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Lauren Mollyneaux

 Hi All,

Hope you have enjoyed HR blog season, here is the final blog of the season…

One of the joys of working in HR is the number of CVs we received. Over the years we have seen them all; the good, the bad and the ugly! So I emailed my team and asked them to send me a few do’s and don’ts.

It started with a few replies, then snowballed into a mountain of   ‘Also…’, ‘And….’ emails.  So as a favour to all our loyal readers, I have compiled a list of Do’s and Don’ts when contacting companies about work experience, jobs and general enquiries.
 
Do
• DO include your mobile number and an email address on your CV. Also include your full address.

This applies when leaving a telephone message- its untrue the numbers of messages we get that simply go ‘Hi, I would like to enquire about work experience. Please call me back’- we have no name or number. We’re good at Channel 4 but not that good! Introduce yourself and leave your details clearly.

• DO put Mr/Mrs/Miss/Ms if you have a unisex name i.e. Jamie, Sam, Chris- your gender doesn’t matter but it saves us some embarrassment.

• DO ensure that your email address is spelt correctly; we can’t get hold of you if it’s incorrect.

• DO list the month and year on everything on your CV i.e. Work experience and length of time at jobs. DO list all jobs and education in reverse order. (Newest to oldest)

• DO a thorough spell check on your CV. If you are sending out bulk emails/CV make sure each one is personalised to that company and check its sending it to the right company. We have a surprising large number of CVs for the BBC here… 

• DO ensure that you use the same format all the way through i.e. same size font, same font and margins are correct. Using different fonts and sizes makes it look messy and like you don’t care about presentation. DON’T use fancy colours, too much bold or underlining.
 
• DO include referee details; include a phone number, email address and full address including post code.

• DO list all of your grades for educational subjects taken.

• DO group all temporary jobs together rather than spread it out.  If you had a several jobs since your paper round when you were 13, we don’t need that much detail about it.

• DO explain job responsibilities in bullet points rather than paragraphs. If you have to use paragraphs, short and precise information given. Print out your CV and look at it, does it look too dense? An employer often only scans for the key points.

• DO have all your details clear before you call - calling to request work experience but not knowing your WEX dates does not give a great impression. Like a good boy scout/Brownie be prepared!

• DO send a covering letter- explaining your reasons for applying for the role or work experience.  If you send just a CV we’re going to have to guess what you are looking for and again we are not that brilliant.

Don’t
• DON’T put your education before your work experience
 
• DON’T include a photo of yourself on your CV especially one that include someone that has been cut out, you drinking or drunk, posing in swimwear (NO!). We don’t care what you look like (believe me, you should see the HR team!), just as long as you have the right skills and qualities for the role.

• DON’T make your CV too long. It should be 2 pages and no more, however DON’T squash everything onto 2 pages and make the font too small. If it goes to 2 and half pages, that is ok. If it’s going to be more than that, put the extra information in your covering letter (which should not be more than a page long by the way).

• DON’T swear in your application forms!! This is never acceptable, no matter how liberal or innovative the company you are applying to is.

General extra info that HR have wisely suggested….

• Don’t put the Curriculum Vitae on the top of your CV!  If you have to tell us it’s a CV, it is not doing its job. 

• Don’t handwrite your CV! Or handwrite it and send a photocopy of it! Borrow you friends, neighbours; school or library computer and print several copies.

• Don’t get your parents, grandparents or any relative to contact companies for work experience on your behalf. They may be trying to be helpful, but it would make a better impression if you do it yourself. The number of parents of graduates that contact us….

• Use a sensible email address xxxlilmissnaugthyxxx@tmail.com or Imadogkiller@bol.com does not give a good impression. Have two addresses one for professional and one for social.

• Do search the internet properly. We advertise all our positions online at www.channel4.com/4careers.  If we don’t have any online we don’t have any vacancies. We’re not secretly hiding them somewhere else for our family members, despite the rumours.

• Putting your Facebook, MySpace, Twitter page link is fine, but make sure you want it to be seen by your potential employer. Pictures of you drunk or semi-clad and friends’ inappropriate messages do not give the greatest of impressions.  

• Check your spam/junk mail. The @channel4.co.uk address is not always recognised and sometimes gets set to the wrong folder.  We’ve had candidates who don’t check it regularly miss out on application deadlines and invites to interviews.

• Read instructions, our applications form gives you 10 days to complete the form or it closes it. This doesn’t matter if the deadline is a month away. It states this clearly on the applications but most people just click through this and ignore it.

Hope you found this helpful and enjoyed HR blog season. You can still get in contact with us on wrl@channel4.co.uk.

See you all next month, when the 4Talent Blogs will be taken over by the Diversity Production Trainees!

Thanks for reading,
Lauren x

Lauren Mollyneaux

Hello and welcome to 4Talent’s first Blog season!!

The first (lucky) department to be chosen is HR aka Human resources (Not Human Remains, as some people fondly call them).

HR may not have the same bright lights of Production, Commissioning or Future Media, but it is an integral part of Channel 4 and to any large organisation for that matter. Most would not survive without them; they are Wolverine’s claws, Jamie Oliver’s cooking pans, Beckham’s boots…you get the picture.  Without them, most companies would not survive.

At HR headquarters, it’s not just hiring, firing and payroll that go on and over the next month, blogs from our team will give you a bit more of an insight into their C4 universe. Like why does HR always have so much food, who is it that likes to sing along to Sharika’s ‘She-wolf’ loudly and whose idea was it to have HR do the first blog season?

HR blogs will also provide advice to all who are currently applying for jobs, work experience and internship placements. Human Resources are usually the first point of contact for vacancies, and over the years they have seen every type of CV, Interviewee and email possible. Over the next month will we tell you some of the do’s & don’t when applying for jobs.

By the end of October you will all want to become part of the HR team- yes; these blogs will be that exciting!

Blogs will be uploaded weekly and if you have any questions about HR just leave us a comment at the bottom and we’ll get back to you.

Happy reading!

Lauren x

Lauren Mollyneaux

Having been at C4 a while now, I thought it was only time for me to write my first ever 4Talent Blog. Now, I’m not much of a writer, so don’t expect a Pulitzer winning article, but hopefully you will find my experience interesting. 

Before I worked at C4, I was an Operations Executive at an International Business Events and Information Company (don’t worry, I still don’t know what this means and I worked there for seven months!). Fresh out of University, I joined this company after reading a job description, which I thought would suit me to a tee. However, I was wrong and within a few months I knew it wasn’t the right place for me. Now, my first bit of advice to you is this: if you are not happy in your job, leave! Life is far too short to be unhappy in a place were you are going to spend the majority of your time (11 years of you life according to Google).  No matter how much money you’re paid, the friends you make; the status you have-if you are unhappy, you will not get anything out of it. Find a job that makes you want to get out of bed in the morning and you are well on the way to having a happy-not perfect-but happier working life.

So while looking for a new role, not quite knowing what I was looking for, I came across the 4Talent Team Assistant role. It came from a simple job alert email which landed in my inbox-it pays to sign up on the 4Careers website and having read the job description I thought it could be the role for me. Apart from A-Level Media Studies and a brief, unsuccessful stint as a journalist for my university paper I had no media experience and applied thinking I had no chance but ‘hey, what the hell’ I had nothing to lose.  However, my initial negativity was misplaced, because not only did I get an interview but I got the job! And that’s how I got my big break at C4-simple. Just over two weeks after applying, I was sitting at my own desk in Channel 4; I still don’t quite believe it now, 18 months later.

Now, I had always thought of the media as an industry I would like to work in, but didn’t know which role would be best for me. When I thought about the industry, I thought on-screen; journalism; production; directing and all the glamorous roles you hear about (ironically from the media).  As I’m not very creative or overly media savvy, I thought I had no chance of getting in and resided myself to the role of consumer not a contributor to the television world. However, since working here, I have quickly learnt that there is a whole plethora of roles out there, for anyone with even a general interest in the industry.  So much so that I believe anyone can find a place, not only here at C4 but in any Broadcasting company.

Have a knack for numbers and like the media, our Finance team might be for you. Or have a good sales background, but have strong desire to work in television; most broadcasters have a sales department.  What ever your skills and passion, there is a place for you in the television. Large broadcasting companies to small independent production companies need all sorts of roles. Here at Channel 4 we have lawyers, a financial teams, human resources, Information Services (Computer geniuses!) security, chefs and sales assistants. We even employ a nurse!

So, don’t think that just because you haven’t surrounded yourself in all things media since birth; that you can’t become part of this vibrant world. Two years ago I would never have thought I would have been working at Channel 4, let alone the anywhere in the Media Industry.  Whatever skills and attributes you have, you could be an essential addition to the industry- the media industry is your oyster.

Other things I learnt:

•The Media industry is not all about “who you know”- it’s about who is right for that role. For all those, ‘I got in through my cousins best friend’s dog’ stories, there is 100 more ‘I just applied and got the job’ stories. 
•You don’t have to be only interested in Media: on our schemes we have had Physicists, Law students, Business Analysts, Historians and a whole lot more come through our doors. Some of the most important executives in Media did not come from a Media background. This only makes the office a much more interesting and diverse place to be.
•And finally, a lot of people in television don’t really watch that much television (but shh that one is a secret!).

Next on Lauren’s Blogs: What to do and not to do when sending speculative CVs email and letters.