HOW TO WRITE A CV

What is a CV?

"A curriculum vitae (often shortened CV or vita) is a written overview of a person's experience and other qualifications for a job opportunity."

           This is what Wikipedia suggest if you search this question on the internet. So basically we can say a CV is document which include details about your professional life. A  CV is  mainly focus on details about your industry experience history and educational qualifications for a certain occupation. In many countries a CV is the document that requested initially from job seekers by companies. So a good and complete CV will definitely push  you another step closer to qualify for the whatever job you apply.

What to include in a CV ?

              A CV can be long to two or more pages and it contain more detailed summary of a person. So your CV should be clear, concise, complete and up-to-date with current employment and educational information.

            The following information can be included in your CV. But consider that elements you include will depend on what you are applying for. So be sure to incorporate the most relevant information. 

•  Personal details and contact information

              Most CV s start with personal data. But you have to be careful when selecting things that include under personal details category. As a example you must avoid details like children's name , parent's name and etc.

• Education and qualifications

                Be sure to include names of institutions and dates attended.

• Work experience or Employment history

               Insert your career history in reverse date order starting with the most recent jobs.

• Skills  

               Include computer skills, language skills, sports skills and any other recent training that is relevant to the role applied for.

                      Ex:-      Training experiences

                                   Teaching experiences

                                   Publications

                                   Awards

                                   Professional licenses, Certifications and Memberships

What not to include ?

                 
                 There is no need to include your salary history, the reason you left your previous position, or the list of other companies that you submitted a CV for jobs. However, that the requirements for international CV s differ, and depend upon the country to which you are applying. In other countries, private information like your date of birth, nationality, marital status, how many children you have may be required.

An important fact

                 
                A good CV should ideally cover two to three pages.( CV s for mid-level professionals, especially in academia and medical research roles may run longer.) Always make sure the content is clear, structured, concise and relevant. Using bullet points rather than full sentences can help minimize word usage.

The following is a curriculum vitae example for an university student.

 The following CV show the European curricular vitae structure.

LIFE GOALS

What is a goal?

   "A goal is an idea of the future or desired result that a person or a group of people envisions, plans and commits to achieve."

      This is the definition of  "Goal " that we can found in  WIKIPEDIA. In other words we can say a goal is Something that we hope to achieve in the future.

Mainly goals can be divided into following categories.

•  Personal goals
• Academic goals 
• Profession goals
• Daily goals

                Actually we can categorize goals in many ways. Above are most common categories among most of the people. 

Now on let's talk about each mentioned category respectively. 

Personal goals

 

                     Personal goals are the goals that we want to achieve for the good of our personal life. As an example we can consider "taking care of  our health". This is a health goal that can be categorized under the title of personal goals. These personal goals are really important and really make an impact to our lives. Because all the other goals like Academic and Profession depend on the personality of the person. If you have a weak personality or a weak life style, then achieving  other goals may not be easy.So it is very important to consider personal goals. In following i have listed few personal goals that i have.

•         Travel the most beautiful places
•         Have a loving and fulfilling marriage
•         Raise good kids
•         Own my own house and car
•         Donate to the children’s fund
•         Have enough money to retire at age 45 if wanted

Academic and Profession goals

 

                                 As the name suggest Academic and profession goals are more linked with our educational and professional procedure.Because both of this categories are flow parallel, i have consider each of them under same topic.

                                   Education is a must for every person.Specially in 21st century , you must have a good educational qualification for survive in really competitive job market.So basically our professional life mainly depend on our education.But sometimes this can be wrong.Because in world there are many people who have achieved at the peak of success without having much education.But for most people this is true.So setting up academic and profession goals is a thing that you can start from now on , if you have not anything yet. It will definitely give you more attraction to your day to day life. Following are the few academic goals that i set to my self. May be you also can have a look at those.      

•   Complete my degree with higher GPA
•   Be a skillful careerist in whatever field i will work
•   Obtain a scholarship for my higher studies from respected university
•   Conduct tuition classes for kids as a part time job

Daily goals

                Daily goals are the goals that we can set to our normal day to living procedure. These are very simple but can be very useful for any one. Sometimes you can see these goals are more likely to be good habits or good feelings.

                In many cases i have heard people say, "I have a bad day". Well then daily goals can be helpful  to convert your bad days to good days. As an example consider  " Work on time". This is very simple right! But yet most of the people have this bad behavior of lateness. And when you used to be late , it is very difficult to abstain from that. And  also it will take time to break this bad habit completely. So if you are a that kind of person ,who are trying hard to be punctual but yet always fail then you can definitely have a daily goal as mine "Always be punctual" . I have listed few daily goals of mine in following.

•         Motivating myself
•      Be punctual
•         Organize my stuff
•      Sleep at least six hours 
•         Be patience

                    As an conclusion we can see that most of the listed goals in this article have already exist in every person's life. those are not completely new. But the truth is we don't pay much attention to those. If you consider the personalities of many successful persons , we can clearly see that they have a clear view of their lives and also they had a good plan during the journey to success. So if you want to be a successful person in the future it is important to have good set of goals. Just start with more simple one's.And at the end you will ended up as a person who achieved his / her life goals and won the world.

GOOD LUCK FOR THE FUTURE!

                  

HOW TO FACE AN INTERVIEW

Things to remember while preparing to an interview

1.      Research the company and make sure you know as much about it. So you can impress your interviewers and show them how much you care.

2.      Prepare to answer common questions and practice with a friend who knows about your field. It helps to you to feel really confident going into that interview.

3.      It’s important to prepare everything in order you need together the day before you go to the interview.

4.      Dress professionally and arrive at least 10 minutes early.

5.      When you walk into the room, stand tall, make eye contact , put a smile on your face and give your interviewers a firm, confident handshake when you introduce your self. Speak as clearly and share your thoughts and ideas.

6.      When the interview is over then stand and shake your interviewer’s handshake again and put a sincere smile and a real thank you.

Know what not to do

•        Don’t talk about your significant other, your kids or your personal problems at home.
•        Don’t bad mouth your current job or employer.

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TRUST WALK

                Trust is very important when we live with others. In last ppd session we did this game names “Trust Walk”.

                          Two members per group and one partner of each team had to guide. The blindfolded person to a certain point to complete the task. The partner was blindfolded by using serviette. We had to guide blindfolded partner through the front of the lecture hall to the outside. There were so many obstacles  in the middle path.

                                        We had a carefully guide his/her through the path. We enjoyed this activity and also we took turns and did the activity again.

These things are really important when we live in the society.

We learned,

•    How to overcome obstacles by taking the right decision.
•   How we should trust other people according to the situation.
•   How work collaboratively with other people.
  
  

WSO2 FIELD VISIT

                 A Technical Writing session was organized by University of Kelaniya.It was held on 12th September at WSO2 , situated in a very crowded area in colombo.It was very   attractive.There was a game area in the lobby.It was the first time I ever visited a software company.

        At the entrance we were given a note book and a pen.we went there at 9.00 a.m.

                                     In the first session they gave us an introduction about what the technical writing is.We did a small activity to test our knowledge and skills.Then we were divided into groups and did an activity as write instructions for a customer who is using an ATM machine for withdraw money from his/her savings account.The winning group got t-shirts from wso2.After refreshments we had a great fun.By doing an object guessing game.We had to guess the objects which were described by other teams.Our team won that game and they gave us a box of chocolate.

        It was  a good experience to us.It was very joyful and we learned a lot.

THE BARTER PUZZLE

                 This is another very challenging activity that we done in our PPD sessions. This is more like Jigsaw puzzle game. But in here there is more additional rules for make the game too hard because this will play as teams. 

What is Barter Puzzle Game?

                As I said this is a team game. Before the game start each team will get a piece of a newspaper. Then all the teams get same amount of time to read the newspaper and to identify special characters and pictures in the page. After that each newspaper piece will be teared into tiny pieces. And some of those pieces will be mixed with the pieces of other teams. Then each team can get their teared pieces of the newspaper back to start the game. The goal is create the newspaper piece as it was before. The fastest team to do that will be the winners.

Rules

• As I mentioned above some pieces will be mixed around in other groups. But It's up to the team to come up with a way to get those pieces back either through negotiating, trading, exchanging team members, etc. Whatever they decide to do, they must decide as a group.
• Each team will be given same set amount of time.

The way we done that

                  First of all we started to match the pieces as we can and create the puzzle as possible.After several minutes we identified missing pieces of our puzzle and some of our members searched those missing pieces in other groups.In that period other members continued completing the puzzle. Then we discussed about the way we should get our missing pieces back.Each member presented their ideas and finally all the members agreed to one method. Making the puzzle was very tough. Somehow after the hard effect we managed to complete our puzzle.

Things I learnt

•  Leadership skills
• Problem solving
• Time management
• Team work 
• Concentration 

STAND ON THE PAPER

                   This is another very interesting game. The game is simple. But it is challenging and really enjoyable.

                  Basically this game is all about managing the space we have and stand each member of the team on the paper.When the game goes on, paper will be teared to exactly the half of the previous size. The team who successful in many rounds or in other words the team who stand on the paper for longer time will be the winners.

Rules

1.   At least one leg of each member should be in the paper area.
2.   Teams can use any method.
3.   After each round ,size of the paper will be minimized in to the half of the size compare to the previous round.
4.   Each team will get the same duration of time. If a team unsuccessful after the given time they will eliminate from the game.

My Experience
 

                   After the game started our first task was find the correct method to balance ourselves. First round many teams were successful as well as mine. But after the few rounds it was really tough.

In the given time we had to think quickly and execute on our plan. Each member of the team done their best for win the contest.

Things I learnt

• Time management
• Team work
• Decision making
• Balancing my body
• Self confidence
• Quick thinking