As we continue to move through our collective consultation, we know that change is unsettling but it can also present great opportunity.
Live webinars to support you
Our Learning & Devlopment team is supporting you with live webinars designed to help you deal with emotional and personal responses to change. They cover topics such as financial wellbeing and planning, to resilience and mental health. They are running all next week – find out more here.
LinkedIn tips from Paul Thomas Digital
Paul Thomas from Paul Thomas Digital, hosted a 60 minute live Zoom session for Carnival UK colleagues focusing on maximising opportunities through LinkedIn and social media in a competitive jobs marketplace. Paul’s session included:
- Top things every LinkedIn profile should have, but rarely does
- What to share, when to share, how to share
- Knowing when to connect and who to connect to
- Using your 1st degree network to reach more people in your field of expertise.
New job opportunities
We’ve been asking you to share details of any organisation that’s recruiting and potentially may have opportunities for employees at Carnival UK. You’ll find all their details here.
CV writing and interviews
To help you prepare for a possible change in career, Hannah Cross, Consultant, Resourcing & Onboarding shares some thoughts on CV writing and what to consider when going for an interview.
“We spend so much time at work that our role often defines. Yet sometimes we don’t put lots of thought into what kind of job we actually want. Many of us often fall into a role, enjoy it for a few years, and then another job comes along. Now is the time to really think about what you want your next career move to be so I’ve offered some tips below which I hope will help.
CV writing time
- Sell yourself
- No-one likes writing about themselves, but now is the time to emphasise all your best points. If you aren’t sure what they are, ask a relative, friend or colleague to help come up with a list. Don’t be shy.
- Almost every job has a job description
- Recruiters are telling you in black and white exactly what they’re looking for. Consider the key skills that the job mentions. Then go through your CV line-by-line, highlighting which of your skills and experiences are relevant. Make sure those points are the first parts of each role or experience you’ve had.
- Your CV should be no more than two pages long
- You should be able to summarise your core skills, experiences and education very succinctly. Recruiters are really busy and have to deal with a lot of applications, and need to quickly be able to see if you’re right or wrong for their roles.
- You have more experience than you think
- You might think that one of your previous jobs is not relevant for the role you’re applying for. But almost all roles have elements of teamwork, individual decision making and perhaps responsibilities. Really think about the experience you have.
Congratulations, you’ve got an interview!
- Know the brand
- Go onto their website, find their company values and goals – what are they? Write them down and think of examples you have met and achieved those goals. If they are showing examples of their work on their website, find one example you can bring up in the interview and say why it really grabs your attention. It could be the interviewer’s own work and something they are passionate about!
- Is it an interview or not?
- If you’re not sure, err on the side of caution. Consider it an interview. Dress to impress – even on Skype or Zoom. First impressions have very little to do with what you say when interviewing remotely, but a lot to do with how you present yourself and even the background in your room. If you’ve got a chair that swings and leans back, an interview is not the time to use all its functionality! Stay still and focused.
- An interview is a two-way process
- This might be a cliché; an ideal interview should be 60%-70% of them interviewing you, and the rest of the time you talking. Have two to three questions prepared to show you are competent and have completed some research. For example, ask them why they enjoy working in their place of work. What impressed them about your application? Do they have any concerns about any of the answers you’ve given? This will provide you with the opportunity to respond to any concerns they may have.
One of the world’s best selling books is called “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie. Written in 1936, the principles are still true to this day, and highly applicable to CVs, covering letters, and interviews:
- Become genuinely interested in other people (ask researched questions)
- Smile. Even when you are nervous, smiling makes you feel better
- Remember the person’s name
- Talk in terms of the other person’s interests and make them feel important, sincerely.
However we are communicating with people, for job applications, interviews or just through our emails, consider everything from the other person’s perspective. It will help get you so much closer to your career goals.”
Hannah regularly shares tips through her LinkedIn articles. You can find Hannah on LinkedIn, here