I see by your curriculum vitae that you’re a Sagittarius.

Here’s where Working in the Media Industry gets juicy. We actually discuss what should go on a media tailored CV and craft one which would be good enough to send to potential employers.

This CV would not be one of fiction.

We had a tremendous lecture by guest Gary Farrell who works for Frame 25, a broadcast recruitment agency. He gave us great insider knowledge for what media companies want from prospective employees and how they sift through hundreds of CVs and Cover Letters.

The first piece of insightful knowledge was the idea of writing the CV from the employers perspective. They have a problem that needs solving and you have to either satisfy their needs or solve their problem. They’ve opened up a vacancy for a reason, so make it easy to spot on your CV.

Employers are looking for the essential criteria needed to work in their industry. If they need a camera operator, what equipment have you used?

However, with these skills or even attributes of your character, they want this supported with evidence. They want the abilities in some form of context. How did you use these certain skills? What was your process for making this content?

Gary said something I wasn’t quite expecting, and that was “as an employer, why are you telling me this?” This put me in a state of mind that all employers are robots, that they do not care about the human behind the CV, just the tactical empirical evidence of the skills and knowledge they know. But I realised that the influx of applications may to be grand to allow for any time to make an emotional response, nor should they create one in case they cannot detach themselves from one CV to the next. But lastly, it also made me understand how important the information you put on this form is and how much you just need to sell yourself. Unimportant or irrelevant information should not crowd what little space and time you have for them to read. “When in doubt, leave it out”

The formatting of your media CV is also crucial. Flashy fonts and outlandish colours will be seen as gimmicks and an excuse for the employer to throw away your CV. Your CV needs to be easy to read, clean of clutter, and preferably two pages maximum.

Whatever role you’re applying for, focus your CV and skill set to that. Graduating Media Production will provide you with a plethora of skills, but you, and your CV need to be focused on the job you are applying for.