Thing 21 Job applications and interviews

CVs

I have got a CV as when we went into consultation last year, we were offered a couple of hours advice on how to draw up CVs with an Employment Consultant. I've actually ended up doing 2 CV's - one that's library based and the other one for standard office jobs. The consultant also focussed on my skills that could be transferred into other jobs, mainly frontline customer services or admin rather than library work.

On the positive side, my CV is nicely set out with bullet-points making it easy to read. Unfortunately, I struggled with the listing of achievements and strengths etc as I'm just no good at self-promoting myself and identifying anything I can boast about (Probably something to do with the English psyche).

I did however come up with an irrelvelant list of positives which include:-

I'm never ill, bugs avoid me.
I have a knack of being able to get to work daily despite living over 40 miles away and not being able to drive.
I make very good chocolate truffles.
I'm a good waitress.
I have a photographic audio memory for voices and conversations which means that I have an uncanny knack of remembering customers and can impress them greatly (or scare them slightly!) by recalling conversations ie books they've ordered from months or sometimes years gone by! I'm not sure how I can translate this skill to other jobs!
As I'm out the house for 12 hours a day, I'm good at squashing in as many things as possible in the few hours I have free.

Also, probably also to do with that British psyche, my work colleagues aren't forthcoming with positive comments either so it's hard to judge yourself. However going on customer comments, I usually get the following:-

"Oh good.....a cheery voice" or "You sound nice and cheery".
"You're very patient to deal/cope with me".
"How did you remember that?" or "You know me don't you".
"I didn't think you're find that" or "you know your books/stuff".

And my favourite which was said only last week by an ex-Librarian "You're a good librarian".

Maybe I should just put their comments on my CV instead.

Job applications and Interviews

I haven't applied for any jobs lately but in the past, I'm not too bad in getting to the interview stage. I tend to write too much in applications though and tend to go over the top in giving evidence for essentials and desirables. Unfortuantely, I tend to blow it in the interview - I either fluff a question or say something inane and talk myself out the job. I did also used to think that I was just there to make up the numbers until I did a spot of recruiting and interviewing myself and realised that you have to meet the criteria before you're interviewed and are quite happy to interview just 2 people if people haven't scored the necessary points.

However I did go for an interview once where the interviewer confessed that I was called to the interview because he was curious to see who was behind the handwriting. When I write neatly in capital letters, my applciations tend to resemble more like ancient Greek manuscripts. I think he was expecting some Plato figure coming through the door dressed in white robes and with long hair and a beard!