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Monday 7 April 2014

BUNAC Work America Diaries; Job Hunting and Resume

Once i had signed up and paid my deopsit of £100, I was then granted access to BUNAC's very own 'Online Job Store' which held adverts posted from multiple companies over the whole of the United States.

I think i did this the wrong way round, most people uploaded supporting documents and applied for the embassy appointment to get their VISA approved before applying for jobs, but you know, i like to be original, make your own path.

The majority of the employers on the job zone are large scale businesses such as country clubs, theme parks, hotels, or food serving shops, so quite easy labour, nothing highly skilled. It also means that each job advert has many places within it for lots of different people to be signed up.




Here's a screen shot of the page you gain access to, the actual employers names are blurred out so BUNAC cant tell me off for giving away their employers to people who haven't signed up!



At first, i applied to two jobs that I thought 'yes I really want to do that, that sounds awesome' to, but then the next day I realised that even though the lady in STA Travel had reassure me I wasn't too late to find a job, I shouldn't be too picky just in case. I then applied for about 12 different positions, ranging from bartending, to waitress/serving staff, to life guards and food serving.

BUNAC recommends you tailor you resume to each job you apply for, but i just made 4 different ones for the the four main categories of job i applied for, promoting my strengths of coping in a busy environment and previous experience with food on the waitressing one, and then having a basic life saving and first aid training and wanting to work in the out doors for the lifeguarding, will all the same generally information and studies and previous experience. Make sure you include a skype address (or sign up if you don't!) and the country and area dialling code of your phone number(+44 for the UK) so american employers can get a hold of you if they need to!

Dont forget, a tip BUNAC give on the website is 'make it stand out!'. Because i dont have any particularly exciting unusual skills, i thought id use my design and creative side to achieve this. Resumes don't have to look like British CV's, all neat writing, bullet points, black and white, and instead i chose to give my resume a pale blue colour scheme, using a photo manipulation program to choose professional yet eye catching fonts and a unusual layout. Make sure you spell everything correctly, incorrect spelling is a instant turn off for most employers.

After two more days, i had four people/companies wanting interviews with me, so we arranged times and date with provision for the difference in time, as they are about 5 hours ahead of us in the UK.




 

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