Reflection on Mock Interview and Application

Assignment three of the Leicester Ambassador Award required us to complete a mock application, attend a mock interview and then reflect on this process. I applied for the Trainee Investigator role because from studying criminology I’ve become more interested in crime and have considered this role as a career choice based on my experience with people and knowledge of crime. I had little time to complete the application because I replied late when requesting it, which relates to my careers reflection post that I should apply early when looking for a job to give me plenty of time to consider the role, conduct further research, then draft and redraft my application. I was however quite early for the interview and fully prepared for any questions with plenty of examples. In relation to my course and reflecting on my organization skills, I believe this shows that although I can be indecisive, when I’ve made a decision I become quite organised and prepared to follow through with that decision. 

I made the same mistakes during the interview as I did for my application. I either didn’t give enough detail or rambled on too much and didn’t answer the question. This wasn’t helped by the surprise question that I was not expecting. So although I thought I had plenty of examples, I actually only had a significant number of examples for the type of questions I was expecting. From now on I’ll consider any unexpected questions or any unexpected ways an expected question might be worded differently, depending on the skills the employer requires. I swapped my application with the ambassador who was also applying for that role and also had knowledge of crime from working with victim support.  I learnt from her application to give more concise and specific answers, her application seemed to show more confidence in her facts than mine. The feedback I was given proved this and was similar to the feedback gained for my interview. 

To summarise, I’ve learnt to be more prepared to answer a range of questions, to remember to breathe rather than ramble, to include an official covering letter with my application and I should find more ways of turning negatives into positives by focussing on the skills I developed and not the reasons I quit a job in the past. To build on this I will make a database of all the skills I’ve developed and make sure to reflect on this process when I next apply for a job role. To build on my skills to become a trainee investigator I’m keeping in touch with the ambassador volunteering with victim support. I hope to apply and volunteer myself to put my academic knowledge of criminal behaviour into practice by helping those who have been victims of crime. This should give me more relevant examples of my skills when applying to become an investigator.  

Matthew the Presenter: A Critical Reflection

Last week the enthusiastic ambassadors were tasked with the immense challenge of presenting the following topic, ‘How do my experiences to date relate to my future career plans?’ and this was certainly an immense task for me because I believe everything you experience affects everything else in your life, including your career. And I have a lot of experiences. 

With the challenge accepted and task defined I’ll first let you know how I plan to reflect on this experience. First I’ll cover my preparation for the presentation, the slides themselves, my presentation style and my need to smile more! I’ll then conclude by summarising the good and bad experiences of my presentation. 

To prepare for the presentation I made some notes on word that covered what turned out to be almost the story of my life and so I managed to summarise these notes into brief points for my power point presentation. In reflection I realised that this actually meant that I spent most of the time talking about the things I actually wanted to cut out by summarising the presentation in the first place! In the past years as a student I’ve learnt that cue cards are not for me as I tend to think too fast to bother reading them, the downside to this is that my mind tends to wonder or dwell on a topic for too long. Normally I deal with this by keeping a few specific points at the forefront of my mind and then using a timer, I allow myself 1 minute or more (depending on the time) to cover each specific point.  This presentation ended two minutes over time which shows that In the future in need to practice more before I present. 

My first thought was that blue is a friendly colour and I hoped this would quell any severe criticisms that I expected because I was and always am nervous for a presentation. I received good feedback for adding a personal touch and showing my honesty, but this would have been improved if I’d remembered to introduce myself. The content was wide ranging with an introduction, story and conclusion. This was the plan except that I never finished the last slides and was still two minutes over my time. My main problem with presenting and even when talking about a topic with a friend is that I tend to dwell too much on the details, but this is because I believe that ‘it’s all in the details’ and without details anything can be shown as false. To reflect on this I will take on quality over quantity by presenting all the necessary information in the time allowed and to practice this I’ve now remade the presentation by focussing my skills on project management. 

My style feels generic, though I try authentic made, I present like a grenade, explode with thought but fall flat like a spade. That is how my thoughts feel when I attempt to present and become shocked that I didn’t fail, though not failing isn’t exactly achieving. I’ve always had a problem of talking fast since I was able to talk and beg for sweets from my mum, but since coming to university nerves of presenting have put my voice box in fast forward again. I could see when delivering this presentation that my audience was considering my points, which delighted me because at least they weren’t bored! Then at the same time it made me more nervous because I realised just how much I’d thrown at them to consider when the timer went and I still had two slides to go. In reflection I intend on practising pacing myself when I speak so that everything I say can have more of an impact, I’ll practice this when I work with volunteers and when I’m just talking about work or politics with friends. If I attach pins to my face then I might remember to smile more! And life would be easier for me and my audience. 

To conclude this tour of my presentation failures and personality traits; my content was broad, lacked focus and could of used the STAR technique more, but my honesty can win people over if combined with quality of content. Less animation and more use of the arrow keys would have been less noisy, and while my body language is open and my voice projection effective; my smile needs to catch up and shine.

Who is Deserving?

The dilemma of wanting to help people is who to help? Christmas has just past, winter is here and everybody needs charity, especially with every benefit being cut. I've read about the deserving, undeserving poor and thought; isn't everybody deserving? Don't we all deserve help to some degree? I know I wouldn't be getting a B.A degree in criminology without the amount of help I've had. The general public seem to resent students for getting free handouts and argue that most young people are lazy, even if free handouts eventually get us a job. Or students are jealous of  other students who don't need handouts because they have rich parents, yet they end up with the same money as us and their parents probably expect a lot more back from their investment than my parents who don't mind what I do, as long as I enjoy doing it.

Choice is the matter, we choose to help who we think deserves it and can't help thinking that others are less deserving because this ideology has been drilled into us for over 100 hundred years. Therefore when I argue that homeless people are victims because they're homeless, my friend argues that their victims because they're too lazy to get a job or addicted to drugs, so their homelessness is their own fault. Apparently socialization has no part in economics and everything has a right answer or at least my house mates will argue for up to hours about the most economically viable society, whist ignoring all politics and ethics which criminologists have to consider. So I think to myself when I can't decide if I should give money to the homeless person, the busker or the preacher; who deserves it the most? Should I listen to my house mates and follow the most economic option which would be to keep it. Or should I listen to myself and give it to the homeless person because that's my dissertation topic and keeping it myself will only benefit the bank, not the community. 'Who is the most deserving' should be changed to who is the most beneficial? Giving my money to the preacher might encourage them to make society a better place through religion, regardless that I'm not religious. Giving it to the homeless man might benefit society if it gets him off the street (because we no longer own our streets) or he might spend it on booze or drugs or he might spend it on soup. The point is that who ever you give your money to, they will spend it. Were as giving it to the bank only benefits the bank. Selfishness only encourages us to become more individualised instead of diversified and selflessness through giving money or through volunteering will only ever benefit society, I don't care what your argument is; giving something for free will never cause harm to anybody. I volunteer, I keep my money to pay for student debt and instead I give time.

I'm assuming that we all have the same benefits in mind, but when most no longer believe in society and others believe in nothing else, who are we benefiting when we're not benefiting society? Where does our money go? Well, that we'd all like the know....

Graduate Schemes Less Than Likely

Ok, I tried. I tried really hard to understand the maths, the percentages and numbers and place them in scenarios. But after spending 3hrs yesterday failing to get through a 30 minute practice numerical test I've decided that I'm not even slightly prepared for graduate recruitment, especially the recruiters who's grade requirements go back to GCSE level. Lesson learnt; preparation, preparation and preparation. I'm usually good at this but I blame the timing of our semester dates for failing to have a Festival of Careers at an earlier date, preferable not a week before the deadline for most graduate recruiters or at least the ones I spoke to. I should of considered wider options than probation when I first realised how much work experience I'd need to get such a role and the fact that the government prefer profit over public service. Despite missing deadlines for graduate jobs I'm not even sure that I want, I'll still take a good look at them after I've graduated and focus on a few (rather than many), when I have the time to improve my maths and research properly without worrying about how I plan to interview homeless people in the street and all the ethical issues that come with a criminology dissertation.

To be honest I didn't study criminology to work for a company, I studied it because I want to work with ex-offenders or youth offenders or become a social worker or more recently a clinical probation officer (providing I gain at least a 2:1 in my Clinical Issues module), and I'm fairly sure all of these roles require little mathematical understanding but more decision making exercises which I'm usually good at. I know I don't want to work for the Police after volunteering with them for a short time last year. I'm still trying to decide how the work experience I have as a Leicester Ambassador is relevant to social work... Maybe travelling would be an option, I've been told about some good programmes that pay well to teach English abroad and my house mate has applied for JET. Maybe I'll be a travelling social worker....

Reflection on Careers Research

To reflect on my careers research so far I have to admit that it’s not going so well. My preferences from starting at University have been to work with people and to achieve this I’ve become a Leicester Ambassador, ISWP Assistant  and part of the SET Team. While these roles have improved my interpersonal skills and work experience for a H.R role, I haven’t been able to get any specific experience in criminal justice related to my criminology degree. Such experience would be with the Leicestershire Police, Probation Service, Futures Unlocked or the many other opportunities around Leicester. Unfortunately at our ‘Criminal Justice Careers Fair’ last year only NOMS were recruiting to take on 15 people nationwide and even admitted they won’t be recruiting in 2013. The Leicester Police have failed to get back in touch with me about community volunteering and because of my previous time commitments with them I missed the last volunteering recruitment for Futures Unlocked rehabilitation service. 

In reflection of last semesters career research, I not only attended but ran one of the sponsor stands (Contact Student Volunteers) at the Festival of Careers which improved my networking skills significantly as I had none previously and opened up the opportunity of widening my careers research to Government organisations and business recruiters as I realised they essentially had the same graduate leadership and project management schemes. Unfortunately after apply for GCHQ I realised I didn't have enough experience to even answer all of the questions because I have no example of working with ‘experts at the forefront of their field’. And after spending 10 minutes staring at my PC screen attempting to figure out 2.61% of 75,010 I've decided that I need to do some online practice tests to refresh my maths before I apply for the Civil Service Summer Internship Programme. 

I was never great with numbers but I've always been great with people. My next plan is to go through the Times 100 Graduate Recruiters, apply for Futures Unlocked for the 3^rd time and do some research to find out exactly the kind of work experience I need for social work. In further reflection I could have planned my research better or perhaps followed up my initial research at the Festival of Careers quicker, if I hadn’t got swamped by my essays and a significant personal event. In retrospect of that event it made me realise just how important planning and thinking ahead is. And in fairness to my indecisive personality, I may not know exactly which graduate path I wish to take but at least I’ll have graduate prospects.