During first semester within the Science and Employability module I attended a Career planning and graduate CV workshop.
Career Planning
The first section of this workshop was used to inform us about the process of planning for a future career. During this time it quickly became apparent that there are four main areas that need to be looked at when thinking about a career.
Decisions
In this part we were encouraged to think about the subjects that we enjoy and select areas within these that we are good at.
Experience
This was an assessment of the point that we are currently at within career planning, considering current experience in the field chosen such as extra-curricular work and modules we have taken throughout university life.
The Working Environment
After deciding what the best option is for a career path there is still many other factors that now need to be considered. These are work related and may help you to decide on the best job for your specific needs such as salary, job security and working hours as well as the opportunity to progress further in your chosen job.
Organisations and employers
This is again another important section, in this the importance of knowing who is employing you and how they recruit is explained as this could be important for tailoring your CV and preparing yourself for attempting to get a job.
Writing a CV
In the second half of the workshop advice was given on how to refine and complete a CV including structuring and optional extras that can be added to personalise.
My Thoughts and My Career
I found this workshop extremely useful as it gave me information on planning for a career which will be needed after my masters. It also put into prospective the amount of planning required to ensure that the job chosen is one that I will be happy in.
In addition to this I found that after this workshop I was able to look over my CV and pick out areas that I needed to work on such as my experience section. Because this was an area of weakness I then applied for an internship at the University in the hope that I would be able to add to this section. I thought that this was a massive positive that I gained from this workshop even though prior to the event I was skeptical as to how helpful it would be.
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