Blog

Three Steps to Brand Your Part-Time Job for Career Success

A common question from students is how to build a relevant resume when you don’t have any relevant experience. You know you should create a resume that shows employers why you’re the best pick for the position, but if you’ve never worked in the field, how are you supposed to do that? With only retail or service industry experience, it can be daunting to try and prove that you’re a viable candidate for a professional job.

If you’ve been reading this blog, you know that the answer is to brand your experience. You want to take aspects of your part-time job and show why having worked it makes you the perfect hire. You need to make the position relevant.

But what does that mean, and what does that entail?

Below, we look at the three steps to brand your part time job.

Continue reading →

Who to Use for References as a Student (And How to Ask Them)

References are an important component of any successful job or placement search. You can have an impressive resume, interesting cover letter, and exemplary portfolio, but for employers there’s nothing like having another person tell them how awesome you are.

You should dedicate some time to choosing who you use as references. Your references can make or break your job hunt efforts.

Here are some foolproof ways to have awesome references.

Continue reading →

Three Key Ways to Defeat Impostor Syndrome

Impostor Syndrome is the feeling that you’re a fraud in constant danger of being found out. It’s the feeling that no matter what you’ve achieved, you’re not actually good at what you do. This feeling is a lie, but tons of people are subject to it: this constant sense that we are not good enough.

Impostor Syndrome can hold you back at school, in your co-op placements, or at work. If you listen to it, you hesitate to take promotions or leadership roles because you might feel like you aren’t qualified enough. And it’s simply not true.

So how do you beat this feeling? How do you stop these kinds of thoughts from holding you back?

Below the cut, we look at some real techniques to deal with Impostor Syndrome.

Continue reading →

Be a STAR: Using the STAR Method to Be Awesome at Job Interviews

Job interviews are a huge part of the job/placement hunting process. It’s where employers get a chance to meet you and find out what it is that makes you the best candidate. They’ll ask a lot of questions about your experience. It’s likely that a lot of those questions are behavioural.

A behavioural interview question is used to figure out how you react to certain workplace situations. The question usually starts with something like, “Tell me about a time you…”.

The interviewer is usually looking for one thing: a specific example of how you acted in that situation. They want to identify your skills and how you used them.

These kinds of questions can be stressful if you haven’t dealt with them before. Lucky for you, there’s a really simple formula to use when giving your answer: the STAR Method.


Continue reading →