// Archives

How To Showcase Your Year Abroad in Interviews

By Grace Smyth, Spanish and Contemporary Chinese Studies student blogger So you’ve been on a year abroad? The skills and experiences you have had are some of the most valuable that you can demonstrate in job applications and the interview process! Interviews are daunting so preparing some ideas of how you can showcase what you …

Practice Makes Perfect. Applications Are No Different!

By Anna Scrivener, Careers Adviser I’m lucky enough in my job to meet some amazing students, who are proactive members of SU societies, balancing part-time jobs and conscious to complete internships and do volunteering. People with a mind on their futures. I certainly wasn’t that kind of student when I was at university! However, despite …

From Graduate to Graduate Scheme and Everything Inbetween

By Max Cooper, BA Hons History graduate I’ll start by saying that I never considered myself to be within the bracket of students who got placed on internships or graduate schemes. If I can get a place on a graduate scheme then the vast majority can provided that they prepare accordingly. What I believe allowed …

Writing for Applications

By Anna Scrivener, Employability Education Projects Officer For the last three years you have been training yourself to write academically, removing your own voice and backing up your opinions with evidence and research. Then all of a sudden you are writing job applications, a task that requires you to talk about yourself, demonstrate your personality …

Using the Support From the Careers Service To Ace My Interviews

Hannah Wright, MSc Mental Health: Research and Practice As an undergraduate, I had heard that career support would be available throughout our studies and as alumni, but it wasn’t something I’d engaged with yet as I had planned to move straight to postgraduate study. Now in the position where I am nearing the end of …

How To Be a STAR

By Katy Skillen, third-year Master of Nutrition and Dietetics Student Recently, I’ve been trying to use the STAR (situation, task, action, and result) technique in interviews. This method helps you systematically answer application or interview questions. It helps you include all the key points that interviewers want, but without going off on a tangent. STAR …

Playing Games To Get a Job

By Saumya Surendran, MSc Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Management We interviewed Saumya to find out about her experience with game-based assessments and how she prepared for them. What did the games involve? There were various different game-based assessments that tested my ability to solve problems quickly and creatively. It’s interesting as the elements of the game …

How I Found a Science Job During the Covid-19 Pandemic

By Mica Cunningham, University of Nottingham BSc Biotechnology graduate. Graduating from University can be a daunting experience – especially during a pandemic! Having a lack of previous work experience, I initially felt I had no idea what I was supposed to do next or even how to start – what should I put on my …

5 Essential Steps To Get Into Marketing

By Catherine Sibley, Employability Education Projects Officer Marketing is a fast-paced career, full of variety and is open to students from any degree discipline. The other good news is that it’s a growth industry, and the pandemic has accelerated the need for digital marketing skills. Below are five tips to help you kick-start your marketing …

Tracking Down the Right Placement

By Joseph George Walters, PhD Engineering Surveying and Space Geodesy In my previous blog, I identified my skill gaps and began to search for work placements to run alongside my PhD study. In this blog I describe my experience of finding, applying, and interviewing for my perfect placement. Finding Before I started looking for a …