One of the most difficult challenges at the beginning of your career is writing your CV. We know the aim of the CV, is to impress the company and convey you’re the right person for that role. When you have just graduated and your CV is only made of your school experiences, presenting yourself as the right person seems impossible. You think that all your years spent at the university have been a waste of time and you will never find a job without any experience. But the reality is that you can still make your CV interesting even when your unique experiences are related to your studies.
In this case, therefore, obviously you should not simply insert in your CV the academic title and the name of the university but use all the school years to bring out experiences and skills you had not thought about but that you have surely acquired and that you can use to make your CV stronger.
The first thing to do is to not see your college years only as a period spent studying, and in which your only acquired skills are related to your ability to memorize many books to pass the exams (which by the way is a great skill).
Think instead of all your exams, projects, presentations.
Did you work on a group project that you had to present in front of the class or a commission of professors? You have already acquired 4 skills: research (research and competitor analysis are tow common tasks of many jobs in fashion), teamwork (the ability to work independently and also in teams is required in all the jobs), you used powerpoint to create the presentation and you practiced with your communication skills to present it.
You have therefore acquired 4 skills that you can add into your CV:
- Analysis and research
- Teamwork
- Communication
- PowerPoint
Did you have to do analysis to develop a report? Surely you had to use Excel, which is the number one tool required by all positions in any fashion company, you used your analytical skills to understand what data to use to draw results and create a report.
Have you worked on your clothing line while you were at school? Then you have certainly acquired all the necessary skills: from market research to understanding and choosing the fabrics, competitors analysis, design, production …
Did you work on your dissertation while you were taking the last exams or worked on other projects? You’ll surely have multi-tasking and organizational skills to manage multiple things at once.
Did you take care of the school blog / magazine? Then you developed editorial and writing experiences
Analyze every activity you have done at school / university and associate it with one or more skills.
The descriptions in the form of a bulleted list do not necessarily have to be added only to work experiences. When at the beginning of your career you need to make your CV more substantial by using only your school experiences, it is advisable to add descriptions for your university or master’s degree as well.
For example, I attended a Master’s degree during which I worked on projects for Versace, Estee Lauder
The part of the Master on my resume was written like this:
Master ____ at ____ Year
- CRM Project for Versace (analysis of competitors, teamwork …)
- Marketing Project for Estee Lauder (market research, analysis of the beauty sector, product development, …)
- Marketing Project for the beauty retailer Marionnaud
So it was visible to the recruiters that I knew about CRM, marketing and that I knew the fashion and beauty industries and the main players.
After my first internship, I deleted the master’s description and gave more space to the description of the internship tasks. Always remember that the structure of your CV must be clean and concise.
Using examples and practical descriptions
You don’t need necessarily to add experience related to the fashion industry. If I did a CRM project for any other company than fashion, this is how I would have added it on my CV:
CRM project (competitor analysis, group work …)
I would not have mentioned the company probably since was not a fashion one, but CRM or marketing or whatever you are studying PR, communication, in the end, have the same basic theories. Therefore, even if you have not studied fashion, add your projects in your CV.
You don’t have to add only projects in the description, you can also insert a couple of courses that can be particularly interesting for the fashion internship you want to apply for.
You took a course and gave an exam on:
- project management
- excel for business
- PR and
communication Marketing - Writing
- International Business
…
Add a couple of exams relevant to the keywords in the job description.
I hope that from today you will see your college years with different eyes 😉 Although you have not yet had the opportunity to have work experiences, the lessons
