CV Information Gathering

“Personal statement” - this is incredibly difficult to write and it is a mini-covering letter, so the information you gather for this can be used for both.

• Contact people who know you personally - your parents, grandparents, friends, colleagues, teachers. Try find at least five. 

• Ask them to write down THREE things they know about you which makes you a good person to hire - these should be personality traits (punctuality, friendliness, hard worker, etc). It’s important that they write this all down as it makes them think a bit harder! You’ll also get a range of words to use to describe yourself.

• Contact 3 or more people who know you in a professional capacity. This could be current employers or clients, as well as previous employers - even in a different industry. Ask them to do the same thing. Again - you’ll be surprised at what nice things some people have to say about you, and they’ll give you a good selection of words!

Relevant Experience & Skills

• Go back through your work diary. Spend a bit of time down memory lane and remember all the things you’ve done, make a list of all the gigs you can remember, all the kit you’ve used, all the events you’ve worked.

• Make a list of what you did/learned on those gigs. Make a list of the skills you used - “I worked Glastonbury” means very little. “I was patch tech on the Glade stage” means a lot more!

Other Experience

• Stay down memory lane and remember all your previous lives when you did other jobs. What did you learn from these jobs that could be helpful? If you were a baker, you could mention that you are used to getting up at weird times and working unsociable hours. If you worked  in an office, do you know how to handle telephone calls properly? Are you familiar with the kind of software that allows you to easily adapt to warehouse-stocking software, or generating quotes?

Referees

• Identify and contact 2 people who will be your referees - it’s really annoying to read “references available on request”. I want to contact referees very easy and quickly!

HOMEWORK

COMMIT TO DOING THIS!!!

Set aside 3-4 hours in your diary.

Using the CV Information Gathering Document -

• Send out emails/phone calls with friends, family, colleagues etc to ask the CV questions.
• Spend time down memory lane and list your skills, what you did on each job.

Using the “Plan Of Attack” Spreadsheet - 

• on the “research” tab - start with three companies/entities you would like to work for and fill in the info on the spreadsheet - DO NOT CONTACT THEM YET!
• on the “current contacts” tab - start adding everyone you can think of that you know in the industry

Other - 

• If you haven’t got any - order your business cards right now.  MOO LINK for 25% off https://refer.moo.com/s/darryn
• Have you got all the tools, PPE and PLI you need?