making me employable..

DCFC79

OP have you tried agencies for temp work, look in the job section of a local paper, what kind of work are you looking for or are you looking for anything and not something specific

Buddingblonde

Jobs can also be about who you know - let EVERYONE you come into contact with know that you are job hunting - you will be amazed how many people know of work going in the local community - that local creche needing workers, that local pub looking for staff etc etc
Network, network, network!

Mrs.Metallica

Thankyou all for you're comments, I have recently asked the Jobcentre to put me forward for training, i will also ask about more. As for doing volentary work, i have done this in the past and i have quite enjoyed it. I have had people look at my CV and they say there is nothing wrong with it, though they might just all be a bunch of ''yes men''.. i will take my CV to someone else and ask thier opinion. I do always Spellcheck my CV's as i know first impressions are very very very cruicial, I am always polite, well dressed and properly spoken. I may lack confidence in my interviews but i do try my best to ''sell'' myself.

Thankyou once again for all your comments and your advice has been taken in.

Mrs.M

Savvy_Sue

If you've done voluntary work, I think it's fine to put that in the 'employment' section. When I went back to full-time employment after several years 'off' for the family, my employment history included ALL the part-time and voluntary 'stuff' I'd been doing, with the skills I'd gained through it. I landed a far more responsible job than I'd had BC, and the skills I needed for it were nearly ALL drawn from the voluntary work I'd done.

BTW, remember that spell checkers only tell you whether a word is spelled correctly, not whether it's spelled correctly for context: you're and your, their and there, two and too and to, it's and its, whether and weather, etc etc etc.

Also remember that if you wrote it, you won't see all the mistakes in it. That's why it helps to get someone else to proofread anything important. You also don't 'see' as many mistakes on screen as when something is printed out, so after using the spellchecker, print it and check it again. If you know you have a blind spot about any words, be very careful - I know I have to think hard about acoustic and jewelry (and even though that's not showing on my spellchecker it looks COMPLETELY wrong and there seem to be different spellings of it so I'm still not sure if the way I want to spell it is OK or not!) It's a good job those aren't words I have to use very often!

Mrs.Metallica

yep.. those two get me alot aswell.... lol and i also noticed that about spellcheck.. doesnt always do what its meant to..

Kez1983

I agree with all the suggestions above. Any experience you can get, voluntary or paid will make you more attractive to employers. I also may be really picky when reading CV's but if its not set out properly, and is hard to read, I sometimes dont read them all the way through. Also personally I hate coloured paper (others may disagree), pink CV's dont attract me! Give me nice simple black ink on white paper any day!

I also want to reassure you, and anyone else out there job hunting, that there isn’t necessarily anything wrong with you. I advertised 2 vacancies with the job centre on Monday and by Friday had over 300 applications! And they are still coming in! This time last year I would probably have had about 20 applications in the same amount of time. There are just a lot of people out there looking.

Good Luck!

bibbly

Mrs.Metallica wrote: »

yep.. those two get me alot aswell.... lol and i also noticed that about spellcheck.. doesnt always do what its meant to..

That's because sometimes it will recognise a word that is spelt in the American way (i.e. jewelry not JEWELLERY which is the English version!) By the same token it will not correct you when you have used "your" instead of "you're" - both are correctly spelt but you may not have used the correct version. Using the grammar checker is just as important as the spell checker and if in doubt ask someone who can help (or ask on here!)

GrammarGirl

Can I just add - you should never solely rely on the spellchecker. A computer cannot determine the meaning of your sentences, so often highlights errors where there are none. Also, many, many spellcheckers are set to American English, so words such as 'realise' will be automatically changed to the American spelling (realize). Always proofread your CV and get someone else to proofread it too.

Just realised the person above me has made the same point! However, even with the combined forces of spell and grammar checker, a computer cannot do the same job as someone with a good, detailed knowledge of the English language.

RobertoMoir

Mrs.Metallica wrote: »

hrmm.. i make sure all my spelling in my CV is spot on.. my appoligies if my spelling is not up to your standards. Thankyou for the comment.

I don't think the intention was to pick on your spelling here, but in any case the point is valid if taken and used in the right way.

Consider it from the other side of the desk... If you were hiring someone and received something like 50 CVs and had to check them to produce a short-list of people to interview, how would you go about it, considering you also have to do whatever your normal days work is on top of this...

Wouldn't you go through the pile and throw out any obvious "No" CVs? And if you had a large pile to cut down from 50 CVs to 5 interviews, then wouldn't you be inclined to be quite... sharp... on adding people to the "no" pile? If your CV doesn't present information clearly and makes me struggle to find out what is good about you then you're probably going in the "no" pile straight away.

Then you might seperate out the "yes" CVs from the "Maybe" pile. If you had enough "Yes" CVs at this point to make interviews worthwhile then you're done with the "maybe" group at this time as well?

If you think about it like that... then look at your CV. If you're not getting interviews then either it's a "maybe" or a "no". How can you make improvements to it to move it up the ladder?