All 13 entries tagged Chartership

Met with my Library Chartership mentor

Met with my chartership mentor today who has given me some good comments about my portfolio.

I have enough content but need to divide my portfolio up a bit better. That is the hard part I had divided it up already following my PPDP but I need to rethink this and maybe use the following categories:

• strategy;
• skills development;
• project work.

I'll have to see if I can do this as my portfolio covers 3 different jobs over a long period of time as I worked part time.

I will look at this week & see if it can be done!

My mentor also suggested that I did a mind map for the skills that I have gained from each of my jobs. This makes sense and I will get this done by 2.12.11.

I have asked to have the 9 December off work as study leave & will use this time to write my personal statement, so I need to get my folder sorted pretty quickly.

: 23 Nov 2011 21:09 |  Tags: Chartership Library |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Student Careers & Skills new website

Careers & Skills is in the process of integrating 5 websites into 1. This is due to the department being restructured in the summer of 2010. Student Careers & Skills is currently in it's first academic year of operation. The individual websites need to be merged into 1 to show the users all our services and how we can helped them in their career and academic skills development.

The new website is to be completed by 31st July 2011 (the current website is over 900 pages long!)

January 2011

From January I have been attending the Operations group meetings when they have been discussing what is required in the new website. We grouped all of the sections of the website and the headings were agreed by the Operations Group. I along with the IT Officer put these headings looking for any missing areas into a tree diagram. The tree diagram was taken to the Operations group to agree it. This was all agreed in May 2011

April 2011

Since the end of April I have been working on the website project 100%, no more Helpdesk enquiries for me.

I've been responsible for:

• Taking colleagues permissions away from the websites & informing them via the staff newsletter.
• Developing a Project Plan on the time scales that colleagues are able to update or write information for the new website.
• Created an order to copy the content, this was decided by using the project plan
• Written instructions on how to copy content of the current websites into a word document, standardising file names and where the documents are to be saved.
• Trained colleagues on how to copy the content of the webpages.

May 2011

I realised that the copying the current website content wasn't happening fast enough so I spoke to my line manager and we organised getting a temp in.  I already knew that we had budget to cover the cost of getting a temp.  I had to write what skills were required for the job and was involved in interviewing them.  This was my first time of being involved in interviewing.  The temp is great he is very fast at the copying the content. 

I don't seem to have time to do any of the copying as I've been organising the project and sorting out queries.

As the temp was very fast at copying the content, I then spoke to the Skills team about taking away their website permissions, so we could start to copy the web pages. This was agreed by the team.

13th May

Divided up the website sections that the Operations & Information team were to update or write.  Decided which Information Adviser had the skills to do which section.  In the process of this I realised that all of the sections that the Ops & Info we were supposed to update we did not have the necessary skills for and I spoke to other colleagues who would have more expertise in these areas, i.e. Careers Fairs & Employers Events this was passed to a member of Employer Connect.

I wrote an email explaining what was required in the updating, attaching the relevant files, the new website structure & a guide on writing for the web.  After the emails were sent I spoke to each of the Information Advisers who had sections to update and I explain what was required, as each section requires different information.

W/C 16th May

Sent all the Key Job sectors files (old files from the website) to the relevant Careers Consultant.  The key contact for the Careers team organised who was going to do which section and I spoke to her about any queries.

W/C 23rd May

Emailed the relevant careers consultants the rest of the files for the sections of the websites they are updating i.e. career planning.  

It doesn’t sound like much sending emails to colleagues with files attached but it took me all  day today (Monday) to send the rest of the sections to the careers consultants as I have to send at least 5 files with each email and I need to make sure that I have not missed any documents off.  

Reflection so far

Currently we are on target with the project plan.  Thanks to a lot of help from colleagues who are acting a key contacts and understand the importance and complexity of the new website project.

It is a huge task to complete and I'm mainly concerned with the current content and how to integrate all the websites into one.  There is another large issue to do with the design, but we have come up with mock ideas and have turned to elab for their expertise in designing the home page and students landing page.  

I feel that it is my job co-ordinate the updating of content or creating of new content, explaining what we are looking for and try make sure that people keep to deadlines. I may be grey by the time this is finished!  

: 23 May 2011 21:36 |  Tags: Chartership Library New Website |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

19th May 2011 met with mentor

Met with my mentor to update her on my progress with my chartership.

Informed her that I had met with:

Director of Student Careers & Skills
Head of Academic Services at Coventry University
Head of Academic Services at Warwick

I explained how these meetings have helped me to understand; my roles (working in SCS & Coventry), the institutions strategies and how the departments I work in are working towards the university's strategies (Coventry & Warwick).

I have added further reflections of these meetings in my portfolio.

Portfolio building
I have started to gather my portfolio evidence into a ring binder. I need to start gathering the evidence into groups.  I will try to do this in accordance with my PPDP.  This does seem to be quite hard as I have evidence from 3 jobs in 3 different places.

I'll aim to have this finished by the end of June.  (My deadlines keep changing due to my busy personal life).

: 21 May 2011 13:35 |  Tags: Chartership Library |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Student Careers & Skills Strategy

Met with Sue Bennett the Director of Student Careers and Skills to gain more understanding into the Student Careers & Skills strategy and how it is created.

The Meeting

Sue Bennett explained how the Student Careers & Skills strategy is formed and her role within the department. Student Careers & Skills was restructured and fully integrated in July 2010.  The department is currently within its first year of running.  Student Careers & Skills was created by the merging of Careers, CSDE, Postgraduate Researchers, Volunteers and Employer Connect.  The University felt that all these departments were scattered and should be pulled into one department for student’s recruitment, retention, satisfaction, progression and achievement.

Reflection

After having this meeting with Sue Bennett it made me feel more enthusiastic about work as I can see the goals and aims we are working to as a department.  

As a Centre we do have team meetings that require input into the strategies and then this is also cascaded down to the individual team meetings.  But to meet with Sue and have her explain how the strategies are written it made it seem much more clear with a proper and coherent plan.  

I really must start organising my portfolio (I've even bought the plastic wallets to go into a ring binder).  Will start this tomorrow night!

: 12 Apr 2011 21:21 |  Tags: Chartership Strategy |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Met with my Library Chartership mentor

Met with my Library Chartership mentor on Monday 28th March and updated her on my progress.

• I have arranged to meet with Sue Bennett Director of Student Careers & Skills to talk about the strategic plans for the centre. (Thursday 31st March)
• Completed my CV in draft - I need to check it and pass it to a job search advisor to look over it.  I will complete this, by the end of this week.
• Arranged to met with Antony Brewerton about the main library marketing strategy - April 28th
• I will finish making notes on copyright.  (I've nearly finished the 2nd book).
• Arrange to met with the Head of Academic Services Carolyn Haresign at Coventry University about their strategic planning.
• I must get a lever arch folder & start putting my portfolio work in, collating it better & to work out any gaps I've got.
• Book study leave to write my personal statement - I don't feel ready yet.

I'd better get on with it!

: 29 Mar 2011 15:27 |  Tags: Chartership Library |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

CV – 4 pages long

Follow-up to Completed my CV from Vicky's Chartership blog

Have shown my CV to my library chartership mentor and 4 pages isn't too long as it is an extended CV.  I will have to shorten it if I apply for any jobs!

: 29 Mar 2011 15:13 |  Tags: Chartership |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Sharepoint Training

I went on the IT's Sharepoint training Thursday 24th March 2011. The course covered the basics on Sharepoint with enough information to get you going.

Sharepoint will be a good tool to use for the Student Careers & Skills intranet rather than using sitebuilder pages. But I think it is something that we can't rush into as it is like building a website and we will have to decide on the structure beforehand.  We will also have to ensure that everyone uses it instead of using the sharedrive and uploads files the correct way and whether we use version control or not. 

Sharepoint is good at letting people know the last date a file was updated and the current version.  You can also enforce people to check out a file when they are going to update it and a copy is stored in your drafts.  When you update it and return the new version back to sharepoint you have to check it back in.  If someone comes to look at the file when you have it checked out they then can still at a read only copy and know who to talk to if they need to edit that file.

There is lot you can do with Sharepoint you can have libraries (files of information), lists (i.e. contact lists that you then can update outlook with), announcements, calendars, blogs.  We didn't cover the full use of the calendars as Student Careers & Skills want to use it for booking rooms.  It does look quite simple to use, although the permission levels on what people can do, can get complicated.   So I suppose we'd better get building the Sharepoint intranet.

: 28 Mar 2011 22:01 |  Tags: Chartership |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Completed my CV

I have just completed my CV and it is 4 pages long.  I know the CV for the chartership is an extended one, but I think 4 pages is probably too long.  But another reason why it is so long is that as I'm completing my chartership retrospectively I need my CV to cover 3 jobs in quite a lot of detail including all the training I have done.  I will have to show it to my mentor to get her opinion & I'll ask my fellow library colleagues about the length of their CV's at the Love your Chatership meeting that I'm going to tomorrow.

As I'm meeting with my mentor next week I have completed or almost completed some of my action points.

1. CV completed (draft only)
2. Spoken to Sue Bennett to arrange talking to her about the strategic plans of Student Careers & Skills
3. Almost but not quite yet fixed a date up with Antony Brewerton to talk about library marketing

I still need to ask about study leave to write my personal statement I will do this on Friday.

I will blog again later in the week as I'm off on a SharePoint training session all day tomorrow, to see how it can be used for Student Careers & Skills,  particularly the calender aspect but how we could use it for our intranet.  Coventry University library already use it for their intranet but I don't know how to build one.

: 23 Mar 2011 21:15 |  Tags: Chartership |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Effective applications careers workshop

Attended an Effective Applications Workshop on Friday 11th Feb 2011.

I have referred lots of students to this workshop as they need to attend this before being able to get their CV checked.

I found it very interesting, but it is a very quick overview on filling out applications, CVs, covering letters and personal statements.  It does give the students basic information with relevant links to the Student Careers & Skills website.  Also explaining how they need to research the sector, company and themselves and tailoring the  application or CV to the job they are applying for.  The workshop used powerpoint presentations and was broken up with exercises, bad CVs, good CVs etc). 

The students have the chance to ask questions through out the session and can ask questions relating to their own CVs at the end.  On the particular session that I attended I observed that the students didn't ask many questions.  The reason for this could be that the students had already written their CV and were only attending the workshop to enable them to have the one to one check of their CV.

It has encouraged me to get writing my CV for my chartership course, I know all the links to the website and books etc, but it takes a long time to do. I've only just finished the education and haven't started on the hard part of summarising jobs.  I will aim to get my draft CV finished by the end of this week.  (Although life does seem to get in the way).

: 15 Feb 2011 20:44 |  Tags: Careers Chartership |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Will send my PPDP tomorrow

My mentor has looked at my PPDP and it's ok to go! I will post it off tomorrow.

I have arranged to sit on an effective applications workshop on next Friday 11th February 2011.  So that will help me with drafting my own CV and to see how the Student Careers & Skills workshops are used / valued by students compared to me showing them web pages or referring to books for CV examples.  May also help me to answer some of the questions I get asked by students.

I will start drafting a template to use for reflection this week!

In meantime you may want to look at these useful information / library blogs.

Karen Blakeman blog 

Phil Bradley's weblog

Wikiman

: 01 Feb 2011 21:08 |  Tags: Blogs Chartership Information Ppdp |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem