Interviews Talk Now On-Line

If you missed the Interviews talks I did last week for Masters and PhDs, they’re now available here and on the On-Line Talks page on this blog. They’re also on the postgrad pages of the Careers Service website.

It’s quite a long slidecast but you can take it in bite sized chunks and skip or go back to slides of interest and the audio should follow. One warning though – when you first view it, it takes a little while to buffer all the audio, so you won’t immediately be able to skip to the later slides. Should only take a few minutes to load it all up though (depending on your internet connection).

Just to tempt you, within the slidecast are hints on talking about salary (see slide 14, “Your Questions”), my views on the oft quoted “fact” that “70% of communication is through body language” (see slide 15, “Presentation” – you’ve probably already sussed out my view…) and recognising and talking about your natural talents (see slide 9, “Forensic Interviewing”).

Right, only got Assessment Centres to do now (aiming for early next week for recording and editing).

Interviews & Assessment Talks

Quick reminder that I’m doing two more talks this week in the “Career Essentials for Postgrads” series:

• Interviews for Masters Postgrads – today (Monday 2nd Nov) at 1.00pm, LT 1.4, Kilburn Building
• Interviews for PhDs – Thursday 5th Nov, again at 1.00pm, LT 1.4, Kilburn Building

Next week is the last talk in this series, on Assessment Centres. As there’s normally a smaller audience for this talk, I’ve combined Masters and PhDs into one talk:

• Assessment Centres for Postgraduates – Monday 9th Nov, at 1.00pm, LT 1.4, Kilburn Building

Again, I’m aiming to make a version of the Interviews and Assessment Centre talks available on-line (audio plus slides) after the face-to-face talks.

 

CVs & Applications Talk – Now On-Line

Following the slidecast on “Finding Jobs for Postgraduates”, I’ve now created an on-line version of my Applications talks, covering CVs for Postgraduates, Covering Letters and Application Forms, with both slides and audio commentary.

You’ll find them embedded in this post, archived on the “On-Line Talks” page on this blog (later today), and with a bit of luck – available soon from the Careers Service website as a rather nifty playlist widget on the Postgrad pages.

There’s always lots more I could cover in the talks, so inevitably there will be things you might want to know about applications which are missing – there are always plenty of questions in a face-to-face talk. So, if you have questions on anything in these talks, or things you think are missing from the talks, just drop me a comment and I’ll try to answer them. If there are lots of questions, I’ll find a way of presenting them together as FAQ s.

Note: To get the best out of the CVs talk, I’ve suggested having a copy of some sample CVs to refer to. The clickable links on the presentation refer to our standard CVs handouts, CVs From Scratch and CVs for Research Students which both have example CVs at the back.

Assessment Centre DVD – Now Streamed On-Line

There’s a new Assessment Centre DVD in the Careers Service, and now it’s available streamed on-line (you’ll just need to log in using your Manchester University login details to access it).

UPDATE 19/10/09: Looks like there may be some problems with MBS access to the central university video streaming service. MBS staff have reported they can’t see any videos from the Careers Service when they log on (we don’t know why!) but not sure about students. Leave a comment to let me know if this is affecting you, and we’ll investigate alternatives.

You can access this new DVD and the older (2000) DVD (which is still useful) from the section on Assessment Centres on the Careers Service website. So, to tempt you, here are the topics covered in the new DVD:

• 10 minute overview (in case you’re off to an assessment centre in the next half hour)
• Ice Breaker
• Case Study
• Group Discussion
• Interview
• Presentation
• In-tray exercise
• Meal with selectors (don’t believe them if they say it doesn’t count in the assessment…)

Work Experience At The Olympics

Fancy demonstrating your prowess in business advice and consultancy? If you enter the Deloitte Business Competition, you could not only get the chance to visit the Singapore Youth Olympics, but also get two weeks paid work experience at the London 2012 Olympic Games.

There are lots of business games open to undergrads, but this one is also open to postgrads. You need to focus on one of the identified “customer groups” of the Olympics (eg. athletes, spectators, press etc) and advise the London Organising Committe for the Olympics on how to make the Games successful for your chosen customer group – all in no more than 2,012 words.

There are lots more rules and regulations (must use clear correct citations etc) but this could be your chance to get the sort of work experience you couldn’t buy. The competition opened on 5th October, and closes at 12.00pm on 1st December 2009 – time to get writing?

Careers Talks For Postgraduates

Finally, we’ve got the dates, times and venues sorted for our careers talks for Postgraduate Masters and PhD Researchers (that includes EngDs and all the other professional doctorates as well).

• The Essential Guide To Getting A Job For Postgraduate Masters:
  • Date:  Monday 5 October 2009
  • Time:  13:00 – 13:50
  • Venue:  Mansfield Cooper G19
• The Essential Guide To Getting A Job For PhD Researchers:
  • Date: Thursday 8 October 2009
  • Time:  13:00 – 13:50
  • Venue:  Chemistry G54
• CVs and Applications For Postgraduate Masters
  • Date: Monday 12 October 2009
  • Time:  13:00 – 13:50
  • Venue:  Kilburn 1.4
• CVs and Applications For PhD Researchers
  • Date: Thurday 15 October 2009
  • Time:  12:00 – 12:50 (note: earlier time than other talks)
  • Venue:  Kilburn 1.4
• Interviews For Postgraduate Masters
  • Date:  Monday 2 November 2009
  • Time: 13:00 – 13:50
  • Venue: Kilburn 1.4
• Interviews For PhD Researchers
  • Date: Thursday 5 November 2009
  • Time: 13.00 – 13.50
  • Venue: Kilburn 1.4
• Assessment Centres For Postgraduates (Masters and PhDs)
  • Date:  Monday 9 November 2009
  • Time:  13:00 – 13:50
  • Venue:  Kilburn 1.4

It’s helpful if you can sign up on the website for the ones you’re planning to attend (so we can assess numbers). However, the first people to arrive get the seats, so even if you don’t sign up, you can still attend. See you there!

McKinsey PhD Workshops

I’ve recently spoken to management consulting company, McKinsey, and found out that they are running 1 day PhD workshops in September, in London (17th), Oxford (21st) and Cambridge (18th). The workshops are primarily aimed at PhDs from, well, guess where, but they are prepared to consider excellent applications from wherever they come*. In addition, they pointed out that if they find a fantastic applicant who can’t be accommodated within these September workshops, they may be able to direct you to other opportunities to meet up with McKinsey. The closing date is midnight, Wednesday 9th September and you’ll need to upload a CV as well as an on-line application.

As you’d expect from one of the world’s most high profile management consultancies, their standards are high.  “Just” doing a PhD is only a fraction of what you’ll need to impress them, but if you have academic and non-academic achievements which show that you’re something out of the ordinary, you could be just what they’re after. Just make sure you don’t sell yourself short with your CV – for consultancy, a one page stand-out CV is more impressive than two (or more) pages of waffle.

If you don’t get the chance attend one of these workshops, they expect to run a more detailed three day Insight programme in the New Year, which hopefully I should be able to tell you about in January.

* At the moment, their on-line application system allows you to choose your university from a drop down list which includes “Manchester Business School” and “Manchester Institute of Science and Technology U of” – but not “University of Manchester”. They’ve said they’ll change it, but in the meantime, just use your common sense and use whichever you prefer!

Latest on Postgrads & Recession

So far there have been 6 articles on the job market for researchers posted on the Vitae website, and although the focus is on researchers, they include useful information of interest to all postgrads.

Shiona Llewellyn (made sure I spelt that correctly – you’ll understand why if you read her article) has some insights on how recruiters select candidates for consultancy jobs. She acts as a retained recruitment consultant on behalf of employers, so is ideally placed to let you know what it takes to get through the first cut. If you don’t make it through her filter, the employing organisation will probably never see your application.

I’ve also had an article published on the variability of the job market and ideas (beyond “look at the job ads”) for what you can do to get lucky in your job search. It includes some hints on breaking into a tough job market which I haven’t blogged about so even if you’ve been following the blog or read our Recession pages, still might be worth a click.

Just to back up my assertions that not all graduate and postgraduate recruitment has disappeared, here’s the latest update from the job ads still being sent to the Careers Service at Manchester. The usual caveats apply (see my original post on what the stats might hide, plus all the earlier posts on the job market for the running commentary on the recession), but here are the stats for January to the end of June.

First, the number of new job ads for full-time jobs sent each week to the Careers Service. The graph below compares this year, last year (our best year for jobs) and 2002-3, the last “downturn year” (click on the image to see a larger version).

The next graph shown below (the cumulative number of full-time job ads we’ve received), irons out the volatility of the weekly figures:

I know there are people losing jobs right now. I know there are fewer jobs on offer generally. However, it’s difficult to be a total gloom merchant when you see evidence like that. All I would say is, “Get ‘em while it lasts”. In previous recessions, graduate unemployment has lagged behind the economic recession so next year might be worse.

And on that cheery note, I’m off on hols for a couple of weeks, so don’t expect me to post unless I’m really bored, fed up with the weather or I find the odd off-topic video which I can’t resist sharing.

PT Vacancies – Applications Advisers

We’re now looking to recruit more paid applications advisers to help with the flood of undergrads and postgrads who use our Quick Query service for CV and application feedback – details here. There’s not much time until the official closing date (3rd July) but I’ve negotiated an extension for you – if you get your application in by 7th July, you should still be considered.

If you’ve used the service yourself, you might not have realised it, but our Applications Advisers (as opposed to our Careers Consultants) are generally our current postgrads, mainly PhD researchers working with us part-time. They’ve all got skills and experience which make them ideal for helping other student with job applications, often with prior recruitment, HR or coaching/counselling experience or at least experience of training or teaching so they can empathise with our students and get information across to them (we know what a multi-talented bunch our postgrads are).

It helps if you’ve applied for jobs before, so you understand the application process. It’s also quite pressured – 1-1 discussions with students you’ve never seen before, where you have 15 minutes to establish rapport, understand their issues, read their application(s) and give them feedback to help them improve – and then it’s straight on to the next 15 min appointment. You get to see students from all disciplines and at all levels but most of the basics of applying for jobs are common across the range.

You also get to see all nationalities, which can be a delight and a challenge. You will need excellent written (and spoken) English – you don’t spell or grammar check or re-write CVs, but you do need to be able to point out where a CV needs the student to go away and do some work on the wording or punctuation, as well as the content or layout. However, this certainly doesn’t exclude international postgrads from becoming applications advisers – we’ve had excellent Greek and Canadian applications advisers, who can bring the extra dimension of knowing how tough it can be applying in a language which isn’t your first (OK, Canadian English probably bears some resemblance to UK English but you get the idea).

If you’re interested, I’d strongly recommend coming in and booking a Quick Query session yourself before applying (if you haven’t already used us). The applications advisers and careers consultants running quick query over the summer have been forewarned that you might want to talk about these jobs, so come and talk to us.

You’ll need to be here for the next academic year, so this excludes most current Masters postgrads, though if you’re doing your Masters part-time over a couple of years and can commit to being a student here and available for work at least from August to the Christmas vacation, do contact us. The hours are quite “bitty”, where you might be needed for a couple of hours in the morning, then a couple later on, so it also helps if you’re on campus a lot of the time.

It’s an interesting role, great for your CV, full training is given and you get real appreciation from all the students you help.

If you think you fit the bill, full details are on our website.

Pathways Day 2 – 10.30am Start

Thanks to the magic of Twitter, I’ve found out that it doesn’t look like we have the programme for Monday’s Pathways workshops on the web anywhere – oops!

[EDIT: Monday morning - it was there all along, but under the Resources section of the Pathways website. Double oops! Ah well, read on if you don't want to click there.]

If you have registered, you should have had the programme e-mailed to you, but if you were just planning to turn up (just bring your university swipe card), you won’t be aware that we’re giving you the chance for a lie-in (don’t worry, we won’t tell your supervisor/PI – let them think it starts at 8am sharp).

Programme:

10.00-10.30  Registration

10.30-11.00   Intro (that’s Judy and me again, with more explanatory details of the workshops)

11.00-12.00   Plenary workshop – VOX Coaching (…OK, I’ll admit it, I’ve forgotten the title – but it’ll be good, and funny, and relevant, they always are)

12.00-1.00     Choice of workshops – Evidencing Skills, Occupational Personality Questionnaires, Presenting at Job Interviews, Networking to Help Your Career, Interview Confidence, Assessment Centres (by Accenture), Negotiating Your Salary, Emotional Intelligence, Careers in Teaching: School vs University

1.00-2.00       Lunch

2.00-3.00       Choice of workshops – Critical Thinking Skills For Your Career, Occupational Personality Questionnaires, Marketing Your PhD To Employers, Evidencing Skills, Strategic Academic Career Planning, Negotiating Your Salary, Interview Confidence, Emotional Intelligence, Using The Web To Find Jobs (that’s me’n'Alex), Working With Others: MBTI Personality Questionnaires

3.00-4.00       Choice of workshops – Critical Thinking Skills For Your Career, Occupational Personality Questionnaires, Negotiating Your Salary, Interview Confidence, Emotional Intelligence, Working With Others: MBTI Personality Questionnaires, Getting & Keeping an Academic Job, Grant Funding Applications, Networking to Help Your Career

Some are running in lecture theatres, but they may still be very popular, so it’s first come first served. The only thing I would warn you about is that the Negotiating Your Salary workshops at 12noon and 2.00 are in smaller rooms (this format works better for an interactive workshop) but recognising it might be popular, the final session at 3.00 is in a lecture theatre, so if you don’t get in to the first two, you should get into the last one.

Think I’ve got that right, though as I’m at home and don’t have all the documentation to hand, apologies if I’ve got anything wrong. Look, just come along for the whole day anyway, you never know what you might learn…