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How one undergraduate stood out from the rest

How one undergraduate impressed us with her CV and covering letter. A guest blog from Beth Lawrence…

To be told whilst at Sixth Form, that studying Ancient History meant that I could do anything after University, conjured up grand ideas at the immature age of 18, it filled me with great confidence, allowed me to fight back at the narrow-minded neighbours who asked when I was going to become teacher, provided me with big ambition - a career!

Now however, this prospect fills me, and many of my classmates set to graduate in 2013, with terror and dread. It almost feels a little like you’ve been fired by the great institution of education with little more than a footnote to go on your CV. And with more than 64% of students now achieving a 2:1 or first class degree (requirement for most top graduate schemes), what was once a rare achievement, now has little more impact than saying I turned up for three years.

You even start to think, and I know everyone does a little bit, why didn’t I study a vocational degree? Why couldn’t I enjoy the sight of sick and blood, or teeth, or children?! Though I think we can be forgiven for not enjoying any of those notions - hats off to those who do!

Burdened by these nightmares, I decided to do something about it. I know, hold the phone, a student taking initiative! But it isn’t as rare as you think - more and more prospective graduates are harnessing the powers of social media in order to network, search for jobs, and advertise themselves to the world.

I started to think of myself as a product - how could I market myself, who would want me, where can people find me? I started, initially, in second year by joining the twitt-o-sphere. On the advice of a friend telling me that employers were now checking up on you via social media, I followed influential people, causes I believed in, BBC News, potential employers…There were no TOWIE stars in sight on my profile page!

I have thoroughly enjoyed adding to this network, and gaining followers over the past year, however don’t think that that’s your work done. It isn’t. It needs employers to get involved too, and from my experience, this is a rarity.

LinkedIn certainly goes one step further in that respect, a site made for professionals to network and the unemployed to advertise themselves. A great idea in concept, some big wig could find me in a search for ‘great communicator’ and I’d have a job thrown at me! Sound too good to be true? Then it probably is.

In reality, most of my friends could tell you that all of their connections are people they already knew and the site is pretty much redundant in use.

But there is a glimmer of hope in the graduate darkness, as today I received my first recommendation on both Twitter and LinkedIn, by Lisa Bean, founder of Gradvert Recruitment and prpa brand builders. This was down to some late night CV emails.

I’ve joined every single god damn graduate job site known to man, and scouring them for potential jobs has become a nocturnal habit of mine. My CV got passed on to Lisa, who subsequently asked for a ‘cover letter’, which apparently impressed her!

It might not come to anything, but then again it might. Within an hour, I had one new follower on Twitter (a bigwig), and five people had viewed my LinkedIn profile, all professional people I did not know!! What was in my CV and cover letter, I hear you ask (you probably didn’t, but go with it)?

Personally, I don’t believe it was just because I was completely amazing and my experiences were totally unique. Otherwise, I would have been recruited by the other schemes I applied to. I think the reason I impressed were two-fold: one, I didn’t follow the standard ‘I’ve got loads of team-work experience and I can communicate’ - it’s a yawn, and might not even be true let’s be honest.

I gave the honest truth, and I gave passion in my cover letter, and I think that means a lot.

Secondly, I believe that the employer plays a huge part in this; handing in a CV needs to be more personal, more care needs to be taken reading them, employers need to get excited by that hint of sparkle in someone’s resume!

However, it’s still only January, there are 6 months until I finish university, and nothing is certain in life. But I would say it was looking positive for a student with guts. I’ll keep you posted though.

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This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Gradvert .