[Visual of speaker talking to camera in webinar format, including full screen slideshow presentation]

Penny Holloway: We might kick off and begin the session, team. Welcome to Study Melbourne Career Catalyst Online Workshop for how to create a great resume. My name is Penny Holloway, I'm your presenter for today's session. I'm head of marketing and communications for InternMatch and InternMatch is the programme delivery partner for Study Melbourne Career Catalyst. We specialise in placing students into internships and I look forward to taking you through all about creating a fantastic resume today where I can share with you tips and tricks and everything I know working through InternMatch and my career. Before we begin, I would like to begin today by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet today and pay my respect to their elders past and present. I extend that respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples here today.

So let's go through a little bit about what we're going to cover in today's workshop. Beautiful big session around everything you need to know around resumes, creating a fantastic CV to get you into the job market, and everything you need to know to build one out. So first of all, we'll go through what it is exactly Australian talent teams are looking for in a great resume. We'll cover what you need to include and the layout of all that information. Also take you through exactly how to craft that content and make sure that it's written in a way that really fits the Australian resume type for the roles you'll be applying for. And finally, I'm going to give you a fantastic template, a free template that you can use and get kicking with straight away after this session. So by the end of today, you will have a beautiful template, a design to get commencing with, and all the information you need to know to be able to build out a sensational resume.

So let's get into it. First things first, your resume is the first impression you're providing to your potential employer, so you want to make sure it's a pretty great introduction. We get about seven seconds in the real world to make a first impression. Now online that is about two seconds and you are most of the time providing your resume in an online format. So these talent teams, recruiters, HR managers, and supervisors have got just a couple of seconds to decide whether they think that it is worthwhile perusing the rest of your resume and finding out you're the right fit for the role or if they want to pass on to the next person. So we want to make sure that that initial, from the opening of the resume to the content that feeds throughout it is a really delicious and sensational so that you are better equipped to being able to get an interview for that role.

So let's just begin with some little housekeeping, some really nitty-gritty bits and pieces of what it is to have a really great resume before we start breaking things down. So first of all, a resume, you might also know this as a CV, a curriculum vitae. It is a document essentially that lists your work experience, your education, your skills, and your achievements in one nice little small package. And that is then provided to these HR teams, these recruiters, managers, potentially even people that are not in HR that are running the business and that is how they decide to take you through to the next step of recruitment process. You're going to need a resume for almost any job application. Nowadays, it doesn't matter if it's a service-based, casual work, full-time work, regardless of the industry, regardless of the remit that you are working in, you are going to need a CV or a resume for that job application.

Often you will need a CV and a cover letter. Today we're going to focus really on resumes, but we'll go through a little bit about what the difference is with those two. So you know that you need to look out for whether you need to use a cover letter in your applications and these days, as I mentioned, these are both typically submitted online. So even down to the way that you submit these applications, how that document is sent is really important and we'll cover that today to make sure that you are not letting anything get in the way of a really sensational application process. So first things first, in a nutshell, a resume is a broad overview of your education and career history. It utilises small, sharp sentences and dot points. It's a summary of all that information brought into what you're going to find out is two pages.

It's really condensing everything there is to tell about you, but leaving that supervisor, that hiring manager wanting to find out more about you. A cover letter isn't always asked for, but often it is a requirement of an application and it's often a nice to have. It's a nice thing to be able to provide an application in addition to a resume because it's giving a little bit more narrative about who you are. It's less about the nitty-gritty and it's an opportunity to be able to provide personality and storytelling into your application for that role. It uses longer form narrative and it's that one-pager that really summarises why you're enthusiastic to apply for that specific role. Your cover letter is tailored for the specific role that you are applying for, whereas your resume can be used for multiple job applications potentially with a little bit of tweaking to make sure it's correct for that particular niche or industry.

We are going to focus mostly on your resume today because that is a really key part of this and every application's going to need a resume. So let's get you started in that realm. So let's kick off with talking a little bit about what Australian talent teams are looking for. At the end of the day, talent teams are really busy. HR teams, recruiters, supervisors that are hiring for roles often will have hundreds depending on the kind of market at the time. And the market of the last couple of years has really fluctuated. It's changed a lot as to whether it's really high applications or really low applications, but most commonly recruitment teams are coming across hundreds and hundreds of applications for a role in their day-to-day. They have other things that they are doing for their job. They're often hiring for multiple roles and so they are needing a really to the point clear cut application from a great candidate that pricks their engagement and makes them want to find out more.

So the key of today's session is going to give you the tools to make sure that you are cutting through the other fluff of other applications and really standing out because you are making that recruiter's life easier. Your job is to make the recruiter and the supervisor and the hiring manager's role a lot easier by saying, "That person looks fantastic, let's bring them in for an interview." At the end of the day, your resume needs to be really easy to scan and really quick for them to identify key information that is threaded throughout that application. We want to see a demonstration of really good written communication skills. So from the get go they are reading, they're absorbing this information through reading and they're going to be looking for really fantastic professional communication skills that demonstrates you can take that into a role.

It sounds quite basic, but a really clear career and study trajectory. They want to be able to see what you're doing now and where you've come from to get to there. Key details that pertain to the role we're looking for, qualifications, education, what study you've done, other courses and short courses that really relate to the role that you're applying for. Obviously your experience, the bits and pieces that really make you a great candidate for the role and that will often come from keywords that you have thread throughout your resume. So something to keep in mind when you're writing this content is if you are, for example, a marketer like myself and you are applying for marketing roles, what are the key services, the keywords that a marketing recruiter is going to be looking for when they are scanning a resume to kind of say that person really does know everything they need to know about digital marketing.

These are things you want to strategically thread throughout your resume. You also want to make sure that your contact information, your name, where you are based is there. Your LinkedIn is really, really clear and easy to find and we'll go through where that is placed in a moment. We also need really factual examples and I'm going to hammer on about this throughout today's session because it's a really important part of a resume that's often overlooked and that is that you need to thread what we're going to call conversation starters throughout your resume and even your cover letter when you write that as well. What really succinct examples, statistics, numbers, can you thread throughout your resume and throughout your experience that are very easy to scan and that make a hiring manager be able to kind of hook onto something. Our brains love stats, facts, and numbers.

It's really digestible for our brain to read and it means it's probably some quantitative data of an example of what you have done in your experience that's going to come within that sentence that they can really relate to. They're also things that they can ask you about when you are in the interview. So we want factual examples and less fluff content. We'll go through this. And obviously a hiring manager is also looking for professionalism in the presentation of your CV. So as your resume got a really nice layout, do you know how to well structure a document? These are things that are going to relate to how you work as a professional in the role in the future. So it's a great first impression to start giving them.

Let's just quickly break down what a bad and a good resume look like before we start getting into a great resume example. And remember I'm going to take you through a real deal example of a resume that you can use afterwards to take you through a good resume, but let's just revisit some of those things that make a bad resume bad. First things first, it might throw you a little bit, but if it's a Word document, that pertains to a bad resume and it's for a couple of reasons. Word documents don't lock and load the structure of the content and the formatting. So if you are sending a Word document, depending on what software the recruiter is using at their end, it may distort a lot of the information that you've spent a really long time on beautifully laying out.

You might've popped tables in and had something left aligned over here and it looked fantastic at your end, but you can't guarantee if you send a Word document what that looks like at their end and it'd be really disappointing if you found out that you didn't get a role or didn't get a look in for a role because the resume just had completely not actually shared information the best way and they might not know that it actually was looking fantastic at your end. So we don't want a Word document.

It can't be too busy, too overloaded with information or too long. We're going to get into that length as we go throughout this session for too long, especially when you're early in your career is rafts and rafts and rafts of pages and information that is just more info than this person probably has time to digest. Remember your resume is a teaser. It entices them to take you through to next steps. So we are just looking for key bite-sized info that gives them enough information, the right sort of information, but it's not waffling on, it's not overloading them. It's also not too busy in how it looks. It's not like an oversensation for the vision. It's nice and clean, really sharply put together, which we'll get to with a good resume, but in the same breath it can't also be too scarce, it can't look incomplete.

You need to give this recruiting manager some information to hook into a little bit of depth into your experience and if you don't have a great deal of experience yet, we're going to go through this afternoon how you can pad that out. And it really is important to find that balance. If it's super fluffy, if you're just writing words but without really any solid examples, no stats and facts about what you've been doing, nothing that that recruiter can really hook into and ask you about specifically. We don't want fluffy resumes because it may come across as that you actually haven't done a lot of things in your study, in your career that relates to the role. We don't want fluff content, we'll go to that as well in this afternoon. And obviously things like grammar, your grammar has to be really important. If this person is looking to see if you're a right fit for their business, things like poor grammar are going to probably go against you as far as how you're going to communicate with stakeholders, internally, with superiors.

So really making sure that your resume has the right grammar, spelling, is super important and as I mentioned, badly designed, is it really bright? Is there too much happening? Is it just looking at it dated? The design is key because our brains are incredibly aesthetic and we look for things that just feel nice to read and to look at. So the look and feel is really vital. This template is going to help you with that a lot. So a good resume, on the flip side, we're looking for a PDF document. A PDF is going to lock and load. What you create and save at your end is going to be represented in the same way at the end of that recruiter opening it.

So we want a PDF document, make sure you PDF and save everything that you create and send it that way. The perfect length at the beginning of your career is two pages. We want a little bit of information, not too much, but enough to say that you are experienced enough to be able to start tackling this job and adding value to that company. It's clean, it's simple, it's neat in its presentation, it's easy to read, it's nice to scan. We want those facts, stats, and examples I spoke about, which we'll go through in your experience section a little more. It's well written, it's beautifully communicated, and there's a method to your layout. We'll go through chronological order when we get to layout, but there is sensical methodology applied to the way that you have a lay of your resume out and again, it's really nice and quick for our brain to look at and go from one thing to the next.

So what are you going to include in your resume? There is method to the madness and it is easy to get this stuff wrong. So let's go through the key sections that I want you to start opening up a document and breaking down as we go through this the things that you can add into yours. If you have two screens, I strongly suggest having this up on one and a document on the other screen and start mapping out these sections as we go. Start giving yourself some food for thought so that after today's session you can really think about this and start to add more information in. Today's session is recorded, so we'll be able to go back and share this with you and you can access that information again and revisit all of this, but start having a think about these sections. Your resume should include the following, your contact information. Sounds simple.

We'll go through exactly what that information is in a second. We're going to include a short summary or career objective, a little opportunity particularly when you are early on in your career to kind of sell what you are doing and why you'd add value really succinctly and where you want to go with your career to this recruiting manager. Obviously your work experience, we're going to break down any work experience that you have and try and really beef that out and make it really valuable and really showcase a lot of the things that you have done and that you can do for a business. Obviously your education, your qualifications, and that's more than just your university degrees. We're going to go through some really great technical courses that you should be adding on there to really show that you have professional and personal development at the front and centre of what you want to do in your career. That leads into professional development really well, soft skills, technical skills, and everything that kind of adds value to what you do and what you can add to this company.

So let's start breaking down these sections. We're going to really go quite in depth to each of these areas and then the layout of all of these. So great time now to start taking notes and thinking about your sections. So contact information, sounds simple. It's going to be at the top of the page, really clear and really simple for that recruiter to access. Keep in mind that they've looked at your resume, they love it, they've sent it off to somebody else. They want to be able to jump back in there at any time and go, "That's right, that's the person I'm looking for. I want to contact them right now," and they're not hunting for it. It's right there and easy for them to grab. You want to include your full name and use your preferred name in there as well. How do you want them to address you?

Your phone number, your email address. On your email address, I strongly note if you are still using a personal email that's from a few years ago, perhaps it's got some cutesy fun words. Maybe it's a Hotmail. Try and make yourself look more advanced and more professional. Get a Gmail or an Outlook and try and keep it as close to your name as possible. Perhaps you need to add in some underscores or a couple of numbers if your name is taken, but try and keep it as professional as possible and I strongly suggest getting a Gmail or an Outlook for that to keep it really top level. A link to your LinkedIn profile. We are not including the actual link, not the URL, not the full line of it. I want you to actually hyperlink your LinkedIn profile perhaps it says Visit LinkedIn Profile and hyperlink that out to your profile.

People know that these documents are digital. Recruiters know that they can click on things so you don't need to actually include the full URL. I want you to keep it succinct and clean. And finally, I want you to pop your location in there. Perhaps this role is open to remote work. Perhaps they're looking for someone in a particular area. Pop your location in there so that they know whether you're based in Melbourne, you're abroad, wherever it is. It's just really clear for them and they know what they can ask you about when it gets to interview time. Career summary or objective. This is a short little paragraph that's going to explain to the recruiter what you want to do with this role. Where are you going? If you've just started in your career, this is a really nice way to kind of say, "I'm brand new to the workforce and I'm ready to rock and roll."

So let's look at an example like this that you could use and reframe for yours. Let's pretend that I am starting out as a marketer and I am trying to explain that I've just come out of university and that I'm ready to go. It just needs to be a couple of tiny little sentences and it's going to say something like, "I'm a motivated and skilled marketing graduate," so they immediately know that I'm just out of university. "Having recently completed my master's in marketing with La Trobe University." You're just giving them some immediate little hooks that go, "Oh, she's done her master's. Oh, she's done with La Trobe University." They might know someone at La Trobe University. They might have come from La Trobe themselves. It's giving them things that they can connect to. Also, don't be afraid by saying that you're a marketing graduate. We love hiring graduates, fresh, enthusiastic, ready to rock and roll, easy to mould into company culture. People want to see that sort of stuff.

My next sentence is going to say something like, "I'm fascinated by social media marketing and I'm excited to commence a career in influencer marketing." It connects the dots that I know about one of the remits in marketing. I know all about social media marketing. I know that it's important and I'm excited about it. I'm more than just a generalist marketer. I want to work specifically in this niche of my industry, and then I finish that with the role that I want to get into. So if you are applying for an influencer marketing graduate role, I'm going to pop in there that I'm excited about influencer marketing. If I'm applying for a social media paid marketer role, I'm going to pop in there that I'm excited to commence a career in social media marketing. Keep it specific to the role you are applying for.

As a manager, I'm going to get excited to see that you want to work specifically in the remit that I am hiring for, not the broader area, exactly that role. That gets me really excited. "In addition to university, I've spent the last three years getting professional experience across marketing agencies and events." What that says to the person who's reading this is that, yes, I'm a marketing graduate, but I have spent many years trying to get experience so that I'm ready for you to take me on. It also sparks interest with that recruiter that they're like, "Ooh, she's done some things already in the area. I want to find out more about what she's done," and that's when they can start to scan my resume and see internships and work experience that I've tackled.

We're going to get to experience in a second. So you haven't got any experience, let's come back to that. But this says that I am new but that I am more than what perhaps you think. I'm more than what meets the eye, and that's exactly what a great recruiter is looking for in a really good candidate. That's all your summary needs to say. Really brief, little teaser, key information. Opportunity to sell yourself when you perhaps are starting out in your career.

Let's jump into work experience. So this is the meatiest section of your resume. It's the largest part of the two pages and it's where you're going to pad out in chronological order what you are doing and what you've been doing to work towards a career in this industry. We're going to go through the breakdown of what that looks like in a second, but you're going to start by saying the who, what, where of what you're doing, where you did it, who you did it for, and what that kind of involved, what your responsibilities were and the things that you achieved. You're going to dot point it out so that it's really easy to scan, that you can help pad out the information for yourself when you're doing this. But it's short, sharp sentences, no fluff words. If you do not have any experience, I strongly, strongly suggest that you start looking for some work experience, some unpaid roles.

They may be internships, they may be volunteering at events or volunteering in the niche that you work for and there are plenty of websites that can give you this sort of experience to start being able to add sections into your resume. If you also have a part-time job or something that's not related to the industry, but you do have work experience, that's fantastic. We still want that in there and the way that you would really emphasise that is you're going to draw out the things that you did in that role that may have nothing to do with your studying or the job you're applying for, but that relate as closely as possible. So for example, if you have worked in retail as a casual sales assistant, but that you are applying for a marketing role, perhaps did you work with the head office team every now and then and provide them content for social media?

Did you send them photos of things? Did you post every now and then on the company social? These are the things I want you to draw out from that role and pop those in there. But then there's also really great transferable skills that relate to every role. So in a retail role, you're going to have sensational customer service experience. So I want you to pop that in there because a customer service experience is vital for every role that has an element of customer facing or stakeholder management. So you're going to weave the content to tailor it as best as you can.

I'll show you layout towards the end of the presentation, but this is the sort of things you need to include and it's going to look and feel just like this. So let's go through a live example. Let's say that I'm including my current role on my resume and I'm going to pop on there that I'm working at InternMatch. Let's start the left and work our way across. We're going to pop the company in there. The role that I had, I'm a marketing intern. The duration of my time there, I was an intern from March till June, 2022, hypothetically, and where I did that role, that role was based in Melbourne. We're then going to include a little sentence about the company. Because I don't want you to assume that everybody reading these resumes knows the companies you're talking about. Often we don't. We know our realm and that's about it.

So I'm going to tell this person that InternMatch is a global led tech company focused on increasing employment and career outcomes through internship placements. I'm then going to pop in there the responsibilities and achievements that I've undertaken whilst in that role. Short sharp dot points. The first one's going to be something like assisting in managing company social media platforms including... Now, this is when I talk about facts, figures, and specific examples. If we just had assisted in managing company social media platforms, that's not providing me as a manager much information about what kind of platforms? Does she know the softwares that we use? But the minute that I add in LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram, as a recruiter, I might go, "Oh, fantastic. We use LinkedIn and Instagram here. She knows exactly the platforms that we already use." You are already providing vital examples that these recruiters can draw upon in conversations.

Next dot point, ideated and developed 15, stat, content pieces per week across a variety of topics including topic 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, business development careers, community, customer service. What that dot point shows the person reading a resume is that first of all, they're like, "What's this 15 thing about?" And they can jump into that dot point and go, "Oh, she's producing quite a lot of content for this team." It also says the areas that I know how to post content about, the variety of the things that I know about in marketing. It's giving them more than just I have done a thing. The next dot, point assisted in running company events and the things that I did at that event. Manning registration tables, assisting guests, organising name tags, assisting the event manager. That dot point tells us that I know how to do XYZ things in event management.

Again, the recruiter might go, "Fantastic, I need help with name tags. I need help with registration tables." You are automatically showing specific things that you know how to do. If you want to go one better, look at the job advertisement and pick out the things that you know how to do from that job advertisement and link them back to your resume in this way. So if they're specifically asking for somebody that knows how to write content, then I'm going to include a dot point about writing content because it's automatically going to talk to their brain about the things that they need help with.

And the last dot point, developed and send weekly internal communications newsletter match report. Now what that does by including a word that is very internal to the role that I do at InternMatch what it says to the recruiter is a little thing that they can actually bring up in our interview. They can say, "Now I see you're producing a match report. Tell me more about the match report that you do." It's giving specific examples that they can draw upon that you know you know about that you can give examples about in an interview. Now, if we look at this, what have we got broken down here? First section in the corner, who, what, where, when. Who you worked for, what you did, when you did it, and where you did it. The one underneath it, a sentence explaining who the company is and then over in the responsibilities and achievements, four to five dot points about what you do. No more. That's all we need. Four to five dot points. Make them good kind of lengthy dot points, but four to five is fine.

Let's jump into education and qualifications. This is pretty short and succinct. It's the things that you have become skilled and certified at. So it might be things like your university degrees, TAFE or vocational education, high school qualifications or maybe it's industry based qualifications. So for example, if you are an accountant, you might have your university degree and then you might have your CA or your CPA on there as well. What that looks like is this example over on the right. We're going to have the name of the study that you did, so it might be a Bachelor of Business major in Marketing, the university that you did it at, and the timeframe of which you did it at. This shows them that it is either finished or continued going, that it's recent, and therefore it's up-to-date. Really simple. We want you to include this for as many of these as you have. If you have three degrees, include them all. Fantastic. Shows breadth of your experience, and it shows an interest for continued learning and development, which as a recruiter, we love.

And then you want to include really, really vital professional development. Things you've done outside of formal degrees that show you have experience and skills specifically in your niche. Now for a marketer, that might be things like jumping online and searching for any free education I can get around softwares and programmes that marketers use. You could be in engineering, you could be in architecture, you could be in marketing. It doesn't matter what it is. They will be free courses you can do that contribute to your career around that area. For marketing, that might be things like HubSpot, which is a CRM, customer relationship management programme. Maybe I can go and do HubSpot Academy and do a day's worth of training and now I already know how to use that programme that potentially that company uses. Maybe it's going and doing my certification in Google Analytics. These are amazing things to have.

What it tells me as a manager is that you can hit the ground running and already know how to use the programmes because utilising programmes is probably the trickiest thing to teach somebody once they begin in a role. If you already know, then you require a lot less hands-on training, which is better time and efficiency management for that potential recruiter to look at. Include as many as you've done and I'll show you where to include them when we get to layout.

And we also want to provide some quick scanning, easy to access, really easy to identify skills and technical experience you have. So what are the few things that you do really well? These are also the keywords I spoke about in the beginning that the recruiter can look at and go, "Oh, I need someone who's great at presenting. I need someone who's an amazing marketer." We are going to outline what they might be. Professional skills are your career competencies and abilities and personal attributes that enable someone to succeed in the workplace. We'll come back to examples in a second. Technical skills and specialised knowledge and experience required to perform a specific task like tools and programmes, what we just spoke about.

So what they might look like. Professional skills could be project management. I might be a great leader already. Maybe I've already managed people. Communication skills, public speaking, facilitation and training like I'm doing right now. These might be the skills that that company really needs. Fantastic transferable, great to any company professional skills. And then technical skills are things like maybe I'm great at using Microsoft Word. If that company uses Microsoft, fantastic. I'm already across it. HubSpot, like we just spoke about. Java, Monday.com project management. Maybe I'm already qualified in using InDesign. Maybe I already know how to use that programme. Add those things in. We just want four to five really great key ones that will get a recruiter really excited.

So we've got all of our information we've just covered. That's the things you need to include. That's it. We're going to pad it out. So how do you now lay this out? I'm going to give you this template in a second, but in the meantime I want you to go through these layout rules. Whether you use our template or you have your own or you find one externally, whatever you might do, totally fine. Up to you. I want you to go by these kind of rules when you're building it. Two pages, not one, not three. Two. If you are starting out in your career, two pages. As you get further advance, my resume is now like three, four pages, but I have a lot more experience I need to cover off on there. I want you to embrace white space, spread your information out, give their breathing room for them to be able to read it, make sure it's easier to digest. I'll show you white space in a second. Keep your layout really clean and really easy to scan and read.

Utilise the space on the page cleverly. Efficiently spread it out. Make sure you don't... You could have wasted space. I'm going to show you how to kind of break your page down to get as much in as you possibly can that's still looking really nice and clean. Clear headings, chronological order, the most recent to the most furthest away of your experience, and your name and contact info at the top of the page always and references at the end. Start with your name, end with your references. So what does all that look like? Something like this. I'm biassed because I'm actually giving you my resume. This template is incredible, has landed me a lot of roles and has given me some incredible feedback from recruiters. We are going to give you this actual template that you can download in a second, but let's go through.

Before you do that, I want to take you through why it's set out this way. We're going to break down both pages section by section by section, but let's start with the top and kind of work our way through. But you see how nice and clean this is. When you download this resume, you're going to literally just use the filler content and replace it with your own stuff. If you follow this function, it's going to look really nice and clean, really easy to read. It's got enough information but not too much and it looks really professional and modern. If I received this, I'd be pumped. Again, it is my resume so I'm biassed, but it works. Let's start at the top. I want you to always have your first name, surname, your expertise. What are you skilled in? Well, you shouldn't be applying for a role that you don't know how to do.

So if you are a marketer and you're applying for marketing roles, I want you to have in there, Penny Holloway, digital marketer. If the role is for event management, then I want to have Penny Holloway, event manager. Own the role that you have just gone and studied for years and years about. That is now your skill and specification. You are a marketer, you are an engineer, you are a nurse, whatever it might be, and then over in the right corner really quick to access, really easy, you're going to have your phone number, your email, hyperlink to your profile. So I don't want you to write hyperlink to your LinkedIn profile. I want you to replace that with my LinkedIn profile or view LinkedIn profile and hyperlink that out. And then finally, your location. Where are you based?

Let's start with the blue, career summary. That's as big as it needs to be. Couple of sentences about what you are doing. We went through the sections to include who you are, what you're doing, and where you want to go with your career. That's going to sit up there. We're then going to start filling out your career experience. Now, you will note that on those two pages there are about three to four places you can pop career experience. So if you don't yet have three to four things that you have done to work towards your career and then I'm not suggesting three to four jobs, I'm suggesting three to four experiences that you have gone and personally seeked out to work towards your career. Work experience, working for a family friend, internship, volunteering, part-time job. Whatever it is, I want to see them in here. If you don't have them, now's a great time to go and try and get that experience and pop them on there.

The first one might be your current part-time job in hospitality, in retail, whatever it might be. Again, it's still great to include. The next one might be volunteering for a community or a charity-based event. It might've only been for a couple of days. That's totally fine, still what did you do in your time there? I can see Q&A is coming through. Thank you for that and at the end of the session I'll go through all the questions and answers, so keep pumping them through. The dates, the company, the role that you did. Remember we said a little overview about the company and then the dot points about what you are doing or what you did at that company, the achievements you've had.

Obviously the next one down, it's going to be the second role and on page two you'll see the third and fourth, same structure, different role. Qualifications and degrees go up here in that education piece. Provider name, year obtained, degree that you've had. You'll note that the next section here, professional development, this is where we're going to include things like HubSpot courses, Google Analytics, some sort of certification that you've gone and are trying to achieve through LinkedIn learning, Coursera, just Googling. Heaps of courses available. Go and find the courses that relate to your industry and pop them in here.

You'll note on page two we are keeping our name and our details at the top. Always keep your name and details at the top. This is really handy in case some reason your first page gets lost, they connect, they know that they're both your pages. Keep your name front and centre. The next bit we're going to pop in your soft skills. What skills do you have around public speaking, leadership, team engagement? Are you really good at energising teams? Are you really great, excuse me, at facilitating small group sessions? Whatever it is, pop them in there. You can literally Google some examples of soft skills. Go into the Google and tell me which ones of those you are really great at. Pop those in there. Technical skills, Microsoft Word, Google Suite, social media pages, specify what you are fantastic at in there that relate to the industry that you're applying for. Specific engineering platforms.

There could be a variety of things. Start googling, building it out. If you don't have them, go and look for those things that you can get technical skills in. We then start adding on the rest of our experience. We're probably getting a few years back now, was it a part-time job you had previously? Was it an internship you did a couple of years ago? Pop those things in there and then finally we have your professional references. Now, it's up to you how do you include these. If you just want to pop a note in there, you can have the same section and say, "References available upon request," but if your references know that you are applying for roles, I strongly recommend popping them in there immediately. It's a lot easier for me as a recruiter to not to ask for them. I've already got them.

I can let you know when I'm contacting them, but they're there and they're ready to go. What it also shows is that your calibre of references relates back to the roles. So if you've mentioned a really great internship that you did with a company and your reference is a manager from that company, that's really calming to me as a manager to know that you had this great experience, you did these things and this person's going to agree with that and give their reference about how fantastic you are. I strongly recommend popping your references down on your resume from the get-go. Perhaps you can pop their name and title down and you can have phone number and email available on request, whatever you are comfortable with, but if they're really fantastic calibre, pop them in there. So here it is. This is the template that you can access.

If you scan that code now, it will take you through to Canva. It is under my name. You can access this resume template, make a copy of it. All you need to do, scan the code, select use template. You can sign up for Canva with a free account. Canva is a fantastic graphic design software, really easy to use, super user intuitive, you'll love it. Just use your email to sign up and then simply go through and replace the content that is there with your content. I am giving you my blessing to use this template. It is all yours, amend it however you want, but this is a great starting point for you and then you can download it as a PDF and send it off. I'll leave that up for a second to give you guys time to scan on your mobile, but it's yours to use. Go for it.

Final tips and tricks and then we'll get into some questions, guys. Your resume must only be two pages, no more, no less. We want it two pages. Have someone proofread for spelling and grammar. I'm terrible at this. I still make mistakes. I need someone to look over it. When you've been spending so much time on something, you will miss little bits and pieces. So either have someone proofread or jump onto something like Grammarly and download it so that you can access that and have grammar checked. Ensure you save your resume as a PDF always. It's going to help you with formatting. Where possible includes stats, data, examples. These are tangible results that hiring managers can actually ask you questions about. They are my key tips and tricks. These will really, really help you in getting a really fantastic resume and if you follow the template, you will have a sensational experience.

Before we get to Q&A, I want to invite you guys to a really amazing event we're hosting next month, 16th of November, six o'clock till 10 o'clock. Come along and join us for a really beautiful session with Anu Villarosa as our keynote speaker. She's the director of people for Pitcher Partners, one of the large accounting and advisory firms here in Australia. She's going to tell us all about why you need to work for a company with an innovative culture. She's going to take you through what that looks like, how to seek out those companies, what you can learn from them and how you can be a really high functioning individual. We'd love you guys to come along, network with students, network with peers, network with other business leaders that are there. Join us for canapes and drinks on the rooftop at Alto in the CBD. If you scan that code, you'll be able to access the registration page and come along for a great evening. Now let's jump along to questions. I'll just jump and see any Q&A that's hopped through there. Bear with me.

The question is, may I ask if it is advisable to include LinkedIn? Well, LinkedIn contains comparatively general info, but our resumes may be specifically directed to... Yeah, this is a great question. So your LinkedIn and resume should reflect one another because the content at the end of the day should be very honest and truthful to the experience that you have. Keeping your resume and your LinkedIn honest is going to save you from being a lot of hot water and getting yourself into a role that you actually aren't qualified or set up to do. So I strongly suggest finesse and perfect your LinkedIn, make it really fantastic. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Finesse and perfect your resume. Make it really fantastic. Get all of your information hashed out. That is your private personal document that you send specifically to recruiters. Then go and get your LinkedIn either set up or amend your LinkedIn to reflect the bits of the information that are the same on your resume but withhold some of those details.

Your LinkedIn should be a teaser for someone wanting to find out more about you. You don't have to divulge all that personal information, the bits and pieces, the stats and facts, that's for your resume, but somebody should be able to look at your resume and LinkedIn side by side and the experience and the order should all match up. They should be honest and the same, but on LinkedIn you might include less of the details about what you specifically did, programmes, things that often are quite private to that company and so you probably don't want to have that divulge all over LinkedIn. We are going to have a LinkedIn webinar and online workshop in the next few weeks. I strongly recommend you coming back and checking for that later and we'll go through how you make your LinkedIn really sensational because LinkedIn can also help you land roles without a resume at all.

So definitely include your LinkedIn and if for any reason your LinkedIn isn't reflecting the same as your resume, then I strongly suggest you might need to have a look at your experience in skills and the roles you're applying for. It's okay that your experience in your early on your career maybe doesn't relate yet to the career that you're going for, that's where you want to pull out those transferable skills or go and try and get experience in that area. That's my best suggestion there for those ones. Any pointers to invite referees? It seems a lot to ask someone to endorse me and these are a time limit. I find a great boss like seven years ago, but she already left that company. Great question. A reference can be from many different places. Often we want to see a professional reference so that is someone who you have worked for or worked with, someone who is a supervisor to you.

So that might be someone at your current company, somebody at a previous company, or perhaps if you did an internship or volunteering someone in there that can vouch for you to say, "Yes, they were fantastic at that role." There isn't a time limit so to speak. However, as a manager we are looking for experience that relates to the role that you're applying for and you probably have learned your best skills and finessed your craft in the most recent years, in the couple of years prior to applying for this job. So you really want to look for somebody who is from the last couple of years. Now again, if you don't have someone that you think would be really proud to say yes, they did a great job, then perhaps you need to go do an internship. Perhaps you need to go do some work experience volunteer and then when you've had that really fantastic experience and you've given a great deal of value to that company, it may only be for a week.

That's totally fine. You email that person, you say, "Thank you so much for the opportunity. Would you mind being in reference? I'm applying for great roles in marketing, engineering, whatever it is. Would you mind if I popped you down as a reference?" I'm often asked to be a reference for previous people who work for me and it's not a hassle. People are happy to help. If they think that you were a value to their company, they are happy to help you, they want to see you succeed. The other kind of reference you can get is a personal reference. Now it's not personal like friends and family, it's somebody perhaps who you have had professional relationships with, perhaps that they were a stakeholder of a company you worked for, maybe they were a professor or a lecturer at your university who you had a great relationship with.

They're someone who can vouch for your work ethic and your keenness for working. It's great to have both and you just need to explain where they've come from in your resume. So for your work one you might say Penny Holloway, she was my manager at InternMatch and the dates of which you worked for them for. For your personal one, you might have someone's name, John Smith and that he was your lecturer for this subject at La Trobe University and what year that was. That is exactly the kind of information I'm looking for. And your next question around a photo, fantastic question and I'm really glad you asked because I wanted to go through it and it actually slipped my mind. It is completely up to you. There is no standard in Australia around including a photo and it often depends on the kind of industry you are applying for.

It is a really, really nice addition to a bit of a look into someone's personality and it adds a bit of depth to a resume. I used to include my photo on there. The last one I applied for I didn't because I had my LinkedIn on there. And your LinkedIn should have a photo. You should absolutely have a photo on your LinkedIn and I think it's okay to leave it off your resume and mostly it comes down to layout and just finding the space to include it and that's why LinkedIn is a great place. They can link out and they can find more information about you that wasn't on your resume. And if you are posting regularly on LinkedIn, which if you go to our LinkedIn session will encourage, I strongly recommend that you post a lot and have your photo because it gives them depth and understanding into who you are as a person and what you'll be like to work with. So don't need to have it on your resume, completely fine, but definitely have it on your LinkedIn.

And question from Linda. Hi, Linda. I wonder if you guys are offering any career counselling sessions in the future. I feel that I'm still not sure what role I'm qualified for after graduation. Great question. We are. We will be offering career coaching shortly through Study Melbourne Career Catalyst. By you guys being here today and signing up for our event, you will get access to all that information when it's released as well. So I'll just pop this slide back onto the event if you haven't had a chance to register, register for the event, come along and be able to access all the information and get in touch with us to be able to make sure you know when those programmes are released, they'll be in the next coming weeks very shortly.

And definitely sign up for a career counselling session. If there is no more questions, I will leave you guys to... One more. No problem. You're welcome, Linda. I will leave you guys to the rest of your Tuesday. Have a fantastic rest of week. I hope that this session was helpful. This is the beginning of the Career Catalyst programme as lots of fantastic services being rolled out for you guys to make sure you've got the right skills and confidence to go out and get a job. And I look forward to hearing how your resumes and your templates go. Thank you very much. Talk to you soon. Bye.

[On-screen logo, and text on screen]

Study Melbourne

Intern match

Study Melbourne Career Catalyst

Thank you

Be empowered

[End transcript]

[Visual of speaker talking to camera in webinar format, including full screen slideshow presentation]

Penny Holloway: Good afternoon. Welcome along, everybody, to another Study Melbourne Career Catalyst webinar. I'm just going to give you guys a second to join on in as per usual. So come on into the session. I can see everyone joining now. And welcome back for 2023. We're ready to kick off into it after a big year last year and get pumping for a new year ahead, which is fantastic. Now, as per usual, guys, if you have any questions, thoughts, feelings throughout the session, you can jump on in and use the Q and A or the chat function, whichever works for you, and I will jump into those at the end of the session because we always have a lot to get through throughout these, and we can have a bit of a debrief at the end. I very well may cover things that you want to chat about as we go.

So let's kick off. And for those of you who do not know me, my name is Penny Holloway, I'm the head of marketing and communications here at InternMatch. InternMatch is lucky enough to be the delivery partner for the Study Melbourne Career Catalyst programme. And today we're talking all things interviews, which is super exciting. Before we get into it, I would like to begin today by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet today and pay my respects to their elders past and present, and I extend that respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples here today.

So let's have a little look into what we're going to cover through today's session. We're coming into a really prime time in Australian job market, January, February always really busy times as far as hiring people, leaving roles, starting new roles, looking for new opportunities.

So it's a great time to talk about all things interviews and we're going to go through a bunch of different things. I'm going to break it down to three separate sections for you today. Researching your company that you're applying for your role with. I have carried this over from a different presentation, that's naughty by me and I'll fix it up at the end. Interview preparation, questions and answers that you're likely going to be asked. We're going to go through how you can answer these questions properly in a great, easy way. Presenting yourself on the day at your interview and how to create a great lasting impression once you leave that interview.

So let's kick off and I'll show you that three part series we're going to go through. So I think a really nice way of breaking up interview sessions is that because there is so much involved in them, let's go by a three part series, part one being pre-interview. All the things you need to do once you know you have an interview but you're not quite there yet, even if the interview is tomorrow, all the things you need to do before the session.

Then we're going to talk about the key part, the actual day of the interview. What do you need to do in the morning? What do you need to remember during the interview? How do you make sure you turn up and you just rock and roll through that entire session? And then finally, how do you follow up? What are the things you're supposed to do post-interview? How do you get the most out of that situation? We're going to go through all of those three things today.

So let's rock and roll and start with pre-interview. Pre-interview is probably one of the biggest, most important parts of your interview session. Most of the work you're going to do and the work that's going to pay off is what you're going to do actually before you even get to your interview. But let's just kind of step back a little bit and think about interviews as a whole first. I want you to remember throughout this entire session that a job interview is all about making a great impression. This is everything from the answers that you provide to the questions they ask, what you're wearing, how you present yourself, the use of your hands in your interview, your body language, whether it's in person, whether it's on Zoom, it doesn't really matter. All those things contribute. Every little bit contributes to how someone perceives you in that interview and the impression that you leave.

So in that first part of an interview, you're starting to build the foundations, the building blocks that create this impression, and we're going to put you in a great place to make sure that you do kick off on the right foot. So there's a few things you need to do in this pre-interview stage, and you can start doing this sort of stuff now. Even if you're not applying for roles, this is the sort of things you should be kind of making your day-to-day, practising, spending time on, so that if you apply for a job today and you get an interview in two days' time, that you already are ready to go. Preparation makes perfection. Researching your personal pitch and how you actually answer those interview questions.

So first things first, researching a role. If you fail to plan, then you pretty much plan to fail. When you are asked to go for an interview, you've applied for a role, you already know the kind of company that you're applying for, hopefully. By the end of this preparation phase, you should know that company like the back of your hand. You need to immerse yourself into, as if the fact that you work already at that company.

And that's for two reasons. One, if you know the company or the industry really, really well, then when you actually get into that interview, you're going to be really comfortable with answering any question they throw at you. Doesn't matter what angle it comes from, you're going to have some really solid knowledge about the company that you're applying for. So you can probably pick and cherry-pick the information that you have in your brain to be able to answer questions about the company and the industry.

But the second part is we come back to that impression part. A hiring manager is going to be really impressed and notice if you are bringing up things that only someone would know if they already worked at the company. You've immersed yourself in it so much, you're so invested and interested in this role that you have spent the time, your personal time, out of hours, out of study, out of work to find out everything there is to know about that company and about the person that you're speaking to. It is vital. I have done hundreds of interviews in my last 10 years, and every single interview I go for, even if I'm not particularly crash hot on the role, I will know everything there is to possibly find out about that company so that I actually feel like I am there adding value and I'm not wasting that company's time. Right?

So let's take a look at what some of that information is. So you've got an interview at hypothetically, InternMatch. You need to understand a lot of things about that company from what we do, to the industry that we're operating in, who our competitors are, and the people that you're actually speaking to. So the kind of information you're going to look for is what does the company actually do? You might have an idea of what you think the company you've applied for is. Make sure you've got that really crystal clear. How long have they been around? That sort of history is really vital because when it comes to your role and the answers that you give for your role, is it a legacy company? Have they been around for 50 years and they pretty much already know what they're doing? Or are they a startup and they've been around for three years and they're still figuring it out and you can contribute a lot to them figuring it out.

What are their key products and services? What do you think is their bestseller? What's the thing they're best known for? And finally, who might their competitors be? Who else in the industry are they up against, and who can you bring into your conversations when you're answering questions to show that you understand how to already hit the ground running? Who do they need to take out? Who do they need to compete with? Who are they running up against?

Let's switch over to the right to the industry. Understanding the industry is as vital as understanding the company because there's so much more breadth to your role in a company than just what they do. And being able to keep your finger on the pulse and understanding the triggers, the strengths that you have in the industry, the weaknesses, threats to the industry, things that are big, big changes, big movements in the industry, you are already showing that you are qualified to be able to jump in there and start adding value.

I'm going to show you where to get this information in a second, but these are the sort of questions I want you to be delving and kind of getting answers to. Put them into a Word document and start punching out some notes to these answers as you are finding it online.

And then we come to the hiring manager in the role. So when you go for an interview, the hiring manager should say to you who is going to be in the interview, and if they don't, you're allowed to ask. It might be one person, it could be two, it could be three. Find out exactly who those people are, remember their names, what are their roles at the company, and even go a little bit further, what are their expertise and experience within the company? If you are interviewing with one person, it is just going to be you and them having this conversation, right?

So it's a really nice idea that if you were interviewing with me, to jump onto my LinkedIn, find out a bit about me, what kind of content do I post, what kind of things have I studied and what am I interested in? What are the little gems that you can make small talk about that you know that I'm going to be able to pick up and go, "Oh, we have common interest." That is going to again look really impressive to a hiring manager.

And finally, what is the role that you are interviewing for? Remember that job description and that position description if you have one off by heart. What are the kind of things they're going to ask you? They should be woven throughout the responsibilities in the job ad. That's the secret. The questions are generally in the actual application. If you are applying for a role in social media and it says that you need to have an understanding of TikTok and Facebook in the job ad, then there's a pretty good chance that you're going to be asked a question about TikTok and Facebook in the actual interview. So look for the secret gems throughout that role description.

What are the main responsibilities? Where do your strengths align, and are there potential weaknesses that you won't be able to address? And how are you going to find answers to those questions when you are in the interview? So there's a point around that you don't quite understand TikTok, can you jump on and do a really quick 15-minute understanding, can you gain some insight? Can you download the app? Can you make sure that you do fill those gaps where possible? Do you see how broad this information needs to be? But as you're doing this, you're actually preparing yourself across many different facets as you go.

So these are the things I want you to research, but where are you going to find the information? This is all online. You're going to be able to go to their website and find out a plethora of things about the company. Their About page is going to have pretty much anything and everything about the history of the company. Their social media pages are going to have the most relevant information though. It's going to be new, it's going to be up-to-date and it's going to be a little bit more candid than their website. So jump onto their LinkedIn. They should have a Life page on their LinkedIn. They might have information about their staff and the kind of things they do in their company on their Instagram. Jump in there.

Just do a broad Google search, search the industry, search trends in the industry. Look at media articles, like if you were jumping into an industry that has had a lot of change over the last 12 months, have they been impacted by Covid? What are the trends you're seeing coming out of that industry because of big world events, life events, things happening?

And then finally, you might jump in and actually look into information on that company, so like newsletters, things, blog articles, things that they distribute on their own, owned media, owned information. There is a plethora out there. You shouldn't be short of information and where to find it, but make sure you do the research. It is key.

Someone will generally ask, and we'll come to this, one of the first questions will be, particularly when you're a junior in a role, is what do you know about our company? And the answer should never be, "Not much." You should be able to roll off a huge array of things you know about the company that are quite interesting and different.

The second part of preparation is your personal pitch. So again, not just when you're a junior, but really for any interview, interviews are just a conversation. It's just someone getting to know whether they like working with that other person. Do they get along? Do they have similar interests? Can they imagine working with them? And a great hiring manager will often pop in, as the first bit, a question that's a really easy icebreaker for you to make you comfortable, to make you ease into the interview setting, and to kick things off so that they can also get their head around the interview. They could be shuffling papers, getting themselves organised. Your hiring manager might've come through a billion meetings that day and then jumped into your interview.

So your personal pitch, that "Tell us about yourself" or "Tell us what you do", is vital for just kicking you off. And often, I want you to remember that this is just to get you eased into the interview. It's to calm your nerves. So there's a really easy way for you to nail this pitch. It's still a really important question because you are kicking off, so whilst saying no, you're going to have interview nerves, they still are looking for little gems that show that you are comfortable and confident and that you have the right answers. So it just needs to be about 15 seconds long. It's defining who you are, what you do, and why you are there, right?

And I'm going to get you to use something like this to develop your personal pitch. Really brief. You're going to start by sharing your name because you could have multiple interviewers in your interview and one might've been brought in last minute and they might not have quite grabbed your name. So always repeat your name. It's also great for double checking pronunciation for them. They can retain it once again. So share what your name is. Share what you're studying or where you've been studying or what you've just graduated in, where you work and what you do if you're working. If you've just done an internship or some work experience, bring that in and say it with enthusiasm and positivity and really own your narrative.

And finally, you're going to mention your goals, the things you want to achieve in your career. Now, why are you there? Why are you sitting in this interview? And then a little gem you can add on if you're comfortable and you have time is some things about you that are not related to the job. Let me show you what that looks like. An example of this, oh no, it's getting cut off. I will read it to you anyway and I can tell you what the last bit says. For a student who's just got out of university or still in university, your personal pitch is going to be very different to someone like me who's been working for 10 years and has a lot more breadth to what I can add.

Your personal pitch is going to sound something like this. Here's an example. "I'm Namita. I'm a student at La Trobe University and I'm studying my masters in marketing. I'm preparing to graduate at the end of this year. I recently completed an internship with a fantastic local marketing agency based in Collingwood." You are giving them little gems of things that they can relate to. I might live in Collingwood, I might work at a marketing agency, bring things in that make sense. "And I'm really looking forward to join the workforce in a full-time capacity." So what's your intention of being there? "My passion is digital marketing and social media advertising, and I spend my time immersed in social media, upskilling and teaching myself everything I need to know."

If you don't have a great deal of experience, showing that you're going to every end and breadth to be able to do what you can to get those things ticked off is vital. So you're saying your passion is in digital marketing, social media, and you're spending time adding extra value. You're showing them that you're going to add extra value to what they're doing every day, right? That you are a self-starter, that you can do the thing and the fact that you're a student hasn't prohibited you from joining and making your life really value-added and your career really impactful already.

And finally, you're going to add in that little bit that's a bit more personal and some things they can grab onto and they might bring back into the conversation at the end when it's a bit more casual and relaxed. "Outside of marketing, I'm a qualified Pilates instructor and I love music and going to gigs." That's all it needs to be. Who you are, what you do, how you're doing it. If you have a role that's quite active at the moment, then you might talk more about that role. And then finally some little gems into who you are as a person. Who are they going to talk to at the tearoom every week when you come in? This sort of stuff, right?

So have a think about what your personal pitch is and practise it and practise it and practise it and start that now. This bit should be the easiest part to get because if you are in an interview and your first question, 99% of the time is going to be "Tell us about yourself", and you don't quite kick that off on the right foot and you feel like you're not comfortable and you feel like you've buggered it up, you're not going to have a great run for the rest of it, potentially. So nail this section so that you go into the next question feeling confident, feeling ready, and you've grabbed their attention and you know this stuff. This stuff is about you, so you are ready to rock and roll.

Let's chat a bit about answering interview questions. So there are too many interview questions to prepare for to be able to answer them all today, but the great thing is that they all have little similarities that you can bring back in to each question. You can't physically prepare to answer all of them, but you can try and nail around five to six that are broad enough that you can retrofit to other questions. Some of those might be things like: What made you apply for this role? That should be quite innate for you because it should be related to your study, to your experience, to your future goals. What interests you about the role or the industry that you've studied for? So if you are asking for a role in marketing, what interests you about marketing? What interests you about engineering? Why did you study engineering? The basic high end starting point, they want to understand what makes you sing, what makes you hum when you come to work.

Tell us about your time at a previous employer or a previous internship or something on your resume. Tell us about your time there. What did you do? What did you tackle? What's some major achievements and responsibilities? What interests you about the company you're applying for? We went through this earlier. You have all the questions you need to identify about that. If perhaps that company's a startup, maybe you'll say, "I love the startup space. I like that it's fresh and innovative and you guys are making things up as you go, which means I can contribute a lot and I can bring new ideas to the table and be a part of the growth." Maybe it's that they are helping a small community group or they're doing work in the non-for-profit sector and that's something you're really passionate about. Find the thing that is your "why" that's not going to be a generic answer that everybody else is going to give. What interests you about this company?

Some of your greatest strengths? What are the things that you bring to the table? You need to nail this one and you also need to nail what are some of your weaknesses. What's something that your previous manager or a peer, your friends and family might say you could do with some extra work on? The answer is never "Nothing." We all have things to work on and it's really great if you can take something out of the role and be able to make it a little bit sharpened to show that you perhaps don't have the TikTok experience, but you learnt Instagram in two weeks, you're fully nailing it and you're having great success there, so you've already downloaded the app and you're ready to start immersing into that.

It shows that you, whilst you may not have the experience in it, you are ready to crack on with it and actually learn about that thing. So it's okay to have weaknesses. They want to see your vulnerabilities, they want to see how you're going to tackle those weaknesses though.

What do you hope to gain from this role? What are the things you want to gain in the next six months to a year? The experience, the skills you want to obtain from it. And another one that's really commonly asked is how would your peers describe you? How would a previous manager describe you, your friends and family? That can be really positive. It should be really positive things. And it may be what you bring to a team or an environment that's really vital. Are you really high energy? Are you really empathetic and you can understand how people work and you are really great at getting conversation out of people and therefore you're going to work really well with customers because you know what makes them tick. You know how to get the right ideas out of them.

So try and hone in on five to six questions and really nail your answers to those, and practise and practise and practise them so that you feel like you have things you can pull on your brain to answer other questions. If you want to delve into some more, if you want to try some harder questions, some more curly ones, LinkedIn Learning has some great tools on there. There's some ones you can access for free in that top QR code that are "Expert tips for answering common questions." And if you have premium access, you can answer some common interview questions and there's some sample answers there as well. So jump on in and scan those now. I'll give you a second to do that, so that you can have some really great resources to try and think about what those questions might be or screenshot this slide here and start practising , gang.

So how do you actually answer those questions? This is the golden question, right? Because so much of your interview time is an actual set answer question scenario. 99% of the time, an interviewer is going to expect that you are answering your interview questions with the STAR method. This method here. It's a really nice common sense way of breaking down questions and answers, and not only is it nice for the company to hear it this way, it will help your brain keep on track. So when you are in the middle of answering a question, I want you to pull yourself back to this STAR method and make sure you've ticked off these things.

Set the situation. Look, I'm going to give you a live example in a second, but first thing you going to do is set the situation. What are you talking about? Where was it? What happened? What role, what company? Let's set the scene. T is for describing the task. What was the task and your involvement in it? What did you have to do? Were you part of a team? Were you on your own? Why are you part of this interview question response? A is for action. How did you actually take action, provide a solution to the problem? There should always be a problem in these interview questions. What did you do that was the great thing that resulted in an action? And finally, what was the results of that? How did you turn things around? What was the return on investment? What was the result? What was the team impact? What was the result of the situation that you've set here?

So let's look at this in a example. So here is an example. The question being "Tell us about a time you used a problem-solving attitude." Not a hard question, a really common question, and it might be asked in a few different ways like this, but generally this is going to be the question around problem-solving. Tell us about a time you use problem-solving.

Answer might be something like this. So let's set the scene. Whilst I was interning at InternMatch, X company, wherever, we were very understaffed due to Covid and we had a critical project that needed to be finalised. You might give a bit more information on that project. Perhaps you say a critical project on delivering a new programme to a new government initiative that we needed to be finalised. You now come into the T section, the task. In order to help my manager achieve the deadline, so that's showing great teamwork, I volunteered to assist with this project in addition to my own regular work with no leniency on the deadline. So you're saying here that you're great at teamwork, you put your hand up, which is really proactive, and you can multitask, you are still doing your own work. We love this answer.

Then we come to the action. To meet the project deadline and to help the manager, I developed and automated a vital process by using software programmes like Excel to complete tasks that would've usually been undertaken by staff members. What's great about this action is that it shows that you understand one, how to use technology to help your role, and you know how to automate things to give you back time and give your team back time. This answer's lovely because it doesn't just talk about you, it talks about your wider team.

And then finally, what was the result of that? This resulted in not only the project being delivered on time, fantastic, but the automation I developed is now part of the regular process, saving time and resources on a daily basis. So let's look at this question-answer again as one.

Tell us about time you used a problem-solving attitude.

Whilst I was interning at X company, we were very understaffed due to Covid and we had a critical project that needed to be finalised. In order to help my manager achieve the deadline, I volunteered to assist with the project in addition to my own regular work with no leniency on the deadline. What did you do? To meet the project deadline, I developed an automated a vital process by using softwares like Excel to complete tasks that would've usually been undertaken by staff members. This resulted in not only the project being delivered on time, but the automation I delivered is now part of a regular process, saving time and resources on a daily basis.

It's not a long answer, it's clear, it's concise, it brings in the right information. And what this method stops us from doing, and I'm a great culprit of this, it stops us waffling, it stops us adding in fluff information, doing ums and ahs and bringing in things that don't need to be in there. When you start to go off on a tangent, you lose people's attention. If you can stick to the STAR method and think, there's four things I need to do in this answer: scene, task, action, result, then you're going to have a much better outcome with the answers that you are giving. So practise the STAR method for me as well. Short, sharp, concise, and the point. If the manager has more questions, they will ask more questions from that answer.

Okay, how are we going for time? Part two. So you've got your preparation done, you've got your pitch nailed, you've researched the company, you know who you're talking to. Let's now get to the day of the interview. We're going to talk about presenting yourself, your body language, where you're going, what are you doing, who are you're meeting, and then some pre-interview rituals that are really vital for getting you in the zone.

So it goes without saying that, and I'm sure most of you will be all across this, but let's just reiterate it quickly. When you look your best, you will feel your best, and when you feel your best, you will present better. If you feel uncomfortable, you're probably not going to bring your best self forward. So it goes without saying that in an interview, regardless of whether it's in person or on Zoom, you need to look and feel your best. You need to be presenting clean, polished, put together. People want to understand the kind of person that's going to walk into their business every day and make sure that they can put them in front of clients, stakeholders and other staff members.

If you're not sure about the dress code, you can always ask your hiring manager what to wear, what is the dress code for the interview? And if you don't get an answer that you're looking for, always when in doubt wear a tailored look, business-appropriate corporate attire, the kind of things you would wear to a corporate role anyway. Even when you're going to roles that are like a startup or you think they're probably dressing quite casual, you just don't know how relaxed that dress code can be, so it's always better to be overdressed than underdressed for these situations. As I said, even if it's online, put a clean shirt on, do your hair, get yourself well presented, clean your screen, make sure your Zoom camera's clean, no smudges on the camera lens, and get yourself ready to go.

And as I said, it's much more about than just the clothes you're wearing. It's your grooming, it's how you hair's done. I use my hands a lot when I speak as you can probably notice, so I constantly have my nails done because I know that people are going to be looking at them because they're front and centre when I'm talking to you. So things like that are really important as well. So have a think about this stuff, not even just on the day. Maybe prepare this day before. We'll go through this in rituals in a second.

Body language. Okay, so you are in your interview, you've got the questions all up here, you're ready to go, you're a little bit nervous, that's totally fine. Nerves are normal and important. They get you in the zone, they get our brain and our body in the go action zone, so that's completely fine. But something to really keep in mind of that kind of goes out the window when we're nervous is how our body is projecting how we feel. So it's really important when you are on, again, whether you're on Zoom or whether you're in person, how's your posture? Are you sitting up straight? Are you comfortable? You should look relaxed, but you should be sitting up straight, head up high, shoulders back, but you don't want to look uncomfortable and stiff. You're just sitting in a really nice relaxed position. We're not slouched down in the chair, we're not hiding under the table.

You also need to be conscious of your body language when it comes to things like arms and legs being crossed. Are you open or are you closed off with your body language? Stuff like this, as we all know, [inaudible 00:33:12] bit, is very closed off, even on a Zoom it looks like I'm not interested to be here. If I'm leaning back on my chair, I'm swinging on my chair, it's awful, isn't it? You need someone sitting straight, eyes down at the camera or eyes on the people that you are speaking to in the interview. Hands are open and your body language is open, and that even goes for your legs. It's okay to cross your legs, but be conscious of the way your body is turning towards. If you're crossing your legs and you're facing interviewers, make sure that you are facing onto the interviewers and not turning away and looking disinterested.

Do you see how all these things make a huge difference? And again, things like speaking with your hands, there's a limit to it. I could definitely overdo it as I'm doing now, but there's a definite art to talking with your hands to show enthusiasm, thoughtful nodding when you are being asked questions or answering questions to show that you understand what is happening, and even little things like head tilts show that you are engaging, you're listening, you are interested. You probably do this stuff already subconsciously, but when we are nervous, we shut down and we close up like this. So we want to avoid this. And if you find yourself feeling really stiff in the interview, take a deep breath, relax, unlock your arms, relax your shoulders, and just ease back into it. You have potentially either half an hour to an hour in an interview to be able to rebuild that up if you've started off a little bit stiff.

And last thing for the ... last or second last thing, for who, what, where of the interview. These things sound really simple, but if you don't have them locked and loaded, they will frazzle you and you will be going into that interview like a hot mess, which if you spent time preparing, that's a real disappointment. What date and time is your interview? Double check, triple check. Have you got the time right? If it's an interview that's interstate, is there a time zone difference? Make sure you're turning up and showing up at the right date at the right time. Where is the interview taking place? Is it on Zoom? Is it on Teams? Have you downloaded the right programmes already? If it's in person, what's the location? How do you get there? How long do you need to allocate to get there? What's the public transport like? Are you going to need to run? Are you going to be sweaty? Is it like today, it's a 36 degree day and you're going to be in a suit? Think about all these things first.

Do you have a quiet space that you can sit for a minute and gather yourself before you walk into that meeting? If you are cutting your interview, fine, you're going to come in from back to back and you're running in there and you'll probably feel a little bit sweaty and a little bit dishevelled. If you have time, can you set yourself the luxury of giving yourself an extra half an hour to sit and have a tea at a cafe nearby or go through your notes or just find a minute to have some peace and quiet either on your travel time or prior.

And then again, like we said, what's the interview format? Who are you meeting with and what are their names? Who are you asking for at the front desk?

And as I said, little pre-interview rituals can make all the difference when getting ready. It sounds like all this stuff's a lot, right? But it's actually not. You do all these things already, it's just making sure that you are making enough time and effort, because you're going into an interview. You've probably spent time doing your CV, your LinkedIn, and applying for it. It would be a damn shame if you've been asked to go for an interview in a time when the market is very hot and there's a lot of people applying for roles, and you haven't quite prepared enough and you feel like you didn't give it your best. We want to avoid that because it's an awful feeling.

So what are you going to do the night before? It's really important to get a good night's rest. I know it sounds simple, but we are all so terrible at getting consistent, good enough hours of sleep, and your brain absolutely is going to need that going into an interview because you are on high alert,.you have got a lot of new information, you've got new faces, new people, new environment. Our nervous system doesn't love that. So let's make sure we're well slept so that we can be as much of a sponge and absorb things as much as we need. Pop your outfit out the night before. Press it, wash it, have it ready to go. Does it have any stains on it? Does it need to be ironed? Have it ready to rock and roll. T.

The morning of. Even if your interview is later in the afternoon, wake up early, get some sunlight. We know, science tells us that first thing in the morning. We need to get sunlight into our eyes, not artificial light, natural light. It wakes us up. It gets the brain firing, and you're going to have yourself in good stride to be able to retain the information that you need to regurgitate for that interview to that hiring manager. Go for a walk, get some exercise into you, have a healthy and nutritious breakfast, gets some food into your body and start that energy firing.

And then as I said right before the interview, regardless of whether it's in-person or remote, allow yourself some silent time, some time to reflect, to look at your notes, to have a deep breath and just calm your nerves. Before every interview, even a lot of presentations I do right before I press the go button, I just sit and I have a little meditation. I might put on a song, and I just give myself three minutes of breathing. That's all I need and then I'm ready to go. So make sure you have the space to be able to do that if you need to do that.

Okey doke. Post interview. Hypothetically, you've prepped, you've dressed, you're ready, you've gone, you've interviewed, you've smashed the interview questions, you're feeling good, you've come out the other side. Or maybe you're not feeling great, maybe you didn't think you went particularly well. Either way, we have to then do the right process on the other side for yourself and for the company.

So after the interview, one of the most important things you need to do, and we don't do this enough and I really beg you to do this, have some time for reflection. Not every interview is going to end with a yes and you're going to do a lot of interviews throughout your career. So regardless of how the interview goes, it's always great for personal development to stop and reflect afterwards. How do you think it went? How did the interview feel? Did you do well? If not, what are the reasons that perhaps it didn't go so great? What questions do you need to work on in the future? What questions did you love answering? What things lit a fire up inside of you that you were really passionate about that you went, "Oh, I loved answering that bit." Because there's probably some real gems in that information.

Like, if you found that you loved answering X, Y, and Z, do you need to apply for roles that are more in line with that? If the bits that made you really uncomfortable are 99% of the role, perhaps it's not the right role for you. So find some, look through that information, dig deep, look into the soul a little bit and see how that feels.

And then another good thing to do here is to also chat to somebody else about it. So if you don't ... I think I want this on the next slide here. If you don't have a mentor or somebody that you can look up to who understands the roles you're applying for quite well, a family member or a friend or a peer or someone from uni is a really great person to sit back with and actually have a chat to them about it. Ask some questions, just debrief on them. It's really vital for our brains and our psychology to have that time to reflect and download. So find a person and say, "Can I just give you a bit of a download on how my interview went?" And they'll go, "No problem." They might have some advice for you as well.

And then finally, following up. So that's a really great question we always get is that should I follow up with a hiring manager or a company after an interview? The answer is you totally can. So something to consider is that hiring processes can be really lengthy. I even know with my teams, it can be a really arduous process interviewing lots of people, potentially lots of roles with personal interests and people working hybrid or remote or whatever they're doing. Sometimes a hiring process can be a really long, like months and months worth of time between applying and the job actually having a result. So don't be surprised if it takes a little while for you to hear back for next steps, but I understand it can be really tedious to sit through that.

So when you are in the interview, at the end of the interview, ask the hiring manager about hiring timeframes and next steps. So generally they say do you have any questions, you will always have some questions. I want you guys to think of some questions to ask back at the end of the interview. It's vital that you show interest and have some things that you have thought about throughout the interview.

And one of those questions can be, "What are the next steps for this process and the timeframes you guys think this will take?" It gives you a bit of a time that you can kind of go, okay, I'll have my expectations set there. You know what to expect if they go to round two or three or whatever the process is. And it means you can set a line in the sand to say, if I don't hear back from a hiring manager from this date, you can email them or call them to say, "Hey, just wondering how my interview went and some results of the interview." Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for you to not hear back from hiring managers. Some HR teams are fantastic, some are not, and often you will not actually hear back from the people that you have interviewed with, which is a real shame. So definitely follow up and kind of say, "Hey, I'd love some feedback on how I went in my interview for X, Y, Z role."

Okie doke. We are right on time, which I love. Some final tips and tricks from our team here at InternMatch, which I love. And these are some really vital ones and this one from Nat is a real killer and it's something you guys should definitely consider when going into your interview. So your interview starts from the minute you walk in the door. You do not know who is in the lift with you, at reception, in the foyer. The person that might meet you in, you're walking into your interview room, they could be really vital in the process of hiring you. So as Nat says, smile as soon as you walk in the door, engage with the receptionist, start conversations with someone in the lift or foyer. You never know who they are and how much influence they have.

From our CEO Jared. He says, make a list of five to six things that you have done in the past that could be applied as a scenario for literally any questions that are asked. This is a fabulous tip and this is something we've spoken about with the interview questions I want you to practise and go through. What are some answers that you can just give to any of those questions? What are some great experiences, some responsibilities, some key things you've done throughout your role that you can use as answers to those questions?

And one from me finally. Okay, so your heart is racing, your mouth is dry. Remember to breathe, as I said, take pauses between your sentences to give your brain a chance to catch up to your mouth. Even I forget to do this, I forget to do it in webinars. And don't be afraid to ask for a glass of water throughout the interview or before the interview begins. Again, some HR teams are fantastic and they will bring these things into the interviews. Some are not, some are busy. So it's a great chance when you sit down and say, "Would you mind if I grabbed a glass of water?" And they'll go, "Oh my goodness, of course, yes." And they'll jump out and grab one. Strongly recommend you do this because an hour of nerves can make your mouth very, very dry and can make answering interview questions very tricky.

Finally guys, I want you to remember it's okay to be nervous. As hiring managers, we understand it. Sometimes even your hiring managers are nervous. But I want you to remember at the end of the day, people like working with people they like, so it's a conversation. They are just looking for some common ground, that you get along with somebody and that also you understand the job that you are applying for and you have the skills necessary to be able to take it to the next step. Skills can be taught, attitude is vital, and the fact that you get along with that person is really key. So go in with the right attitude and just remember you are having a chat. That's all it is and take it from there.

Before we get into Q&A, I want to go through those top tips really quick and then invite you guys to a special workshop we are hosting.

Know your company and the person that you are interviewing with for this role. Nail your personal pitch. Use that STAR method for answering all your questions or as close to the STAR method as you can. Look your best so that you feel your best throughout the interview. And remember that body language speaks louder than words. They're going to notice if you are closed up and feeling uncomfortable. And make it conversational. You are making an impression, you're just a person having a chat.

Before we kick off into Q&A, so start punching those questions into the Q&A box for me, guys, I do want to invite you to the step before an interview. If you haven't quite yet got to interview phase, we do have a resume writing workshop on the 16th of February on the afternoon, 5:30 PM. It is very limited tickets we have available to you guys. We are going to be presenting to you exactly how to do your resume. Bring your laptop in, bring in your resume or a Word doc. We have templates to give you, and let's start finessing your resume, so it is so sensational that you do get to the interview phase. So jump on. I strongly recommend that you register for this. We already have sold a lot of the tickets. We're halfway through, and we've still got a month to go. So jump on, register for this. We'll give you some light supper as well while we're there. And the team will be there for one-on-ones to be able to take you through your resume throughout the session as well. So scan that QR code and come along and join us.

Finally, you will be sent a survey after this session, gang. Check your emails this afternoon. We are giving away a voucher to fabulous Comedy Republic, which is in the CBD here in Melbourne. Unreal comedy show that has opened the last couple of years. So if you'd like to go along to that, complete the very quick survey. It's like four questions. It'll take you literally 15 seconds. Let us know what you think of this session and we will be drawing to see who goes in the draw to win the Comedy Republic voucher.

Okie doke. Let's see questions and answers. How you guys are feeling about things. I'm just going to open this up now and see some questions there. Selma, hello. Thank you so much for your question. What are the red flags and common mistakes that candidates make during the interview process and how can I avoid them? Big question, but really great question. Look, I don't think there are ever red flags. Red flags is like a dangerous dirty words. We won't call them red flags, but it is okay and normal to make mistakes throughout interviews.

And the thing is, I want to remember here is like I said, it is just a conversation, right? So if you keep that at the front of your mind, that it's a conversation, breathe throughout it, and if you can remember those few things that you can draw on for experience that you can use as examples, then it's going to avoid you making these mistakes. I think the thing that stands out the most in an interview is when ... and this is the number one thing, this is something I stumble on as well, is when you get a little bit stumbled or caught off guard by a question, you might get a question and your initial response to go, "Ooh, I don't know." And to um and ah. We want to avoid that as much as possible. So it's okay when you get asked a question, to pause, stop, have a breath and have a think about the question. You can ask for the question to be asked in a different way. And then rack through your brain of those key things that you know have done really well throughout your early career and studying that you can draw on.

It may not even be that the answer perfectly retrofits to that answer, sorry, the answer you're giving perfectly retrofits to that question, but if the interviewer can say that you are calm, you are doing your best to apply an answer and an example to that question, and you're taking the key parts out of the question, whether it's problem solving or a weakness or how would you approach this, then they're going to still give you points for being able to articulate a well-worded answer.

Overwhelm sticks out a lot, and I think when you get to that point where you get so overwhelmed with a question, you can't quite come with an answer, what tends to happen, and is a common mistake that I have seen, is that it tends to derail the rest of the interview in the sense that the candidate is then no longer comfortable answering the remaining questions, which is only tricky because although we know that nerves are completely fine, we understand that, we still are looking for answers to questions so that we have some skills to be able to associate to the role that you're applying for.

So pause, breathe, think about the things that you already know and use that method of problem/solution and what was your involvement, and in essence, that's the STAR method: problem, solution, your role and the result of that. Then just keep pushing through and they might re-ask the question in a different way if they don't quite have the answer they want, or they'll move on to a new question.

So just trying to keep yourself going throughout the interview is the most important thing. Keeping calm and just keep rolling on. Any other questions, gang? Does that answer your question, Selma? Is there anything else you'd like to ask from that that I can answer? We expect fast talking, we expect nerves, we expect a bit of dry mouth and sweat. That stuff's totally okay, but we are looking for correct answers to questions or an ability to adapt to those questions.

I think while I'm on that, I'll just say another common trigger that stands out is if you have oversold yourself drastically on your resume and CV. And that is very obvious when we come to questions and answers. If a candidate has no example of a situation, and every question's going to look for an example, a real life example. If you don't have a real life example that you've perhaps oversold that you know how to do that on your resume, then that's going to stand out as well. So be really comfortable with the role that you're applying for that you can answer questions that relate to that role.

Anything else, team, pop it into the chat. Pop it into the Q&A. If not, I will ... I can't quite see my chat, I'm just going to stop sharing so I can see the chat there. If there are no more questions, I will leave you guys to it. Come along to our session for CV writing. I strongly recommend. Jump over to the Career Catalyst website. There's heaps of resources on there and if you need some more help with interviewing preparation and practising , we have Our Career Coaching sessions that you guys can sign up for, and you can speak to someone from InternMatch live time and go through some questions and answers with them, as well. A great person to vet this against.

So thank you very much, team, for coming along to another webinar with us, and we look forward to seeing you at our next events and webinars. See you later. Bye.

[On-screen logo, and text on screen]

Study Melbourne

Intern match

Study Melbourne Career Catalyst

Thank you

Be empowered

[End transcript]