INTERVIEW FOR MOD!

One of the competencies of managing professional development was to attend a mock interview for a trainee management graduate in Ministry of Defense.First step was to fill in an application form, then it got processed and we got our date confirmed on the 18th of April 2013. My individual time for the interview was scheduled for  11:15 in room 702.The venue for the interview was in Ealing Hammersmith and West London College.

On the day i arrived 20 minutes early.I was interviewed by two panel members  Katy Howard and Philip Oliver and they were very polite and friendly. A lot of questions were from my application form that related to my skills and work experience and other were based on myself that portray my personality.Question like where i see myself in 5 years time, how my friends describe me, if i have worked in a team and what was my role in it, if i have ever lead a team, my greatest achievement, how i deal with a angry customer and also telling them something about myself.

Overall, i was quite satisfied with my interview as i believe i showed enough confidence to answer my questions and i was successful in following all the interview etiquette.I was mostly comfortable answering questions that related to real life situation like my experiences in work or school projects.Having a good deal of experience at work proved to be an advantage for me as i could easily give example for questions based on team work, customers and leadership roles. However,some of the answers i gave were very short where i could have elaborated more, these were questions where i had to talk about myself.
The feedback i got after the interview was very useful as it helped me to identify my mistakes and work on the improvements for future.

Today we had the privilege to have Andy Gillman as a guest speaker from the MOD Education Outreach programme. This session revolved around similar topic that we covered in previous lesson. Andy shared his experience and knowledge regarding important topics like building a good CV, planning and being prepared for interviews.He gave us useful tips on how we should prepare our self for job interviews and mistakes we should not make.To help us understand much better we did funny role plays and also identified mistakes in the sample cover letters and job registrations forms.It was actually surprising to know how many silly and careless mistakes people make.I could relate to what Andy was saying as i remember one of the mistakes i made that is not being well prepared.I had applied for a sales job and i got a call the next day which i did not expect and it was a phone interview.It went really bad and i had difficulties answering the questions as i was not prepared at all so of course the consequence was that i did not get the job.Therefore i personally feel that one of the most important factor is to prepare yourself well, do the research about the job or company your applying to, get ready for possible questions they might ask and also double check the CV or cover letter for spelling errors, wrong information etc.
I feel i have received valuable information from Andy which will help me to progress in my career.
Below i have attached some useful links.
1.10 CV mistakes to avoide
http://www.totaljobs.com/careers-advice/cvs-and-applications/10-cv-mistakes-to-avoid

2.10 steps for a successful CV
http://www.totaljobs.com/careers-advice/cvs-and-applications/successful-cv

3.sample of a Good and Bad CV
http://www.kent.ac.uk/careers/cv/goodbadCV.htm
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This week we covered an essential topic in lesson.It reflected upon building a strong CV ,cover letter and good reference. The first step to apply for any job is to prepare a CV, however just building a CV is not enough we need to understand that we will get through the process of an interview only if we have build a very strong and a good CV.
In class Jay discussed and explained us the essential and fundamentals of how to build a good CV, cover letter and reference.
From my personal experience i have understood the importance of having a strong CV and how it helps us to get a job easily.I remember when i applied for my first job i got rejected a lot of times and i was very discouraged but what i did not realize at that moment was i had a very poor CV and that was my biggest drawback to even pass for an interview.Eventually one day i thought about building a whole new CV and i searched for guild lines in the internet, had a look at sample resumes and also took help from my friends. After i build a new one i then applied for the same job but in different branch and i was called in for an interview.
Another task for the day was questions based on our personal skills that could be asked in an interview.This task was very useful in terms of getting us prepared for relevant questions that could be asked to us. Answering these questions were quite easy as it was based on self evaluation. Since I was gaining these skills from my day to day experiences through work and school, I found my strength in answering these questions as I could relate to them.
Overall I found this task very useful as it's not just about preparing us for our future career but also in dealing with the practical world which lies ahead.
I came across a very useful video that gives tips on how to write a good CV.

Setting goal is easy but achieving them isn't, it is important to have a target but what is more essential is having a SMART target to succeed in life. Therefore a target should be SMART which stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, realistic and timely for a higher success rate for our set plans and goals.

Today’s lesson reflected upon the importance of SMART targets. Of course by now I understood what a smart target is but before this lesson I had no clue at all to be very honest. I had specific targets set in life but never have I implemented a SMART target because I never knew about this. We had a task in lesson today about planning targets in our career and personal goals. In pair of two we had to interview each other and I interviewed Nivedita. I found out a lot of interesting plans about Nivedita’s future but most of her current plan is to achieve academic success which was quite similar to mine. This task helped me a lot in terms of deciding, planning and getting a clear concept of where I would like to stand in future. I used SMART while laying our my targets which made it much more clearer towards reaching my goals. In future I will always make use of SMART targets in my educational and professionals life.
This video below has given a clear and concise explanation of what a SMART target is and why should we use them.

Today's lesson was all about discovering our learning styles.There are different learning techniques and different styles are suited to different people or situations.Our learning style influences the level of our learning success therefore it is important to know what is best suited learning style for us which will help us to progress in our academic and career path.We filled out a VARK questionnaire and it showed me that i am a Multimodel learner which basically means i am a mix of the many different learning styles which are visual, aural, read and write, kinesthetic. I think it has shown quite an accurate result as i am person that likes to learn through many different techniques and according to different situations. I think it gets boring if a person prefers to stick to only one style and can become quite difficult at times.Although the result showed that i am multimodel it gave a high score for aural learning style which i don't think is very accurate as i believe i learn best from visual or kinesthetic but it all depends on the situation as well of course. It was quite interesting though to learn and understand what kind of leaner i am and also made me realize the fact that how important it is to realize the best learning techniques for us.It also gives me a relief and am happy about the fact that i am quite a flexible learner which will help me to adapt to any situations.I am glad that i understand my learning style as i can put this to my advantage when it comes to deadlines and assignments.

This video below has portrait  the different learning style of individual and has made it very simple to understand them so check it out!

Our second portfolio work was career planning.This session helped us as an individual to identify our characteristics and talents which is very important in terms of heading a step in ones career and will also prepare us for interviews.Therefore good career planning is must; a good planning will avoid disorganized implementations and have a much greater chance of being effective.

Today we had something similar task to do in class, we filled out questions that was related to our qualifications, work experience, extra curricular activities and our strength and weakness. I have always struggled to answer about my strength and weakness when it was asked to me in several job interviews. This is one of the most common question that is asked in any interviews therefore it is very important to identify where our key strength and weakness lies.To be very honest i have never given it a serious thought about this and i always given vague and very cliches answers. Today's lesson helped me identify my  real strength and weakness and i am very glad we had this as one of our task.This task sheet also helped me realize the fact how important it is to have a target and a good future planning and how our planning will affect our goals. I think it has really built my confidence and has partially prepared me for future.

Today we had our first lesson for MPD. I found this unit quite interesting as i have never come across to study this kind of module before in my educational journey. I think this module will help students alot in the journey towards their career life.In this lesson we got to know the insight of what the module is going to focus on and what is expected of us as a student.Today we had to make a site like we had done for professional competences and we also made a live binder which was new for us.The process of making this was quite simple as we were guided by Jay of course. We basically got to learn how to make our own site, our online blog and live binder.This is very useful as we can make our own personal one if we like too.I think the live binder is very cool as we can attach and make a whole personal career online portfolio and can also do so many other useful things.Well.i still need to get the hang of using the live binder but am sure once ill be perfect ill make the most use of it.