Career Video: Animator

I thought this was an interesting video on what it is like to be an animator. It was also listed as Best Youth Video category in the 2011 MyFuture video competition. You can see more career profile videos and career profiles (including duties and tasks, relevant courses and potential earnings) at the myfuture website or YouTube channel, myfutureAustralia.

INFOGRAPHIC: Anatomy of a Job Interview

Here is an interesting infographic on the types of interview questions asked, both common and most uncommon. As well as some useful tips that you can apply to your interviews. Please share this and tell others about this blog.

Inexperienced Graduate

Graduating with no experience can be a very daunting time. Almost all the jobs you apply for will ask for your resume, and knowing what to put on it and what to not put on it may make the difference between getting to an interview or being dumped on the heap with other applications. Most companies that are hiring graduates will understand that you will not of had much 'real-world' experience, but it's what you did whilst studying that is important. They are looking for your qualities and skills that you have developed whilst studying. Four things that will help you to stand out from the crowd include internships and work experience, volunteer work, extracurricular activities and your interests. It is not only important to identify these in your resume but also in writing a good cover letter.

Internships and work experience

By completing work experience and other internships you are demonstrating a real drive and desire to enter the industry. However, it is not only the fact that you did them it is also the skills that you developed from that. No matter what you have done if you cannot walk away saying I have learnt or developed this skill from this activity then may as well not bother mentioning it.

Some key things to include here are:

1. Where you interned and for which company?
2. How long you were there.
3. The skills you developed.
4. Who you reported to.
5. Any changes you needed to overcome.

Volunteer work

This type of work can be good in developing skills in communication but also demonstrate to an employer that you are a committed, caring and responsible member of the community. As with internships always identify the relevant skills that you developed from the work and how you can use these to help the company. List the volunteer work that you did, how long you were doing (be it a one-day event or a series of activities) and highlight those key skills that you developed. It not only shows you are committed by that you are hard working and willing to give back to the community.

Extracurricular activities

These type of activities show that you are willing to commit to something and follow it through for the long haul. This can identify also to the company how well of an organisational fit you will be in terms of the organisation culture. You do develop skills from these that may also help you in the workforce, such as commitment, responsibility, leadership, creativity and motivation. When you list these skills put a little example of where you had to use these skills and the outcome of the situation.

Interests

Similar to extracurricular activities you can show you motivation and creativity through these, as well as express your personal brand. Before listing your interests always think about your audience, will you need to know how to water ski for the job you are applying for or will you need a vast knowledge of Facebook for this job? Whatever your interests cater to what the employer wants to know, and back it up with relevant examples and, you guessed, the skills you got whilst executing these activities.

Apps for Education

I thought it might be good to let you all know about some apps that I have found very useful in my studies. But most of these I run off an iPad so may appear different on an android, the only app that is exclusive to the apple store is iStudiez pro.

iStudiez Pro

The iStudiez Pro is a calendar app that you can add you classes, timetable and assignments. It is integrated into the calendar app so any event you put in the calendar will appear in iStudiez, in either a weekly or daily view. I have found this app really good because all I need for uni is in one location, it notifies me when I have a test or assignment and it syncs between all devices through a cloud account. Highly recommended if you use apple.

Evernote

Although I have only started using this app I don't know how I did without. Some basic features are creating checklists, recording audio, and sorting notes into folders, places and tags, and syncing between devices. What is excellent about this is that it is on all devices, apple and android, just set up an account and it can all be synced between devices. The app has a very easy to use layout.

DropBox 

Never use solid state again!! Particularly good for me as I keep forgetting my thumb drive. It is good for storing documents, and there is an app that can be downloaded onto the computer, tablet and phone. You can set up a dropbox account, if you don't have on already, by clicking on DropBox. All you need is an email account.

Google Drive

Similar to dropbox with online editing available, making drive a little better than dropbox in my opinion. I use both dropbox and drive, uploading and sharing documents on drive that need to be able to be edited online and transferring documents from one computer to another through dropbox. If you have set up a Gmail account then you already have access to drive.

Adobe Reader

Adobe reader also has syncing capabilities between devices. I prefer Adobe reader from the app store for this reason and because I can organise my PDFs into folders, rename them and see the recent files. It can be downloaded for free onto your computer, tablet and phone. I use it on all my devices, including my android phone.