If you do a traditional resume for my career,
it looks really bizarre.
But if you do a skill-type resume,
you will see that I've used
the same skill sets in all of the
four or five sectors I've worked at.
So that's the reality today.
You will be moving sectors.
You will be moving jobs,
and moving from business to business
many times throughout your career.
And it's really about
the skills that you bring in,
things that you learn
and things that you can apply elsewhere.
I first started looking for graduate jobs
around February of my final year.
I think the key thing in that is,
really, you've got to have preparation
and really start thinking about this
a long time before you graduate
and I think when you're in
even your second or third year,
life beyond university
seems so distant and so far away
but the more that you can think about that
earlier in your university career
really helps you get prepared
for when that time comes
so you're not scrambling in the last kind of
six months to try and find a job.
And also understand that it's much
easier for you to apply
for jobs that you're very passionate about.
I probably applied for about 10 to 15 different positions
and programs across different companies
and different industries.
I applied to about 30 in total.
It was quite a lot.
It was quite an intensive task
to undertake in applying for jobs.
Of those jobs,
I was offered 3 interviews.
First time I got knocked out at the first stage.
I was pretty disappointed.
But then all of a sudden
you'd arrive at the next stage
with the next one and you'd be happy again.
So it was great to be out in it,
have a really big variety, a big pool.
Obviously the more you apply for,
probably the more chance you've got.
I didn't like any of the offers,
so I ended up applying for a regular job
You know, you don't have to
actually apply for a graduate job
you can just go to seek.com
see what's there
doesn't have to be a graduate job,
it can be an entry-level job
and it might be suitable for a graduate.
Go for it.
So I think writing applications was
something that I struggled with initially.
I thought you could have a
really generic application letter and
just change the name of the company
or something along those lines.
Because you might make mistakes,
you might do what I actually did for one
and accidentally put the
wrong company name in.
I was very overwhelmed
the whole concept of
having a cover letter for each role
because where I'm from, resumé is everything.
It's all and everything that you need to apply for a job.
So it took me quite a while
to wrap my head around it.
I think top tips for me were pretty much
I went and had an appointment at
Careers and Employment.
They looked at my resumé and said
look this is good,
not good, change this, add this.
Literally it was as easy as that.
I learned from them that
you would need to have some white space,
you shouldn't add too many tables
or too many different fonts,
or make it too, sort of, weird-looking.
A lot of the agencies that I applied to
receive over 50 resumés a day
So you have about 10 seconds for
your resumé to make or break basically.
Show that you can add value
to that particular organization
and not just copy and paste
a generic cover letter.
Don't overdo it on the resumé.
All you need is a cover letter,
and maybe two pages.
You don't need to say how you're
a year 7 class captain and the like.
Activities you've done that
really answer the question well.
When I started to
put in a bit more time into the letters
and start to cater them to
what the company's are actually looking for,
I think that became really important,
and started to craft my letter along
what their recommendations were and
what they're actually looking for.
You will find that a lot of the companies
won't respond to you.
You need to do your second
round of emails and calling so
it is quite a lengthy process
but my advice is to
be really persistent about it
and just keep going
and just keep trying harder and harder.
In the end I think if you can
try and take the positives out of
every little bit of experience or
journey you've had along the way
and try and incorporate that in
a really positive way into your CV
so where you think something
might not have any benefit
if you can actually put that in context
and describe how you might have learned
some of the skills out of that task
whether you played sport or
you're in a team or a university project
and apply them in your CV in a written form,
It is a real benefit to you.
If you can talk to it in an interview,
even better.
But I think everything on the CV does count.
It's just the way you frame it.
I think my number one tip would be: be authentic,
and be genuine and be yourself.
People want to see you as a person,
not just a resource or
not just a number in the organization.
They want to value you as an employee
and they want to see you shine.