The ABC reports that unemployment in Western Australia is on the rise and that the number of full time jobs has been falling for well over a year. Part-time jobs / job-shares are, to some extent, taking their place. But the local Chamber of Commerce and Industry anticipates that the unemployment rate will rise from 5.7% (May 2016) to around 6.3% in the current financial year.
This is certainly an interesting climate in which to consider looking around for some additional part-time / casual work, but I thought I’d give it a go…
The most interesting aspect, really, has been updating my CV/resume. These are, of course, not quite the same thing. A curriculum vitae (CV) is a comprehensive listing of about the last decade of your work experience, along with all your academic qualifications and achievements. Once it’s set up, this document should be pretty easy to tweak and update, since most of those details probably won’t change all that much.
A resume, on the other hand, is much briefer – just a couple of pages (at most) to outline your skills and experience. However, as often as not, what many prospective Australian employers actually seem to be looking for is something in-between. Job applications across a wide range of employment areas request a CV, but actually seem to be after what amounts to a slightly more detailed version of a resume.
Having not travelled this particular road for a number of years, the updating and reshaping of the master document took quite a while. Compressing the relevant aspects into a resume/summary/mini-CV was less time consuming, but not a minor task either. The upside is that it’s all done, so I can now apply for random employment willy-nilly with minimal hassle 🙂
Or so one might imagine…
Job applications, however, all come with that most mysterious and complicated of things, the selection criteria. In many instances these are fairly similar for similar sorts of jobs, but each set requires individual attention – there simply isn’t a one-stop-shop as far as job applications go.
The objective is to address each of the criteria in such a way as to showcase how one has successfully implemented/managed situations with one’s skill set. Ah – and each paragraph needs to be different, i.e. not repetitive. They also each need to be interesting enough to generate at least a grunt of approval from the selection panel and get you over the line onto the short list.
In essence this comes down to an exercise in creative writing, critique and self-assessment. Having just waded through one, I think I may as well now apply for pretty much any and everything that fits my selection criteria! It would certainly make the best use of the time and energy I’ve already expended.
I’m just hoping that the current round of creative writing will overlap at least to some extent with other potential applications, so that it will be more a case of tweaking than of re-inventing wheels each time.
Do you have any resume tips or advice to offer?
