Lucy Pavia, author of girluninterrupted shares her list of dos & don’ts when looking for your first job

Posted by Fran, May-17-2010

Lucy Pavia – author of girluniterrupted shares her list of dos & don’ts when looking for your first job

As a class of 2008 graduate, arriving into the working world felt a bit like turning up uninvited to a party; the reception was frosty and no-one offered me a drink. Undeterred (and very stupid) I chose to follow a career in magazine journalism, and after two years, many tears, an incident with a pug and 467 Starbucks runs, here is what I’ve learned:

1)  Keep your CV short. My father has been working for 45 years and his still fits onto one page. No-one cares that in the summer of 2005 your responsibilities at Café Nero included ‘cleaning the coffee machine and wiping tables’; this fascinating insight will be explained in the job title. The Managing Editor of a top fashion glossy once told me that a one page CV is a great display of self-confidence. That said, the same woman also told me she was impressed that I hadn’t felt any pressure to dress fashionably for my interview…

2)  There is absolutely no excuse for being late for an interview, bar sudden death or a complete and unexpected shutdown of all available transport anywhere. Turn up an hour early, find a nearby cafe, read your CV over, and interview yourself. Other occupants of the cafe thinking you’re mad is preferable to a potential boss thinking you’re unreliable.

3)  Carry an umbrella on the way to an interview. I once met a Features Editor of a newspaper looking like a human dishcloth. I was sitting by a warm radiator and my clothes began to steam…

4)  Be nice to everyone, particularly the nasty sourpuss bent on making you feel rubbish. Like a playground bully, she’ll stop when she sees it’s not working.

5)  Don’t bitch. Or even worse, don’t send bitchy emails. I once heard a horror story of a guy in an office who wrote to a friend about a fellow female colleague saying ‘X never seems to wear a bra.. Have you noticed?’ He accidentally hit reply to the entire 300 staff in the building, including poor old X. He lost all professional credibility in the click of a mouse.

6)  If you get chatting to a high-flyer at a party, email them the following day saying how good it was to meet them. They could become a valuable mentor.

7)   When covering a celebrity party, don’t point at the nearest D-lister and ask the PR loudly: ‘who’s that then?’

8)   On a similar theme, don’t drink too much if you’re covering a party.

9)   Don’t power trip the work experience person. In years to come you could find them sitting across from you in an interview and they won’t have forgotten that 1000 paperclip challenge you set them at 5.30 on a Friday afternoon.

10)   Accept sometimes that life isn’t fair and many job opportunities simply boil down to luck and circumstance. Case in point: a friend of mine worked with a man who habitually picked up half the pile of CVs and threw them in the bin with the words ‘I don’t like working with unlucky people’.

Follow Lucy’s blog at www.girluninterrupted.co.uk/