In this weeks lecture with Daniel I unfortunately caught Covid and was isolating from class so took this weeks lecture at home online and tried my best to keep up with everything that was being covered.
As a class we began looking closer as CVs and Cover Letters and the correct and professional way to begin creating these and sending them to potential client or work placements when applying for jobs.
With this weeks class I’m looking forward to diving deeper into the points that Daniel will be covering to be able to begin improving and added to the CV and cover letter I already have prior to applying for this course. I particularly wanted to see what a design CV should look and the best way I would go about implementing this with my own information as a design student. I aim to take what we cover today into consideration fully and begin adapting and updating my current CV with the update that this class will provide.
CV – a
A CV is a document that is used to summarise a persons education, skills and experience that they have built up over the years. A completed CV can then be used to apply for jobs to allow you to sell your abilities and skills to potential employers.
Before I begin to think about developing a CV its important to remember designers today in this industry are all fighting for the chance at every job that comes alone and because of this its important to remember that I must do all I can to stand out from the crowd. Creating a well structured, laid out and detailed CV will help me showcase my potential as a designer and demonstrate why I should be the one for the job that I’m applying for. Understanding this side of the start up of this process will allow me to aim my expectation of creating a CV high to determine my chance of being a successful candidate.
Some of the pointers and further research that I conducted at home and after this week class allowed me to create a summary of the do’s and don’ts of creating a professional design CV.
DO:
- Be brief – It’s important to get to the point of what I’m trying to showcase to the reader and I must be considerate of their time and the others CVs that are to be read. I only briefly explain my main points and characteristics that are related to the role I’m applying for aiming to fit this onto 1 A4 page. It’s the aim of a CV to intrigue and impress the reader to want to know more about me.
- Contact Info – At a minimum my CV should include my name and contact details that include email address, phone number and online portfolio URL.
- Show personality – The creation of my CV should be the reflection and representation of me and the work that I can produce as a designer. Having a unique design that reflects myself is something that would help stick out of the potential 100s of CVs and help separate me from the rest as mine is eye-catching.
- Demonstrate Consistent – Real design projects aim to be centred around a single, consistent them or a link with logo and branding colours and design. This is something I could potential consider when creating my CV to help show my personality my linking my to my brand design I have created.
- Check Spelling – Spelling and grammar mistake can give an outlook that I am either uneducated in a particular area, lazy or ignorant to the importance of this when going for potential jobs. I want to give the best impression and represent the best image of myself and my workload and double checking spelling and grammar can be the smallest but most crucial element of doing so.
- Research – Before applying for a role or a job altogether, I should consider taking a closer look at what the place of work does exactly to ensure that I am fully aware of what I am applying for as well as making sure they’re aware that I understand their business if the time comes to the interview stage.
- Be honest – It’s crucial that the place of work that I am applying for getting the impression of the real me and what I can provide for them in terms of a team member and a designer.
- LinkedIn – Its importance to keep consistency and professionalism by updating and matching my linkedIn account with my CV.
DON’T:
- Type or handwrite CV – This can give an old fashioned and outdated look as well as just over all unprofessional.
- Use templates – As a designer it’s expected at this point that I can create and design up a template of CV for myself which includes all needed information.
- Lie – A CV is not the place to try and big myself up in terms of schooling grades, jobs or experience.
- Use crazy fonts – It’s important to ensure that this document is legible top to bottom which means that using crazy font is a no. Sticking to serif font face such as black Times New Roman as this is professional, readable and prints well. If fonts that are undreadable or messy looking are used this can give the impression that as a designer you don’t know the importance of your typography standards.
- Use colour – For digitised copies of CV colours that compliment the design are ok but must be considered that once printed out my potential employer that the content is readable in black and white ink.
Cover letters
A cover letter is a document that is usually filled alongside the CV when applying for a job. The importance of a cover letter is to demonstrate to your potential employers the passion and want you have for the job in question. When your content in your CV is running over the estimated 1-2 A4 page a cover letter can be used to continue through with your experience, aspiration and why your the person for the job.
Once again I conducted some pointers and further research at home and after this week class allowed me to create a summary of the do’s and don’ts of creating a professional design Cover Letter.
DO
Research – The first area to cover before creating a CV is to research the position you are applying for as well as the place of recruitment or people that are doing the searching. This will allow me to have an understanding of where I’m applying for and what information too include. This is a key area as it can show the interest that I have to the business to work for them.
Simple – Just like with the CV the employer is unlikely to have the full time to read into the cover letter in detail so keeping it concise and simple but also professional will help me get my point across is the most benefiting way.
Be enthusiastic – The cover letter is my time to shine and my time to show the potential employer why I should be the one they hire.
Keywords – It can be beneficial to use keywords through out the document to draw the attention to certain areas of the page.
The list of DON’TS represented above when creating a CV mirror the same importance in the area of creating cover letters.
Its important however to remind myself when it comes to creating my cover letter to not waffle on about topics that have no relation to the position I am applying for and to ensure that what I am saying is backing up me as a potential employee and demonstrating to the potential employer the difference I would make on their team
20 Questions
Daniel played a fun game with us this week called 20 questions. It was the aim of this game to take a job role and the people in your team (colleagues) gas to find out what your role was in 20 questions or less.
This game overall sounds like a lot of fun until your playing it online from a computer in the house with your team sitting in the classroom. I struggled to ask or answer questions to the others in the class because I had to type my responses because the class was to loud to hear my voice over the mic. This has only been my second week so I was I nervous about being put into a team that I didn’t know and also couldn’t actually communicate with expect over type but once we got started it got fun and we had a laugh with each other when it came to not even knowing some of the roles we had to guess but I was glad that I joined in.
I got an astronaut as my job role
The aim of the game was too demonstrate the “important qualities of a job and the skills that make up the role.” This then would follow on with allowing ourselves to assess our skills and qualities we have to give to a potential job.
Overall, this weeks lecture beneficial to go over the key points to remember when creating a CV and Cover Letter. I have covered this topic many times through my school years and find that it’s always a useful topic to be caught up on and reminded of especially now that im in the position to apply for placement. Researching into this further gives me the understand of how to crate my own CV and Cover Letter and in the coming weeks I am aiming to put my research to use and begin drafting up my documents
Task (week 3)
- Start writing CV and Cover Letters. Pick a job or company from last weeks research to get you started.
- Consider ways in which you will stand out or your delivery method.
- Get LinkedIn and any other social platforms up to date