January 26, 2023, by Leah Sharpe

Making Use of the Careers Service To Secure Your Next Role

By George Brown, UoN graduate

It can be easy to forget you still have access to the Careers department after graduating from Nottingham. But the Careers team are available to you at any point during the rest of your career.

Earlier this year, I was looking to leave my job and decided to get back in touch with the Careers team, after receiving some useful support on writing a CV during my final year at Nottingham. The experience I had of working with the Careers team and the advice I received was extremely helpful and I’m sure it played a key part in me securing my current job.

Getting in touch with the Careers team

For just over three years, I had been working at an events company as a conference producer and was ready to move onto a new challenge and a new job within the events industry. I was a bit out of touch as to what employers would be looking for in a CV, so I decided to book a CV review with the Careers team. There were lots of available timeslots to book in an appointment which was very helpful when trying to schedule a call around my working hours. After sending over my CV and covering letter to be checked, I arranged a call to go through my CV with Alex, one of the Employability Officers.

We began by discussing what sort of roles I was looking for and my previous job experience to make sure my CV would be best suited towards the companies I was applying to work for. We then moved on to looking through my CV and covering letter where Alex made some great recommendations, such as adapting your CV and covering letter for each role you apply for to meet all the specific job requirements, as well as making it as easy as possible for someone reading through your CV to identify the relevance of each point you make to the role you’re applying for.

I made these amendments and a week later we had a further call to go through my updated CV and covering letter. Alex was very supportive in showing me how to improve my CV and help me strengthen the points I had made in my covering letter. After three months, I had applied for and accepted a new job.

Advice for getting in touch

I would highly recommend using the Careers and Employability Service at Nottingham, especially after being in your current role or organisation for more than a couple of years, as it allows you to find out about any changes in what employers are looking for in applications since you last applied for a job. The advisers are able to give you tips and insights that most of the other people going for the same job won’t have access to. My one piece of advice to people before having a CV review is to know what you want to get out of the session and prepare questions for your adviser to make sure you achieve that. The more you prepare, the more you’ll be able to take away from the review.

You can talk to a member of staff about any aspect of your future. Whether you are unclear about your options, already focused on what you want to do or somewhere in between, we’re here to help. 

Book an appointment via MyCareer

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