I picked up this message originally from the one you left yesterday on our undergrad blog – and immediately tweeted it! It’s a bit late in the day for a blog post as the deadline’s Friday, but my Twitter account feeds on to the front page of the blog anyway, so job done, I reckon.

Hope you get some good applications – sounds like a great opportunity.
Cheers
Elizabeth
(Manchester PG Careers Blog)

I’m working on a campaign with Escape Studios and The Mill and thought it might be of interest to you and readers.

Throughout October we’ve been running a fantastic competition for aspiring CG artists to win a place on a 3D training course run by Escape Studios as well as a work placement with Oscar-winning visual effects company The Mill. There’s also a bunch of other prizes up for grabs.

We’ve had some fantastic entries so far, but with the deadline for entries this Friday 30th October we’re urging anyone who hasn’t submitted their portfolio to do so before it’s too late.

Full details of the competition, including how to enter and other information are available at http://www.escapestudios.com/cgwhiz/index.html. It would be great to see some more entries before the competition closes on Friday. It’s a fantastic opportunity for to get started in the world of visual effects.

All the best,

Claire

Many thanks for your comments – great to know the blog’s useful. I look out for any opportunities for developing commercial or business skills, but I’ll put more effort into actively seeking them out, as I know they’re particularly important for our non-business postgrads.

As a start, hope you’ve noticed that I contacted McKinsey (after spotting a comment on a UCL blog) and though their PhD workshops are aimed primarily at London, Oxford and Cambridge PhDs, there’s no reason why Manchester PhDs shouldn’t put their best foot forward and get considered.

Will let you know of any more I can feret out!

Cheers
Elizabeth

Thank you very much for all the effort that you are putting into this blog – I think it is a great platform for postgrads to find out about career options. There is one aspect though, which I would like to read more about.

To me it seems research students spent most of their time working on the “technical” aspects of their projects. I am aware that the graduate development team is putting a lot of effort into courses helping with transferable skills, but I think there is still a lack of information about all the non-university opportunities. In particular, I am thinking about valuable training/projects/experience that non-business postgrads can do to prepare themselves for more commercial positions after graduation. Some consultancy companies are offering work experience to PhD students and there is a number of certificates/course (e.g. from the association of project management)… From a student point of view it is, however, quite hard to evaluate all the options and decide on the next steps. I think this would make an interesting topic for your blog!

David

Thanks so much for pointing this out (no really, no sarcasm intended!).

I’ve checked this out and we’ve removed the ad, just in case. I’ve also blogged about potential phishing exploits using vacancy ads (http://manchesterpgcareers.wordpress.com/2009/05/13/phishing-disguised-as-vacancies/), alerted my colleagues and we’ll look at putting further checks in place when we list vacancy ads. It had been through 3 checks and did pass our basic criteria for inclusion, but just a bit more digging would have found that the “website” was really only a holding page.

It might still be genuine, but it’s not worth taking a chance on it, unless they supply us more details to confirm their legitimacy.

If you (or anyone else accessing the ads on the Careers Service website) spots anything which looks dodgy, please, please, please let us know as soon as possible, and we can investigate and remove immediately, if necessary.

I have found an advert for an intership on the Careers Service website.

Please could you tell me if the Careers service vets companies before agreeing to place their adverts?
It’s just that the advert provides an email address to forward your CV and CL to but there seems to be no website or no info on the company from search engine results.

After the recent debacle at Monster.co.uk, I’m apprehensive about sending my details to a company I can find nothing about.

I have recently secured an offer for a graduate position with an defence engineering company, which is a sector I believe to be in a good position in the current economic downturn. However, on reviewing the contract and reading more into the graduate scheme I have been asking myself whether this position will be challenging enough. As grad schemes are generally aimed at recent graduates do you have any advice to us students who are thinking whether to apply for grad positions or jobs that would help us decide what to do. I’m not expecting you to make our decisions, but do you know what to look for in a grad scheme, and have any advice from your experience with others in the same situation that may help.

I am hoping that this is a general concern/thought for many postgrads who feel they may be ’shooting’ too low if the step into a grad scheme.

Kind Regards,

Chris

I’ve recently been to a careers fair at RAES (Royal Aeronautical Society), where I sat in on a presentation regarding professional development and engineering chartership. I was unaware that we as postgraduates can be working towards our chartership while we are studing for our postgrad qualifications. I have read up on what is needed, which basically involves registering on a professional development scheme with a registered society and going from there. Any chance you can post something on your blog to make the wider postgrad community that they could be making their (many hours of) spare time useful by keeping track of their skills. Any useful resources that you know of could also help to point people in the right direction.

Kind Regards,

Chris

Yes, we finally made it live. I only wrote the original welcome post 2 months before you started this blog!

I’ve checked with your Careers Liaison team and the seminar did go ahead last night but the room had to be changed – apparently it was on your intranet (which I can’t see at the moment, so can’t tell you where it is) but they’re sorry you didn’t find out in time.

For info, the future sessions will be on Tuesdays at 5pm, in Lecture Theatre A in University Place, and repeated on Wednesdays at 1pm in Rutherford Lecture Theatre, in Schuster Building (Brunswick Street). Hope you can make the Wednesday session, so you don’t miss out on this week’s topic.

All the best
Elizabeth