1st year YIB guidance

Current 2nd year BSc Management with International Business (YIB) student Alvaro Ferreira who has  secured a placement with Ascot Wealth Management offers 1st year YIBs the following advice: 

“Psychometric tests were an essential for all my placement applications, in fact they are the key for getting through the recruitment process of most placements whether you do it online or once you are invited for an interview. I highly recommend to get your head around these as early as possible, how they work and what to expect from them as different companies will have different types of tests”

Alvaro shares other tips with 1^st year YIBs in this video profile: http://yibprofile.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/alvaro-ascot-wealth.html

And other Year in Business students talk about their placements here: http://yibprofile.blogspot.co.uk/

This year the School of Management Placement team has brought forward some of the workshops run for 1^st year YIBs to better prepare students for making applications in their 2^nd year. Rae Roberts from Careers has just run a workshop on CV/ Applications and Kinga Zaczek from CEDAS has run one on Psychometric testing.

Kinga's interactive workshop on Psychometric tests gave YIBs an overview of the different tests Companies typically use  (eg numeracy, verbal, situational, personality tests) and the opportunity to work through some examples.

Some of the tips can be found in the attached blog article:

http://yearinbusiness.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/tackling-pyschometric-tests.html

Rae Roberts ran a CV preparation workshop which got the students thinking about what employers are looking for in terms of applicants: namely Fit, Motivation and Ability.

Rae highlighted how YIBs should study placement advertisements to identify the employer requirements and then ensure they clearly convey their relevant skills/ experiences, backed up by evidence.

Companies are often looking for a range of competencies which can include:

Communication, Leadership, Initiative, Team building; Priority setting, Problem solving skills.

Students can demonstrate their skills and experiences from a range of examples based on Education ; Extracurricular activities/ sports within and outside College; Voluntary work and Work experience.

All work experience is valuable and students should not under sell any role. Eg responsibilities of a shelf stacker at Tesco Slough could be described as:

> stacking shelves, helping with customer queries, unpacking deliveries OR as

>  being responsible for ensuring the fruit & vegetable section of this busy store was well stocked and within date, which involved working to tight timescales ; maintaining 100% accuracy on stock checks for food on display being within date; providing polite and friendly customer service to shoppers who were looking for items on the shop floor; maintaining accurate records when checking in up to 6 new stock deliveries per shift.

Students were surprised at the speed at which recruiters typically make their initial check of CVs.
Rae referenced this to demonstrate the importance of of ensuring key, relevant skills were highlighted clearly. Students should use clear formatting using bullets, clear headings, clear font (eg Arial); 11pt font minimum; spell checked and 2 sides length.

Rae is available for 1:1 consultations with YIB students to assist them as they pull together their CVs.

More information on CVs on Moodle employability page:https://moodle.royalholloway.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=3259&section=8

More information on value of work experience:http://yearinbusiness.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/work-experience.html

Example of involvement in an extra curricular activity: Enactus society http://yearinbusiness.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/the-enactus-conference-benefits-of.html

Year in Business Speed Recruiting Event

Our first ever Speed Recruiting Event was very well received by placement providers and students alike. On March 6th we welcomed 8 different Companies to Royal Holloway's School of Management. The students, in small groups, moved around the room, speaking to each Company for 7 minutes before the bell sounded and they were on the move again.

This provided the students with a great opportunity to network, ask questions and find out more about the placement positions available.

Afterwards there was more chance for them to talk informally to the Companies over pizza. 2nd year students who had already secured placements joined us for the event as did first year YIBs getting ready for the year ahead.

A big thank you to all the willing participants from the different companies who attended: 3M, DHL, Enterprise, Lemonade Reward, Liberty Global, Marc Daniels, UNICOM seminars and Wiser

Call Back afternoon

We enjoyed seeing the 3rd year Management students who are out on placement at the recent Call Back afternoon. We welcomed students from AIG, Canon UK, Costco, DHL, Eon, IBM (x2) ,L'Oreal, Microsoft, VMware,Volkswagon and Winser London.

The afternoon provided a great opporunity for the students to hear from each about other how their different placements were going and also to learn more about the Academic Assessment due in on 16th October.














Rae Roberts from Careers ran a STAR session. Each student was asked to present a STAR example they had prepared on a chosen skill area and were then given personalised feedback. Skills chosen included leadership, working in a team, initiative and priority setting/ organisation.

While the students may have found it daunting to present infront of the group this approach provided students with good practice in presenting and allowed them the benefit of hearing the feedback given to all students. This included the importance of students talking slowly/ clearly, spending most time talking about the action/ result of each example; making it clear what the student had done (avoiding "we") and where they had made a difference.

Justin O'Brien ran a reflective writing  style workshop which included a brief overview about the requirements of the 5,000 word Case study and a Q&A session with 3 final year students : Gabi (IBM) ; Slav (Canon Europe) and Hippolyte ( The Walt Disney Company). More detailed information about the Case study requirements can be found in Dr Catherine Harbor's guidelines on the YIB moodle page.

Students were advised not to leave their Case study until the last minute but to submit a draft to their YIB Advisor by the summer and the final report before returning for their Final year. They were encouraged to prepare the material for the Case study while still on placement as this would provide the opportunity to access materials/ conduct primary research with other employees.

Finally the 3rd year students on their Call Back afternoon mingled over tea and cakes with a number of 2nd year students still looking for placements and final year students back from placement. Some prepared video profiles which can be found on the YIB video profile link (top page) and Camille (Costco placement) and Nataliya ( IBM placement) presented to 1st year students in the evening at their YIB information event. Thank you all for your active involvement!