{"id":753,"date":"2016-11-10T14:56:27","date_gmt":"2016-11-10T14:56:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/?p=753"},"modified":"2016-11-10T16:04:57","modified_gmt":"2016-11-10T16:04:57","slug":"753","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/2016\/11\/10\/753\/","title":{"rendered":"Careers Week: Graduate Talks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Thursday 9th November 2016 &#8211; Careers Week<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Today we had talks from three graduates\u00a0of the English and Creative Writing awards at Staffs Uni<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Danielle Booker, manager of local PR company &#8216;Lyme Communications&#8217;<\/li>\n<li>Sharon Sant &#8211; novelist (Romantic fiction\u00a0under the pen-name &#8216;Tilly Tennant&#8217;, Young Adult fiction as herself)<\/li>\n<li>Bram\u00a0Welch &#8211; Entertainment Journalist<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/files\/2016\/11\/20161110_114531.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-758 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/files\/2016\/11\/20161110_114531-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"20161110_114531\" width=\"433\" height=\"251\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The speakers brought a wealth of diverse topics to the panel, which in turn generated many helpful questions from the current undergraduates in attendance.\u00a0\u00a0 Having attended the careers talks this week and last, I can see several\u00a0important linking themes emerging, which I shall summarise here:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>All speakers stressed the importance of forming good friendship groups at undergraduate level in order to support and encourage you in the key task of getting through your degree!<\/li>\n<li>Relatedly, there was further emphasis in every presentation regarding the need for networking after graduating.\u00a0 This could mean any of the following:\u00a0keeping in touch with your fellow graduates, attending events relevant to your areas of employment interest, letting family and\u00a0friends beyond the Uni know about your skills set\/career aspirations, creating a LinkedIn profile, creating a Facebook page for professional use only.\u00a0 Get to know people and get people to know you!\u00a0 Many of the stories we heard at these talks depended upon happy coincidence, and that coincidence was generated by networking.<\/li>\n<li>A degree doesn&#8217;t necessarily mean that you get a job &#8211; work on YOU.\u00a0 Become someone that an employer <em>wants<\/em> to employ: work on your interpersonal skills, your self-confidence, maybe even your manners.\u00a0 Learn to cultivate a good presentation of self.\u00a0\u00a0Develop your personality by travelling, possibly even by living and working in other countries (Bram talked very enthusiastically about the TEFL scheme), volunteer &#8211; even for things that aren&#8217;t directly relevant to what you&#8217;d like to do eventually.\u00a0 If you have no particular career path in mind, then pick some work experience\u00a0and just make yourself do it; if you hate it, you can at least discount that field.\u00a0 If you love it you could be making valuable links for later on.\u00a0\u00a0 <strong>Any<\/strong> work experience will give you life-experience and help you with your personal development.<\/li>\n<li>Find out about Graduate Schemes &#8211; you may not even be interested in the field in which any given scheme is based, however, you can be well-paid and given intensive training in a variety of skills which will stand you in good stead for a range of other careers.\u00a0\u00a0 This tip was really just from Kerry Ann last week, but it&#8217;s such good advice that I had to include it here.<\/li>\n<li>Managing your existing online profile\/s: if a potential\u00a0employer were to Google you, what would they find&#8230;?\u00a0 It&#8217;s time to think carefully about what&#8217;s out there on the internet and how it will look from a professional context&#8230; (Again, this was just from Kerry Ann, but too important to leave out!)<\/li>\n<li>Start the wheels in motion <em>NOW!<\/em>\u00a0 This was a common and crucial piece of advice we heard from every speaker.\u00a0 All\u00a06 of these points can be tackled right now, today, yes &#8211; even in the 1st semester of your 1st year!<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>The talks were &#8211; obviously &#8211; much richer than this list can indicate.\u00a0 We are very grateful to our alumni for returning to pass on their pearls of wisdom and inspire our current undergraduates with a lot of food for thought.<\/p>\n<p>Melanie Ebdon.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thursday 9th November 2016 &#8211; Careers Week Today we had talks from three graduates\u00a0of the English and Creative Writing awards at Staffs Uni Danielle Booker, manager of local PR company &#8216;Lyme Communications&#8217; Sharon Sant &#8211; novelist (Romantic fiction\u00a0under the pen-name &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/2016\/11\/10\/753\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":317,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/317"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=753"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":760,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753\/revisions\/760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}