Tuesday 1st November at ChemCareers has an international theme to it.  We'll have live chats from people based in India, China and the USA who will all be online and available to chat at various times throughout the day.  You'll be able to ask them questions about their own career experiences as well as ask them questions about what it is really like to live and work somewhere other than the UK.

We'll also be running a session giving you advice on how to find opportunities to study or work abroad.  There are many reasons why you might choose to work overseas, and some will certainly help you to develop skills and potentially make you more employable.

If you've worked overseas you are likely to be able to develop skills that are transferable in any role, such as communication - through working with people from different cultures and having to overcome language barriers and flexibilty - by adapting to new working and living environments.  Developing these skills may be one of the reasons why you decide working overseas either long term or short term is of benefit.

Other reasons might include:

• family - your partner may be relocating or you want a better lifestyle
• the opportunity to experience different cultures
• more job opportunities in other countries
•  alturistic reasons - particularly if you want to volunteer in a developing country

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As part of ChemCareers we have slots available throughout the week if you want to sign up for a one to one chat with either me or Charlotte.  Timeslots are available through the week and all you need to do is email us at chemcareers@rsc.org.  Make sure you tell us your prefered time and your membership number.

We look forward to chatting next week!

Last Friday I attended a 'brainstorming' day along with others who work in the field to discuss the current hot topics in careers.

One of the topics we spent considerable time talking about was CV's and whether recruiters still want to see a traditional 2 page, hard copy of CV's.  We discussed a number of ways that CV's seem to be changing, and how these different types of CV's may work well with some types of jobs, but not necessarily all.

For example here is an infographic CV that shows someone's skills and experience in graphic form, which may work well if you were working in that field, but could work well elsewhere and certainly would make you stand out! more...

I thought I'd give you a taster of some of the topics we'll be covering in the forthcoming ChemCareers and decided that today I'd look at starting up your own business.

This is definitely something we've been asked more about in recent months particularly from people who have been offered redundancy packages which allow them to make starting up on their own a very real possibility. more...

As I am sure you are aware we see a fair amount of CVs, most are ok, only a bit of work needed....some are superb but others need lots of work. So, for a Wednesday afternoon I thought I might give you my CV top tips.... more...

Wow, this is a big subject, with emails flying back and forth, media reports amd people discussing it in meetings and over coffee I have learnt more about internships in the last few months than ever before.
But, my question is: did you know that many unpaid internships are illegal? It seems that only 10% of graduates are aware of this. more...

Perceptions can be tricky. You may spend time trying to make sure that you act in the 'right' way around people only to find it's taken the 'wrong' way or you may think that you are naturally self conscious but others may perceive you as confident...as I said, tricky.

So how do you handle perceptions? more...

I thought I'd share with you this week the various things that we get asked during consultations and by email.  Today's query actually follows a consultation I had yesterday where the member was considering the pros and cons of applying to work for a big or small organisation.

Ultimately I think it comes down to personal preference as to what works best.  At different times in your career you may find one type of organisation suits you better than another.  Generally speaking larger organisations are more likely to have structured training programmes, more opportunity for promotion and better pay and benefits packages.  In a smaller organisation you are more likely to be involved in a number of aspects of the business rather than just one small function and therefore possibly have greater impact.

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When it comes to job descriptions I often get asked how much of the crtieria an applicant should meet to make it worth their while applying.

Ideally you need to be able to demonstrate at least around 75% of the criteria that they are asking for.  Don't be put off if you don't meet every single essential criteria provided that you can give solid examples of how you demonstrate the majority of them.  And by solid example I mean that you are able to practically demonstrate what they are looking for.

Whilst the selection criteria may have a number of essential criteria listed, it is likely that the recruiter will see some criteria as more essential than others.  It therefore may be worthwhile spending some time thinking about which you think are the most important criteria you need to demonstrate to the recruiter. 

 .  If .  .      What is worth remembering is that a job description is often written with the 'perfect' candidate in mind ............... and they rarely exist.  I therefore always recommend that it's worth taking a punt on a job because even if you can't meet everything listed, you never know you might just hit the crucial things that they are looking for.

Following on from my last post about working to live I appreciate that some of you may be thinking about going to university this year and wondering how much it is going to cost you! You may even be weighing up if it is worth going to university or whether it is better to go straight into work?

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