Earlier this year I ran an hour long workshop on writing a CV, for the Year 10 students at Winchcombe School. Here are a few notes on how the day went and some lessons for next time.
I structured this as a short intro to CVs with some slides, followed by an exercise where the students had a go at writing their own CV.
In case they are of use to anyone, here are the slides I used for the session: CV Workshop Slides
What Went Well
On the whole the workshop was well received. The students showed a lot of interest and rated the session highly in the feedback survey. This was my first time running a class based session like this, and I’m grateful to the Winchcombe students for being so engaged and welcoming!
I also had some good discussions with the students while they were working on the exercise. I really enjoyed hearing about their aspirations, and some of the impressive things they’ve already accomplished.
What I’d Improve
Giving the students the task of writing their own CV was too open ended, and perhaps a little overwhelming for those unsure how to get started.
If I were to run the session again, I’d break this down into a number of shorter exercises, focussing on how to write about your experience and evidence your skills on a CV.
For example:
- talk about a time where you’ve been in a position of responsibility, or a time when you’ve shown initiative.
- describe a challenge you faced, how you overcame it (or didn't) and what you learnt.
This would provide some useful rails to those who found the idea of starting from a blank page a daunting task, and help keep everyone on track throughout the session.