Employability and Careers Blog: Info and Advice for AUT Students and Graduates

Applying for jobs does take time. To put your best self forward and give yourself a decent chance, you need a focused CV and cover letter. Many students question the need for a cover letter. Well, our recent employer survey found that 78.5% of the respondents want a cover letter. Find out more about what they consider a good cover letter.

Make the most of career and networking events and presentations, says Brittany Fitzpatrick, business advisory accountant (chartered accountant) at Findex.

How do you get a part time job as an international student? That was the question on Arsad Barlaskar’s lips when he first visited AUT Employability and Careers services. He quickly learned how to go about job search in New Zealand and build up successful job searching skills.

Learning how to approach a stranger and strike up a conversation, especially about your career goals and journey, takes a bit of practice. But it is possible.

Initially shy and unsure of herself, Jennifer Susanto flourished at AUT, presenting work at two exhibitions in Sweden, becoming an industrial design peer mentor, creating start-up Foodscrapz, landing two design roles and gaining overall achievement for the AUT Edge Award.

Throughout the semester employers are invited onto campus for presentations, panels, networking and expos. With around 30 events planned over the semester, we urge students to come and make the most of these opportunities to access employers.

The experience of working with others while volunteering for the AUT Edge Award helped Ghokkul Muhunthan land the role of IT support technician in a social services organisation where he is delighted to be using his IT skills to help others.

A lot of students ask us how they can stand out in the job market. One of our best pieces of advice is to undertake the AUT Edge Award (undergraduate) or the Beyond AUT Award (postgraduate). Why? Aside from it looking good on your CV and academic transcript, it also encourages you to develop skills ad attributes that employers look for – communication, confidence, collaboration and resilience.

Behavioural interviewing is used in a job interview to discover how you are most likely to act in a specific employment related situation. It focuses on experiences, behaviours, knowledge, skills and abilities. This approach is very popular in New Zealand and is based on the belief that how you responded to situations in the past will predict how you will behave in the future.

Elab Online? NZ Unitalent? Employability Lab? Who does what and how do they link up? Here’s my attempt to explain what they are and what they offer – and while I may be biased, I want to say they are brilliant services that offer plenty of career and employability help.