Professional Practice (Week 2)

Developing your CV

This week we got a lecture on how to create a personal curriculum vitae (CV), in order to obtain a job and learned how it was a document that we needed to further our career within animation. I have created a CV once before for an A level class, as it was to help us on our preparation into the working world and for universities we were hoping to apply too.

Our lecture started off with Yuan informing us the correct way we should refer to ourselves in our CV, an idea of the template we could use and overall, the most concise and professional way to begin making our CV’s.

The content we needed to include within our CV was something I was familiar with such as our personal details, contact information, skills, education and to include some information on your past experiences. However, I was shocked to see how much a regular CV to apply for a day-to-day job, is vastly different and less centred to the job you are looking to apply for and the employer. The CV we are instructed to create for an animation job is instead much more creative in style, needs to be personal to your chosen place of work and has to be carefully researched before to match your employer’s exact criteria. After our morning class into what CV’s, we are expected to create, I decided to take a quick look at the CV I made when I was in school and agreed that it wasn’t the best work I could have created and took down some notes of the skills, education and personal details I had written within my pervious CV and was going to change up what skills and experiences I had included. As now with what I have been learning since finishing my course and starting my second year in university, the level of work I am producing is noticeably much different and better quality, so I have way more to write now.

Going back onto what we were first explained in the lesson about what written content our CV needed to include and the language which we should word our CV, as it is a professional document. I had learned a lot about what words were both acceptable and not acceptable to use, as descriptive words such as ‘unique’ and creative’ are something we were advised not to use as they can be quite vague and lack description of what type of person we are. I also learned the way we should introduce ourselves in our CV as it is said to best talk in first person and to keep the words and topics you discuss, in relation to the job you are applying for. This allows the employer to know that you have researched their company, the work they have produced and have read over, keeping in mind what employee they are hoping to hire from their job search.

In beginning this CV and any CV I will be sending to my desired job, I learned that it is a good first step to research the company that you are applying for and gain as much knowledge of their past and up-coming projects and an idea of the team they currently have and the workspace pipeline. I have also learned that it would be helpful during my research, to familiarise myself with what part of the team I am applying for and to introduce myself to who is hiring for that role and what work they have personally worked on. This is a good habit to get myself into as I have learned that it is not best to send out a default CV to every employer you are looking to be hired by and to instead research that studio and employer, as the employer may notice how vague your language is to their job search and not find you eager enough or acceptable to what they are hoping to find. I will need to tweak my CV for their role and make sure that I show to them that I am applying for their position, their company and have already provided that little bit of effort to show them my determination and interest for their job specifically.

I had used websites such as Indeed and Glassdoor Jobs to search for the job application I am looking to be hired into and have spent some time searching up the studio’s history, projects and a bit more information into the team and requirements of their job search. In order to practice our CV’s, the job I found was for the animation company Aardman Animations, who are based in Bristol and was for an employment of a character designer position. This was a live job application, for a studio that I have actually admired and have been familiar with my entire career. So, it was interesting to imagine that if I was in the right time of my life to apply for these employers, that this job would be something I would realistically try to achieve and work towards in having the company consider me for an interview. To choose this company and job application for my base of practicing my CV and mock interview, I feel was a great choice and opportunity to get good feedback on my CV and if presented well enough, give me a confidence boost to potential apply for the job, for real, in the future.

The information I needed to include in the CV for personal details, contact information and education is pretty standard and for me the difficulty has been on what to include in the document about what skills and experiences do I think would show my work and abilities in their best light. I can obtain a little understanding of what best to include from what the job application itself asks for and in making sure I include some keywords also used in the application, so that my application stands out and is firstly consider by the company. Although in terms of experience, I don’t have much when it comes to free-lance work or interesting things in my opinion, however with each task and life lesson I have learnt in both school and university. I have definitely grown in personal experiences and would be able to talk about some skills I have learnt along the way and that would boost my CV and show that I am a hardworking, progressive artist that will excel and adapt in any space I find myself within.

Experiences that I have thought about including, could be the time I created my first stop motion short movie for my end of year assignment in school and how I did this with no experience in the field and had produced this animation with the new skills and information I had just learnt along the way. If I felt necessary, I could also go into more detail talking about how in my class it a common option to a produce was a final piece of a painting or sculpture and to keep in lines of a subject which teachers knew more about and could provide help with. However, I have always wanted to try creating, developing and shooting a stop motion piece for myself and when I noticed that in this end piece, we had the ability and freedom to create whatever art we wanted. I had taken this opportunity to pitch the idea to my teacher, showed my ideas, character designs, concepts and how I planned to make the models. At first my teacher was apprehensive in how I was going to be able to successfully complete this project, but when he had saw my passion and the research I had already done for the project, I was happy to say that the final outcome is still a piece of work I am most proud. This project relates to my CV as it is an experience that pushed me to develop the skills of independent working, how to think on my feet when it came to difficult decisions and was a great push, teaching that with good research and determination, a great product can be made.

Something that I am looking forward to when am designing my CV and professional material, is the more creative approach I wasn’t aware which we could take on producing our own versions of our CVs. Yuan had showed us some other people’s CV’s which they had created using characters, colours, their own drawings and had really used their CV as a means to express their own individuality through a word document, video, game or interactive piece. This opened my eyes to creating a CV as before I viewed a CV as a boring document listing all the stuff your life has come to at that point, however learned that you can have more freedom when creating your CV as long as it is legible and holds the correct information.

I began firstly by creating my artist statement, where I began in referring to the employer who was hiring for their team and had made sure to include keywords, relevant topics to the job application and continued this with introducing myself and what I hope to provide as an employee. This cover letter was going to be the first document the employer would see from me and was going to be my introduction to the CV.

Across all of my documents which I was going to create both in Word Document and Photoshop, for a more personal touch, I was going to follow a theme of a light pink background, scattered clouds and a character of me presenting each document. I hope that with my CV and other documents, that I am considered for the company I am applying to and will be able to attend loads of interviews, improving my CV template and communication skills with each feedback I may get.

Communicating in a Digital World

In the afternoon, after we had attended our morning class, we were given the opportunity to attend a helpful lesson on communication within a digital world and how both the digital and verbal language that we use within both our personal lives and a professional setting. Can impact our ability to be hired, accepted within our career and has a big impact on how we are perceived by others. In this lecture we were given an interactive lesson with questions and scenarios that we were able to personally picture ourselves within, decide how we would communicate within these situations and evaluate how acceptable our response would be in real life.

In this lesson I learnt a lot about the type of person I am and how this can change or stay the same when working in a professional practice and was able to find out that from the in-class quizzes, I had presented myself as a little bit of a push over in the working world, but someone who would attract minimal conflict. I have always known I am a timid person, who gets on with their work and has little to no conflict within the professional side of life and how this would change from day-to-day life, as I could find myself more outspoken and confident in a familiar social interaction. However, I was able to learn a lot about what type of personal I am and how this could affect my life, as when it comes to a professional situation, I am more likely to go the route of staying quiet and completing the work set for my project. I would stand up for myself if things ever got bad, however as I just accept the rankings within a workplace. I believe it’s better to not speak up too much, let the boss get on with their own task and all will be happy.

This has worked so far within my career, however an immediate disadvantage I learnt from the talk of digital communication, is allowing people to see you as a non-conversational person is a benefit when everyone is respecting but can quickly change to others seeing you as a push over and a person to take advantage of easily. I thankfully haven’t felt this yet but was an interesting thing to learn and understand that being accepting and a hard worker is great, however in order to progress and be respected, you need to be able to speak up for yourself and always find a healthy balance. These lectures and tools on how to communicate within a digital world, are helpful lessons to learn when combined when applying for a placement. As when we begin to develop our career as artists, we want to make sure we are being respected within our craft, respect others and can manage ourselves successfully when being hired for a job.