Tom Mursell

Yes you read it right, 7 year-olds are to receive career advice under new Gov’t proposals. You can just imagine it now; little 7 year-old Johnny updating his CV after sitting his Year 2 SATs! The report ‘Quality, Choice and Aspiration – A strategy for young people’s information, advice and guidance’ has flagged up the need for better careers information, advice & guidance (IAG) highlighting that it should be delivered within the Key Stage 2 curriculum. The reason? “…because decisions made at the point of transition from primary to secondary school can have a real impact on the direction young people take in their early years of secondary school”.

But should it really be delivered as young as 7?

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This is the first of what will be a regular feature of common CV mistakes, what they are, how to avoid them and how to communicate ‘properly’ with employers. The first common CV mistakes article (how exciting!) is on how to express yourself by actually saying something rather than just writing words.

We’ve all been there and so have you if the following looks familiar…

I am a hardworking, enthusiastic, motivated, good communicator who works well in a team…

In fact, in my opinion that’s why looking at someone else’s CV is not the best way forward. By all means take the basics & format from it, but don’t copy…and seriously – don’t use Microsoft Word’s synonyms tool else you might end up saying something you don’t mean. Using the word ‘aroused’ instead of ‘motivated’ will most probably go down like a ton of bricks (depending on the recruiter of course – and the job!).

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Yesterday was an eventful day to say the least – it all started with a pre-organised session at Radio 1 where I was asked to be on a panel helping listeners with their career-related problems (not a music session, Live Lounge is next week…!). I didn’t really know what to expect although I knew the panel was made up of myself, Shaf Rasul (entrepreneur & online dragon from Dragons’ Den) and Kavita Oberoi (entrepreneur, featured in Secret Millionaire).

So I arrived at Radio 1 towers, cup of tea in-hand and I’m waiting in reception when I hear two voices I recognise; Chris Moyles & Aled Jones (who by the way didn’t go to university!). I didn’t know what to do; should I speak to them? Should I corner them for quotes for the website? Should I ask them about their views on what we could be doing to reduce NEET rates? Well anyway by the time I thought of what I would do (smile & say hello, by the way) it was too late and they were gone…

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Youth unemployment currently stands just shy of 950,000 and economists reckon it could hit 1 million very soon. The story has been covered by BBC Newsbeat all day with features from young unemployed people from the West Midlands (which has one of the highest youth unemployment rates). BBC interviews various young people who have been turned down from jobs on the basis they don’t have the necessary experience.

This isn’t a new problem; I’ve experienced before (pre-recession) as have plenty of other school leavers & graduates I know. The difference now is that there are far more people (older & more experienced people) chasing those same jobs that required experience in the first place. The result is a whole load of young people on the “scrapheap” (to quote the TUC).

Last month the Government & various employers launched the Backing Young Britain campaign along with the Future Jobs Fund offering up 150,000 for long-term youth unemployed, and it’d be interesting to see when these campaigns will have real impact on these figures.

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