Working Wednesday: My tips for a killer CV.

You know when you promise to do something, and then discover that actually, you don’t have the time to do it, but you know you’ve got to do it because you’ve promised it, and if you don’t, you’ll look like a bit of a tit? 

Welcome to my first “Working Wednesday” – which I promised to do yesterday!

So when my lightbulb moment came, and I decided that I would make this a weekly feature of my blog, I put a call out on twitter asking for people to come forward and tell me what kind of support or advice would be helpful if they were looking to return to work.  As I’m still a relatively new blogger, no buggar answered, so I’m just going to have to wing it and hope that some of today’s words of wisdom applies to somebody out there.  For this reason, I’m not going to focus on any specific finding work problem, instead I’m going to shout a bit about something that might be of help to lots of people:  CV’s (“Thrilling!” I hear you all shout at once)

Your CV is a sales document – you’re selling your skills and experience to an employer, in the hope that he will buy them and give you an interview.  It’s personal to you, and you know best how you want to come across to an employer.  Lots of careers professionals disagree on how a CV should be presented, and lots of them think that their way is the right way.  I’m going to give you MY top tips for a CV – some might disagree with me, and that’s fine. 

 

Anyway, here are my top ten tips for a killer CV

·         All CV’s should have a personal profile:  A short paragraph at the top of the page (underneath your personal details) that tells an employer how wonderful you are.  Apparently, an employer only really reads the first 2/3 of the first page of a CV, so this part should be crammed full of information that demonstrates your skills, abilities and fabulousness.  Read the job advert or person specification – this tells you what skills the job requires, and it’s these requirements you need to meet within the first part of your CV

·         Include a section on your skills and attributes.  This should ideally go underneath your personal profile and be bullet-pointed so it’s nice and clear and concise. This should also reflect the requirements of the job

·         Your CV should not exceed 2 pages, and generally not shorter either.  It should be on good quality, white paper, preferably typed in a clear black font that is no bigger than 12 point. Please don’t spray it with Miss Dior eau de parfum or include foil confetti in the envelope.  It won’t make you stand out from the crowd.

·         Don’t have one CV that you send out to each and every employer for each and every job you want to apply for.  You need to tailor your CV so it meets the requirements of the job.  You wouldn’t fill in every application form the same, so you shouldn’t send off the same CV.  An employer wants to feel as though you’ve made some effort just for them so make the effort!  You need to tweak you r CV slightly each time you apply for a new job – the main sections to amend would be the personal profile and the skills and attributes as you want to demonstrate that you have the competence to apply for the job that is being advertised.  I have recruited before, and it’s very obvious when people send out a generic CV that they don’t bother to change, and that makes me think they can’t want the job that much if they don’t out the effort in to match their CV to the job.

·         Keep your CV to the point and factual.  Avoid elaborate creativity. One of the funniest CV’s I came across was when a recently made redundant senior manager of a sales company brought me his CV for a once-over.  He included a picture of a lion at the top.  His CV went on to explain how his skills and personal qualities reflected that of a lion’s. He was “A natural born leader, a predator that worked to satisfy his companies hunger for profit, when he had a goal, he sunk his teeth into it and wouldn’t let go until it had been achieved.”  I honestly wanted to piss my pants from laughing but had to be professional and tactfully gave him pointers on how he could make his CV more appealing (we took out the picture of, and any reference to, a lion)

·         Only include information that is relevant:  This means information that is relevant to the job.  I know we all love our children to bits, but an employer does not need to know how old they are, what their names are or the fact that they played the donkey in last years nativity play.  They also don’t need to know about your partner and their occupation, the lyrics of a song you have written for your local church choir or why you hold family meetings around the dinner table every Sunday evening.  You think I’m joking?  I kid you not, I have honestly, honestly witnessed these things on CV’s – and at times from very educated and successful people!

·         You don’t need to put your date of birth, national insurance number, marital status, number of children, ethnic origin or health information on a CV.  When application forms ask for these, they are usually asked on an optional and/or confidential equal opportunities form which usually gets separated from the application form – we all know that discrimination is wrong, but it can happen and some of this information could be used to discriminate during the sifting process. Leave it off.

·         Always list your previous employment and education in date order, starting with the most recent first.  You don’t need to include your primary school as you didn’t obtain qualifications there and not many employers care about what you were doing when you were 7.

·         Always include a cover letter.  The employer needs to know what job you’re applying for – I will focus on these more in a future “working Wednesday”

·         Get someone else to proof-read your CV before you send it off.  Spell-check doesn’t always pick up on words that you’ve mis-typed, but are spelt correctly.  For example, you may be a “hot-shot” on computers, but you don’t want to tell an employer that you’re a “hot-shit”.  (I actually wouldn’t recommend using the phrase “hot-shot” in your CV, I was simply using this as an example because I could swap the “shot” for “shit” and thought that might make my post a bit funnier)

 

 

 That’s all you’re getting from me for today.  There’s a lot more I could say about making your CV a killer one, but I think I need to go into more detail in a future post, before I bore you all to death.   I wanted to include a CV template in case people wanted to use it, but have no idea how to attach a word document to my blog post.  Any suggestions on how I might do this in future posts are most welcome!

Introducing...(on a tuesday)...Working Wednesday

We see it in the media all the time: Unemployment is at a record high, more young people out of work than ever before, parents feeling the pressure to go back to work etc, etc...

When I first started blogging (before I went AWOL) I decided that although I would talk about being a working mum, I wasn’t going to talk about the ins and outs of what I did.  Not because it’s massively boring, or so incredibly exciting that I need to keep it a secret, but because I do it for 35 hours a week and when I get home, I like to think about other things.    

Anyway, since returning to the blogosphere, I’ve thought about how my blog might evolve and I think that I might be able to use my day-job to make a blog a bit better. 

So, I have decided that each Wednesday, I am going to feature “Working Wednesdays” and will focus on working; returning to work and all it entails, changing careers, having a work-life balance, that sort of thing. 

I probably should have mentioned – I’m a qualified careers adviser and have spent the last 12 years supporting people into employment – just in case any of you were thinking “Who the hell are you to advise me on employment?”  I’ve given advice and guidance to a variety of people from a variety of backgrounds, from graduates to long-term unemployed, prisoners to parents, so hopefully I might be able to impart a little bit of knowledge that might help readers of my blog. 

I think that there is more pressure on parents returning to work – single parents claiming benefits will soon be moved from income support to jobseekers allowance when their youngest child turns 5.  Stay-at-home parents are finding themselves having to look for part-time work as costs increase but their partner’s wages don’t.  And lots of parents want to work and are actively trying to find a job, but are finding they’re hitting brick walls all of the time.  And then there are the barriers some people face when going back to work:  childcare, gaps in employment, inexperience, confidence.  It’s no easy task finding a job these days, with a limited number of available jobs and a high volume of applicants for each job going.   Adding children into the mix can make the task harder as we have to find jobs that accommodate school hours, are flexible with things like dentist and doctors appointments and knowing we have to come home from work to cook meals, wash school uniforms and prepare lunchboxes.

So I thought that maybe, my blog might be somewhere that can actually help other people, and offer them a bit of advice, rather than just be a place for me to let off some steam.  (Although on other days of the week, it will still be a place for me to rant and just be myself)

I hope it won’t be too boring, employability can be a bit of a dry subject so I’ll try and make it as light-hearted as possible.  And if there’s any aspects of returning to work you’d like me to cover, please feel free to leave a comment or send me a tweet and I’ll try and cover it. 

Working Wednesdays is going to start tomorrow, so please pop back to see how my first one goes and if you know any parents who are looking for work then please point them in my direction!

Yummy arab stew recipe, nom nom nom...

Now we’re coming into autumn, and Little T is back at school, I like to try and start the new term being super organised, and always plan to make sure there are healthy, yummy meals at the ready when we all get home from work and school (This wonderfully-organised working mum facade usually lasts about a week).  So, today I climbed into the back of my kitchen cupboards, retrieved my slow cooker and dusted it off.  I had every intention of using it to make a chicken curry, but when I opened the chicken it smelt a bit iffy so I chucked it in the bin.  Deciding to make sausage casserole instead, I took the sausages out of the freezer and then realised that I wasn’t sure if you could put frozen sausages in a slow cooker.  I didn’t have time to defrost them as I wanted to put the slow cooker on straight away so I put them under the hot tap instead.  This ripped the sausage skin from the sausages, leaving me with a handful of half frozen-half mushy sausage meat.  The sausages went in the bin too. 

So far, operation super-organised is not quite going to plan. 

However, I’m not usually this bad when it comes to slow cooking, and have jotted down my shopping list to make sure that tomorrow, I buy all of the ingredients I need to make my famous Arab stew.  Big T’s half Arab and when we moved in together, I got the recipe from his mum (so really, it’s her famous Arab stew, not mine) and it’s so lovely, warm and delicious that I thought I’d share with you. 

 

Serves:  About 6-8 depending on how greedy people are in your house

Prep time:  15 mins

Cooking time:  Slow cook on low for 8 hours or, I suppose on high for 4 hours (Never cooked on high before so I’m guessing)

Ingredients:

Half leg of lamb, diced OR 2 packs of diced lamb from a supermarket

4 medium potatoes

3 large carrots

1 large onion

2 tomatoes

3 tbs tomato puree

2 or 3 peppers of different colours

1 large tin of marrowfat peas

1 tin chopped tomatoes

1 passata

Cup of water

1 tsp paprika

1tsp turmeric

1tsp ground cinnamon

1tsp hot chilli powder

½ tsp mild curry powder

Method

1)      Cut up all of the veg, nice and chunky

2)      Fry the onions in a pan – when soft, add the lamb until sealed and browned

3)      Pop the onions and lamb in the slow cooker, followed by all of the vegetables

4)      Add the chopped tomatoes’, puree, passata and marrowfat peas and give it a bit of a stir to mix everything up

5)      Add the spices and give it another stir

6)      Add a bit of water if the veg isn’t properly covered, but not too much as the slow cooker makes things  a bit runny if you’re not careful

7)      Put the cover on and turn the switch to ”high”

Once done, best served with couscous and bread but it goes down well with pasta too.  I suppose you could swap the lamb for beef or chicken but I can’t vouch for how this tastes as I’ve never made it with any other meats before. 

This can also be cooked in a stock-pot on the hob (which is my fave way of cooking it if I get the time) the only difference is you need to add the spices to the meat, then add the puree, chopped tomatoes and passata and then pop in the veg. So it’s kind of backwards.  Stir frequently to prevent burning.

It really is a lovely cold-day kind of meal and can be frozen afterwards and makes a yummy lunch for work the next day as there’s plenty of leftovers. 

That’s it, hope you enjoy, and if anyone knows whether I can put frozen sausages in a slow cooker, please leave me a comment below!

***Edited to link to the fabulous Medicore Mum whose blog features "Slow cooker sunday" - please pop over and have a look at her scrummy slow cooker recipes!**

waving a sheepish hello again...

Hello again (Peeks out sheepishly, blushing slightly and pleading guilty to blog-abandonment...)

I know, it’s been a while.  A long while actually. And First off, to the few followers who were kind enough to follow my blog, I’d like to apologise for going AWOL for so long....the only explanation I can offer is that I’m crap at maintaining things – you only have to look at my head to see six months worth of dark roots to verify it.  And a blog does require a certain amount of maintenance.  See, I started to get a bit stressy with the whole thing – Looking at other fabulous mummy-blogs with their fabulous mummy-owners who could find something witty, interesting or amazing to say on a daily basis was pretty intimidating to a newbie-blogger like myself.  The relentless social media thing to promote my blog was starting to take away from time actually being spent with the child I was blogging about, and I was struggling to think of topics to write about. 

So I thought I’d take a break.  I just didn’t imagine it would last for four months. 

Anyway, I’ve missed blogging, and for some time I’ve wanted to come back to it, but always put it off, thinking “Nobody will be interested anyway...” “What’s the point; I’ve left it too long...” and other things to that effect.  Then, when I came back from my summer hols, I had a message on twitter (which joined my blog in total abandonment) from another Mummy blogger asking me how I was and saying I was missed – and I thought, “Sod it, I’m going back to blogging.”  So, here I am.  (Thanks Lynn J )

In the past four months, not much has changed – I’ve still not found my inner-goddess.  Apparently, she got a bit tired of waiting for me so she sought salvation in some tramp called Anna and spent some time ogling this annoying bloke whose grey joggers hung off his hips.  I think she’s finding her way back to me though...I reckon riding crops weren’t her thing... 

  Little T is growing up fast, has a trendy new haircut and has lost his first tooth, although this was down to cracking it and having it removed by the dentist.  Boys, eh? 
 Despite my earlier reference to it, I did waste a few days of my life reading “50 shades of Grey” and getting annoyed that someone with such limited writing talent has been able to make millions from unsuspecting women who have now painted their bedrooms red.  I also spent a week reading the “Hunger Games” trilogy which chewed up 50 shades and spat it out on the shagpile carpet.  Read them if you haven’t already, preferably before you watch the film.

 I fully intend to keep this up now...I won’t be blogging daily.  I’ve made my peace with the fact that I just can’t – I work full-time and have a child and a home that need attention.  I suppose my husband deserves some too.  I don’t have the luxury of getting much time alone, so I will aim to post at least once a week and will do more if I can.  Anyway, quality is more important than quantity.  I tell Big T that all the time...

 I do hope that those who were kind (or bored) enough to read in the beginning will join me again and forgive me for my neglect.  It’s nice to be back.