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Every year, the Computer Science department at Aberystwyth University hosts a careers activity weekend for second-year students enrolled on a degree scheme with an industrial year placement at Gregynog Hall – compromising of group activities, multiple interviews, talks, and careers session; it’s definitely hard work, but well worth it. The department asked me if I’d like to come along to do a talk for the students and hand out some IBM brochures… easy decision for me! I definitely learnt a lot.

This year’s group of second-year students was perhaps one of the highest-quality groups yet, but are wholly unable to demonstrate this effectively on CVs… the interviewers (from companies such as Ibuildings and Pale Purple, as well as Aberystwyth’s Information Services department) literally had to tease all of the juicy tidbits out of the students. I didn’t get a chance to see the bulk of the CVs, but the ones I did see seemed to concentrate on what marks students had achieved in various first-year modules (more often than not taking up half the page!) and what assignments they had done. This doesn’t really help to differentiate them from anyone else who may well be applying for the same job. Some people put limited work experience on but again, (almost) everyone has that these days. Lesson learned: put your extra-curricular activities on your CV! Especially if they demonstrate any sought-after skills (teamwork, leadership, communication).

Both of my groups handled themselves extremely well in their interviews (totally proud of them!), despite being put through the works. They all kept their cool and answered their questions calmly and didn’t try to BS the interviewers. Some were a bit quiet, but after a wee bit of prompting, they all seemed to be good to go! It’s all about confidence, folks (but not too much, I hasten to add).

I spoke a bit about my industrial year experience at the IBM Hursley Laboratories (it’s amazing, I really ought to write a blog post about it), and there seem to be a fair few people who have either already applied or are about to apply! Count must be at about 5-6 by now; best of luck to them all.

An unexpected plus to the weekend was the padding-out of my wallet with a few more business cards and the chance to network — both with people who are currently working, and very bright students — I certainly hope to keep vaguely in touch with them all (a lot of them use Twitter, which makes my life far easier)!

Fingers crossed I get to go again this time next year…

Tags: aberystwyth, aberystwyth university, careers, gregynog, helping, hursley, ibm, ibuildings, industrial year, information services, pale purple, students, talking, University, visit

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 17th, 2010 at 8:28 pm and is filed under University. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.