The CILIP Fellowship guide includes information on what documentation you need to include in your application. This includes:
Before I registered as a Fellowship candidate, I listened to a webinar led by CILIP assessors which should be accessible to CILIP members here. One of the points highlighted was that you might want to consider creating a skills-based CV rather than a chronological one. I'd never heard of a skills-based CV and had to do some research to find out how they are formatted. I found that you would usually match your skills with the person specification, so in this case I selected the ones I felt best characterised my current role, namely:
I shared my CV with The Fellowship of the Ring for feedback. This was slightly cringe-worthy but also really useful for helping me identify further changes. It was a relief when our mentors suggested I leave it as it is for now, and revisit it closer to submission, when I might want to revise some of it to account for any further professional development.
I then decided to move on to the annotated job description and one of us will be reflecting on our experience of this in a future blog post.
Rachel Fell, Senior Assistant Librarian, Manchester Metropolitan University
- Your CV: this should be annotated, up to four pages long and include some reflection on your career development so far.
The last time I updated my CV was for my Chartership application over ten years ago so I desperately needed to create a new one but it wasn't something I was relishing. However, I've recently found some organisations are asking for a CV as part of their application process so updating it felt even more important.
Before I registered as a Fellowship candidate, I listened to a webinar led by CILIP assessors which should be accessible to CILIP members here. One of the points highlighted was that you might want to consider creating a skills-based CV rather than a chronological one. I'd never heard of a skills-based CV and had to do some research to find out how they are formatted. I found that you would usually match your skills with the person specification, so in this case I selected the ones I felt best characterised my current role, namely:
- Team working and Leadership
- Effective Communication and Presentation Skills
- Organisational Skills
- ICT Skills
- Specialist Skills
I included a few bullet points within each section demonstrating how I had developed these skills in my current and previous roles. I added some non-professional points, such as volunteering with local community groups, as I felt these were important and had significantly added to my skills development.
One of my mentors recommended reading a chapter about CVs in a book called Practical Tips for Developing Your Staff by Gil Young and Tracey Pratchett (London: Facet, 2016). I found this incredibly useful and would highly recommend it as a checklist of what you should be including. They encourage you to think about your CV as a marketing tool to sell yourself. One of their suggestions is to include a short paragraph after your personal details outlining your unique selling points and this should be tailored to the role you are applying for. Another tip I really liked and adopted was to include two or three personal recommendations written by people you have worked with such as your line manager.
Once I was happy with the content of my CV I moved on to the annotations. From speaking to our Mentors I found that this could be done either at the end of the CV, or included as comments in the documentation, and I went for the latter. The annotations need to reflect on your career development so far; I actually found these easier than putting the CV together as it was interesting to look back at how I had progressed since qualifying.
Once I was happy with the content of my CV I moved on to the annotations. From speaking to our Mentors I found that this could be done either at the end of the CV, or included as comments in the documentation, and I went for the latter. The annotations need to reflect on your career development so far; I actually found these easier than putting the CV together as it was interesting to look back at how I had progressed since qualifying.
I shared my CV with The Fellowship of the Ring for feedback. This was slightly cringe-worthy but also really useful for helping me identify further changes. It was a relief when our mentors suggested I leave it as it is for now, and revisit it closer to submission, when I might want to revise some of it to account for any further professional development.
I then decided to move on to the annotated job description and one of us will be reflecting on our experience of this in a future blog post.
Rachel Fell, Senior Assistant Librarian, Manchester Metropolitan University
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| CCO/public domain: https://pixabay.com/en/opportunity-recruitment-employment-3185099/ |
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