you in a position to make it a success. So get looking for the diplomas, degrees, apprenticeships or job openings that’ll let you do this!

3) Do I have the business skills that would allow my business to thrive?

Having the skills and experience related to the product or service your business will offer is not enough to ensure success in setting up your own business, however. There’s a whole other area expertise that comes with any business, in the form of accounting, marketing and administration. Now, it’s unlikely that you have these skills right now. However, there are countless full-time and part-time business courses out there to get you up to speed that are suited to all entrepreneurial needs. So once again, getting these skills so you can get on with setting up your own business is just a matter of being willing to put in the effort required to be prepared for the challenges you’ll face as a young entrepreneur!

Tagged business, entrepreneurs, careers |

Useful websites for learning languages

There are some subjects which, although very interesting and essential for helping us to understand the world, can’t be experimented and played around with outside of the classroom. So, for example, while you can study chemistry text books to your heart’s content at home, you certainly don’t want to be playing around with dangerous chemicals in your living room. One family of subjects that you can immerse yourself in outside of the classroom, however, is languages. Because, above all, the goal of learning languages is to be able to communicate. And as everyone knows, there’s a common place that everyone in the world uses to communicate nowadays: the Internet.

Because of this, the World Wide Web offers more opportunities than ever for learning languages. Online you can read about your favourite hobbies, watch comedy shows, chat to new people or do about anything you would do to fill your time in pretty much any language you want. So if you’re learning languages at school or university, or just want to brush up on your skills, online is the place to go.

Of course, the Internet offers far more than foreign-language sites and TV shows; it’s also packed with resources that are designed specifically to help foreigners learning languages. So if you’re not quite at the level yet where you can dip into the European broadsheets or watch Japanese cartoons in their original form, these sites will help you to reach that point. And, of course, if you’re learning languages for GCSE, A Level or university, they’ll also help you boost your grades!

Wordreference

Wordreference is probably the Web’s number one collection of bilingual dictionaries, covering the world’s major languages. But there are also plenty more features to it. It has a big community of linguists who help people out with grammar and vocabulary points, verb conjugators and even features games to help you learn vocab. Basically it’s on the bookmarks list of anyone learning languages.

Linguee

Linguee is quite a clever tool if you either want to understand a whole phrase in a foreign language, or alternatively find out the correct way to say something correctly in your foreign language, neither of which you can do with most bilingual dictionaries. All you do is type or paste in the phrase in English or the foreign language, and then the site searches through its big database of documents that have been translated by professionals between your two chosen languages, before showing you the different ways the phrase you’ve typed in has been translated. If you’re one of those people who has tried to cheat on their languages homework by Google Translate (a trick that people almost never get away with!), this is a resource that’ll help you get to the expressions you’re looking for quicker while also allowing you to learn since you’ll have to think about putting your sentences together yourself.

YouTube

You obviously know this site very well, and will obviously not be surprised to learn that it’s just as popular with speakers of other languages as it is with English speakers. But did you know that among its hundreds of millions of videos are tutorials and video lessons for learning languages? Whatever the language you’re learning and whatever your level, you’ll find something to help you improve.

Tagged revision, languages. French |

Tips for choosing a college

If you’re in Year 11 right now, getting ready for next summer’s battle royale against GCSEs is probably the main educational matter on your mind. However, there’s also another question that is also worth bearing in mind over the coming months: choosing a college for next year.

Of course, if you’re already at a school that offers A Levels and you’re happy where you are, you’ve effectively already made your decision about your next educational step, unlike people whose schools end at Year 11. But even if your school does have a sixth form, it’s not necessarily the case that it offers the best options for you. Or, to put it another way, it’s probably worth everyone in their final year of GCSEs to think about choosing a college, even if it’s just to confirm that staying put is the best option for you.

Choosing a college is likely to be quite a novel experience, because it is quite likely to be the first time you’ve ever had the chance to make your own decision about where you’ll study. Choosing a college is also a process that involves weighing up a lot of different factors to help you arrive at the best decision.

So what things should you bear in mind when choosing a college? Well, these are probably the most fundamental things to think about:

1) Subjects and qualifications offered

In many ways, choosing a college makes up part of the issue of choosing what it is you want to study after GCSEs. And the answer to that question will play a big role in helping you choose a college. So, if you are looking to head down a more vocational route, it’s likely that you’ll be looking to one of the bigger, city-based colleges that offer BTECs and NVQs and/or have links to apprenticeship schemes, rather than heading off to a more traditional sixth-form college. Likewise, colleges tend not to offer the full range of subjects at A Level, and even the syllabuses and content they offer for each A Level can vary from college to college.

2) Teaching, study and behaviour style

Different colleges offer different styles of learning and teaching, and also place different expectations on their students. Further education colleges put the onus much more on you to be responsible for your progress, and also don’t have most of the rules you grow up with at primary and secondary school, such as a uniform policy or restrictions on where you can go during school hours. To some people this freedom is really important, while others prefer the more structured life that is provided by more of a school-style approach.

3) Location

Where the college is is an important thing to bear in mind when choosing a college. It’s all well and good opting fora college with a really good facilities and subject choice, but if it’s going to take you 90 minutes to get there each morning then the journey is going to take its toll on you and affect your ability to do your best in classes.

Of course, these are just a few things to consider when choosing a college. Some factors, like where your friends will be, are common to everyone, while others may be more specific to you. Ultimately the best thing to do is download prospectuses and book yourself a place on some college open days and judge what they have to offer for yourself!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged A Levels, BTECs, open days, apprenticeships, colleges |

The secrets of cutting down a personal statement

Cutting down a personal statement to fit within a very limited word count is a tricky, but very useful skill to have, not only when applying for university but also when you get into writing job applications. So how can you say everything that you want to say and still meet a strict word count in your application? Today we’ll highlight a few tips for cutting down a personal statement.

When you first write your personal statement, it’s often best not to worry about your word count. This will give you a bit more freedom in getting your ideas down and will probably allow for better writing. There are limits to this of course, and cutting down a personal statement draft where you’ve written 5000 words to fit a 1000 word limit is probably going to be more trouble than just starting again. So write freely, but within reason, to start with.

When you do get your initial draft done and are ready to start cutting down a personal statement, it’s a great idea to turn on the “track changes” tool on your word processor. This will generally be found in the ‘review’ or similar tab – if you can’t find it, then Google it. This tool lets you make changes but without committing to them right away. You can make changes throughout the whole document before then going back and accepting or rejecting each individual change. This works really well to get an idea of how close you are to reaching your word count goal with each deletion. If you do make a change or a cut that you know you’re happy with right away, it might be a good idea to accept the change then and there, as the document does tend to get a bit cluttered up as you progress.

In order to cut down a personal statement, it’s often a good idea to rephrase little bits of the text. For example, through turning single nouns into plurals, you can often keep the same effect but omit an article, such as ‘the’. This obviously won’t work in every situation, so reread your sentence to make sure that it still make sense. This may not allow you to vastly cut down a personal statement, but every little word counts and this is an important step to take before you start cutting bits out.

At some point you will have to cut bits out, so consider how important each point is and how much you’ve written for each one. If you’re using the same number of words to talk about something that essential to the course you’re applying for as you are to talk about your hobbies, chances are there are some words that you can easily afford to cut out. Making small changes throughout the document will definitely get some results, but in the end you may just have to jettison a few points completely. Spend a bit of time doing something else, and then come back to the document ready to seriously cut down and meet that word count.

Posted in Uncategorized |

Beating student stress during the coursework and exam months

For some, December can be a great time to be a student. Holiday festivities are starting and a long break from classes is coming up. But for others, it can be a pretty stressful time. If you’re at uni, it might be your first time living away from home. Around this time is often when homesickness starts to sink in. Add on loads of coursework and upcoming exams and you’re probably feeling a lot of student stress! So how can you deal with student stress, you may ask. While there’s no quick fix to get yourself back to a balanced state of mind, there are a few things you can do that will probably help.

If you’re experiencing lots of student stress, you could try talking to a friend or floor supervisor. Chances are your friends are feeling the same way, and this can be a great chance to support each other through this period. Keeping each other on track with assignments, venting about how you feel and perhaps even sharing in some laughs is a great way to keep the student stress in check. If you’re in a residence with a postgraduate student who acts as floor supervisor (e.g. counsellor and mentor), the chances are that they’ve talked to lots of students in your position and can provide some tried and true support.

Trying to keep active can also help a lot fight off student stress. As things get busier, you may find you have less time to do anything besides study and write. Now we’re not saying that you need to run 10km every day (although well done if you do!), but going for a long walk, a gentle jog or to a fitness class will get you away from your books, allowing you to clear your mind and let go of some of that student stress so you can get back to work. Somewhat related to this point – try to keep off the sauce a bit. Alcohol acts as a depressant, so beyond an initial few minutes of freedom from your worries, drinking will not actually make you feel better.

Taking breaks from working is hugely important in dealing with student stress. We’ve highlighted the pomodoro technique before, taking a 5 minute break to do whatever you want every 25 minutes or so. This is a great technique to stop you from getting too distracted, thus making you more productive. But taking longer breaks is important too. You can base this around another activity, like eating dinner if you’re really pushed for time. And every once in a while, try to take a whole day off if you can. Your brain works all the time as a student, so give it a proper break. So plan an outing with your friends and get away from the student stress for a few hours or a day.

Another important element in helping combat student stress is to get lots of sleep. Writing and studying can be really draining, and if you cut back on sleep your work is going to suffer, as is your mental state. It can be really hard to sleep when you’re feeling stressed out though, so think about playing some classical music, reading something that’s not course related or drinking herbal tea before bed. These things work for other people, so why not you?

And finally, remember that you’re just a few assignments away from several weeks away you’re your course, where you’ll get to see family and friends, relax for a few days, and then get back to studying

Posted in university | Tagged university, stress, relaxation |

Preparing for life after Years 12 and 13

Although we’re only a few months into the school year, it’s certainly not too early to be thinking about your options for the future. If you’re in Year 13, you’ll be fully aware that this is your last year in the secondary system. You won’t automatically be going into another year of school; what you do next will be determined by what you choose to do.

If you’re in Year 12, looking into this question might seem less pressing right now. Isn’t contending with this year and the next one enough? 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 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, whether you’re in Year 12 or 13, you should definitely be looking beyond what’s immediately ahead of you and further into your professional/educational future, 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.

Posted in courses-section |

The BTEC as an alternative to A Levels

Although there are all sorts of different types of qualifications offered by the further education sector, nine times out of ten students’ thinking on what subjects to take after GCSEs gravitates towards AS/A2s, the latest incarnation of A Levels, one of the British education system’s longest-running qualifications. Having taken on many slightly different forms over the years and dating all the way back to the 1950s, they’re a bit like the Doctor Who of study options.

The venerable old age of the A Level has ensured that it tends to dominate young people’s thoughts when it comes to deciding what to study. However, it’s certainly not the only one that you can take. And depending on what your career hopes are, what subjects you want to focus on and how you like to study, it might not necessarily be the best choice of qualification for you.

The thing about A Levels is that, as quite a traditional qualification, they’re built around the old-school disciplines that used to be the norm for teaching and training people, but which for some people seem a bit detached from the real world.

For example, if your goal was to become a mechanical engineer, under a more traditional approach to education your path to this goal would be to take A Levels in Physics and Maths (and probably one or two other things) before then going to university. The thing is that those A Levels in Physics and Maths aren’t designed specifically to train people as engineers, but rather to explore those subjects from a more academic and abstract angle.

Some people are happy with this, but others aren’t. For them, explanations of forces that aren’t grounded in real examples or applied to specific situations simply seem irrelevant. And for this group of people, being put off by the content of that A Level in turn puts them off their desire to become a mechanical engineer, even if they’ve got a real instinctive knack for understanding how machines work and would have been perfect for the job.

Somewhat unfortunately, the long shadow cast by A Levels can hide from these people’s views the fact that there is another qualification out there that will both allow them to achieve their career goals and be taught in a way they enjoy, with all the content of the qualification being designed to prepare them for that specific career.

Step forward the BTEC. This innovative family of qualifications has been going since 1984, making it much more spritely than the A Level. If it were a footballer, it’d be considered as being at its professional peak right now. And take it from us that if you’ve got hopes of one day doing a highly skilled job but don’t feel very enthused by the A Level options you’ve seen, it could well be the thing that gets you to that professional peak.

BTEC Extended Diplomas are available for about twenty different professional fields, ranging from Art and Design to Travel and Tourism. If you take a BTEC Level 3 Extended Diploma instead of A Levels, all of your studies will focus around giving you the skills and knowledge you need for that field, while at the same time offering you a wide range of different options within it to focus on the parts of it that interest you the most.

And because they’re regarded as a really rigorous, in-depth qualification, they’re as good for getting you a place at university as A Levels. Getting the top grades in a BTEC Level 3 Extended Diploma nets you 420 UCAS Tariff Points-the equivalent of 3 A-grade A Levels and 1 A-grade AS Level.

Oh, and did we mention that BTECs are a lot less based around exams than A Levels? Here at Leaving School we always like to save the best ’til last!