This week Memuna Younis tells us about why she decided to volunteer as one of our Career Ambassadors, a group of students who help us spread the word about Career and Employability Services across the University. We’d love you to get involved too, and there’s details about how you can at the bottom of the page. Meanwhile, back to Memuna’s story…
I am a 3rd year Adult Nursing student and in my second year I decided to become a career ambassador. As a nursing student you tend to spend 50% of your time at the university and 50% of your time on placement; earlier on in my first year I realised that being on such a course meant that you were away from university a lot, making it quite difficult to integrate and completely experience university life most of the time, and for me it would make me feel disconnected from the university itself.
So in my 2nd year I came across the Career Ambassador Scheme which I decided to join. This gave me the opportunity to volunteer at the careers fairs, go to monthly meetings and as a result I got to meet other students from different degree programmes. By volunteering I got to be a little more involved with the university which meant that I felt more a part of the university. I have enjoyed being a careers ambassador and helping out where I can as I have gained a number of skills such a communication, managing my time and team working- valuable skills that employers look for. I would encourage others to become a career ambassador and promote the service to other students so that they can benefit from the service provided at the university.
Besides being a careers ambassador I have also used Career and Employability Services to get help with a job application which I found extremely useful, as the career consultant helped me to break each aspect of the application form down and helped me to understand what each section is actually asking for. The good thing about the Careers Service is that they specifically tailor any guidance to the profession/job you want to enter, so with me I was applying for a job through NHS Jobs and the career adviser knew the layout of NHS job application and what type of answers they look for, and she was able to help me to see where my experience and qualification would fit into the job application. Again, I would encourage all students to book themselves an appointment with a career consultant and seek help when applying for jobs, creating CVs or covering letters and getting help around interview techniques.
Thanks very much Memuna. See more about becoming a Career Ambassador here, and to register your interest please email careers@bradford.ac.uk with your name, course, year and UB number with the subject ‘Career Ambassadors 2017/18’ and we’ll keep you posted about the programme for next year.