Employers top tips from the Careers Fair – Part 1

It is Careers Fair season! Did you get to our Careers Fairs on 8th November? If you did, we hope you got a lot from it and had chance to chat to the employers about what they’re looking for and how you can make your application stand out.

As an Employment Adviser, my job is to know what employers are looking for in student and graduate applications. I spend the majority of my day helping students learn the tools they need to produce successful CVs, covering letters, application forms etc.  Part of my development is to chat to employers at events such as our Careers Fairs to find out what they are looking for and build that into the advice I provide to you.

If you didn’t make it to the Careers Fair or didn’t get chance to ask questions like this yourself then it’s your lucky day because I managed to chat to lots of companies on the day and have got a few nuggets to share with you this week.

 

So today’s top tip is  Tailor your application

Every time you send an application to an employer make sure you tailor your application to that specific reader. It is not enough to just send your engineering CV to all engineering companies. All companies I spoke to want you to show the connection between you and the company; be clear that you understand what they are looking for and provide evidence, in detail to show that you match their specific criteria on your CV and application.

Repeat back their use of language to them. Don’t assume they have time to read through the lines or make assumptions that you must have strong verbal communication skills because you’ve mentioned you speak to people on the phone.  Provide evidence to show you understand what they are looking for in this role and that you can relate your experiences to how these will be transferable to their role.

Find out what they are looking for and prioritise this in your CV. One of the large consultancy firms at the Careers Fair said they needed logical and numerate people and so would expect you to mention these things in your application and back it up with an example to show how you are logical and in what ways you’ve worked with numbers. A local games developer suggested that on the front page of your CV, you ideally have a table of skills showing the different versions of hardware, software and languages you’ve used and with amount of time you’ve used each as those skills are key to their roles.

 

Come back tomorrow to find out what other top tips our employers shared with me.

For now if you want to get specialist advice from the Careers Service, book in for a one to one chat with the Career Development Advisor on your campus or with me at Moulsecoomb campus.  All our details can be found online at https://www.brighton.ac.uk/careers/contact-us/index.aspx

Don’t forget we’ve got lots of great advice and tips on all things to do with finding and applying for roles of all levels, and many other Careers related information on our website. https://www.brighton.ac.uk/careers/index.aspx

Hope to see you soon. 🙂