CV Writing and Interview Skills workshop

This workshop is designed to show you how to construct a winning CV that will single you out from the crowd and get you that all-important interview. It will show that with careful preparation and thought about the role you are applying for, you can craft a CV that will highlight your skills and experience and help you match the requirements of the role.

Having then been short listed, what is the best way to approach the interview? How should you prepare and practise and what pitfalls should you avoid?

Packed full of practical hints and tips, this workshop will help you approach the application and interview process with confidence and to feel fully prepared for the whole process.

CV Writing and Interview Skills Programme
Programme Details:

Summary of participants’ audit of their ‘marketability’ & selection experience & learning needs for the day – 

Input & discussion on how it works, learning from experience, and the factors leading to success

Drawing up your skills profile
Group discussion with tutor input on how to develop your skills profile, assessing your competencies and selling yourself on paper

Identifying key selection criteria
Discussion on making sense of job adverts, job and person specifications, checking competencies and matching yourself to selection criteria

Giving your CV/application letters an MOT
In groups, review of CV best practice & general discussion of participants’ CVs/Application letters inviting examples and questions (participants to bring CVs to the workshop).

Working on CV writing skills.
Skills & tactics: How to approach interviews with confidence and credibility.
Input & discussion: What do successful interviewees do that influences in their favour?
Specific behaviours, pitfalls to avoid, ‘false friends’; how to prepare and practise. Based on tutors’ experience of over 500 applicants.

Interview practice:
In groups of two, participants examine effective interview practice in detail and observe 2-3 volunteer rehearsal interview segments based on real job specifications. Learning through the tutor guidance, role plays and observation.

Price: £195.00pd

Duration: 1 Day

Exploring Flexible Career Options workshop

Increasingly in organisations, the full time, permanent job that used to make up most of the workforce is being replaced and supplemented by a whole range of different relationships between employee and employer.

While these will not all be available in any one organisation, it is important in considering career options that individuals start by thinking as broadly as possible about what the options might be.

Within organisations today, it is important to recognise that existing employees also need to consider career options, particularly in any outplacement situation, such as a redundancy programme.

Programme Details:

-          Introduction

            -          Participants discuss range of employment options that could be available to them.

            -          Look at the characteristics that distinguish certain employment options.

            -          Rate options according to how representative they are.

            -          Participants study example job profiles to use as a guide when rating own preferences.

            -          Designing personal profiles.

            -          Consider the option of job sharing.

            -          Participants look into sources of help available to them when considering any major career change.

Who is it for: This training is intended for participants who are thinking of their career in broader terms than their current organisation, such as those facing redundancy, retirement or on an outplacement programme? Can also be useful in the following areas:

               ·         Career planning and development, 

               ·         Continuing professional development, 

               ·         Flexible working, 

               ·         Life and career development, 

               ·         Management development,

       ·         Personal development, 

               ·         Personal development planning,

               ·         Personal effectiveness, 

               ·         Self-development, 

Dealing with change and different career stages

Having perhaps identified a possible career change or future types of work, we often find the process of accepting change daunting and sometimes debilitating.

This training activity examines the emotional side of change. Common experiences of different careers are described and put into the context of ongoing change.

In the uncertain business of change there is one guarantee, that change is always involved in the development of one’s current, past and future career.

Whether this change takes place in a slow developmental curve or is experienced as a dramatic shift, it is helpful to be able to understand one’s personal reactions and how best to deal with them.

This makes an individual more able to deal with the change in a positive and constructive way.

This training activity examines the changes that take place inherently at different points in our life, and our means of coping with them.

Programme details

-          The training activity begins by ‘testing’ the confidence of the participants in their careers and some of their feelings about change.

-          Participants look at changes that have affected them over the last ten years, the types of change and their reactions to them.

-          Participants reflect on their lives and the different changes that have happened to them.

-          They put these into the context of the different life stages that we all experience.

-          The training activity then focuses on the participants’ ability to cope with change: accepting change, how they experience change and their coping mechanisms.

-          Finally, participants take stock of their current situation and examine the emotional side of change.

-          In addition, common experiences of careers are forward to where they would like to be.

Who is it for: This training workshop is identified and put into the context of ongoing change?

And support the following: 

      -     Career planning and development,

-          Change management,

-          Continuing professional development, 

-          Flexible working, 

-          Life and career development, 

-          Management development, 

-          Managing change, 

-          Personal development, 

-          Personal development planning, 

-          Personal effectiveness

Price: £195 pd

 Contact: hopecottagecareeradvisors@btconnect.com

Producing a career plan

Who is it for: This training workshop is intended for participants who have thought through their personal motivators and understand what they have to offer in terms of their skills, experience, technical and professional know-how, behavioural strengths and attitude.

Purpose:  This workshop activity enables participants to plan long and short-term career goals. The concept of career bridges is introduced and used to help participants in planning steps to attain career goals.

During this training activity a career plan involving long and short-term career goals is produced in a structured format.

Participants are guided through the stages of planning and given feedback and encouragement by each other.

Programme details:

            -          Introduction to the theme of creating a career plan,

            -          Participants look at their long-term aiming point and begin to complete a personal career plan.

            -          Examine the concept of career bridges and the practicalities of making many small incremental career moves  

-          Participants think more immediately to define their short-term aiming points.

-          Group exercises plotting participants career plans.

-          Participants look at the requirements of their aiming points, how to perfect their plans and,

-          Finally, focus on the intermediate steps needed to attain both the long-term and short-term aiming points.

Themes: 

*Career goals, 

*Career planning and development, 

*Flexible working, 

*Personal development, 

*Personal development planning, 

*Personal effectiveness,

Price: £195 pd

Contact: hopecottagecareeradvisors@btconnect.com