“Your Career Advisor” is responding this week to:

• "A message in a bottle.." from a 17 year old student

• I am in love with marketing… what should I do?

• I need your advice on how to write a professional CV?

All reasonable questions related to careers, skill development or employment related issues – sent to advisor@skill-link.com - would be addressed in this section every week.

Q2: "A message in a bottle.." from a 17 year old student "?

Sorry for bothering you, but what can I do ?

I am a seventeen years old programmer seeking a job where I can develop my programming talents and increase my knowledge. On the other hand, try to make a good sum of money. The problems of age and having no certificates up till now always block my way. Nowadays, I'm studying in the first year in the Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University, Egypt.

And I still have five long years till I obtain my degree. I can write code in several programming languages: Visual C++, Pascal, Visual Basic, Assembly, Java is in progress. I also have good knowledge of DHTML and java scripts.

Please, send me your advice and sorry for bothering you.

H. S. (Alexandria)

Replying:

Dear Mr. S

Why apologize ? we are pleased to receive your message, "bothering" is out of the question. We also liked to title of your email: "Message In A Bottle" J it is catchy and says something about your character and the intellectual side of you (all very positive things).

By the way; we advise you not to use the terms "programmer" and "code" in discussions or job applications with others. These terms are very old fashioned; from the time when mainframes and Cobol dominated IT Departments (then called EDP Centers). You are better off using the terms "Application Developer" to describe yourself.

Now to your problem, yes 17 is relatively young and you do not have a formal degree. On the other hand you are smart enough to have acquired all those skills on the various development tools you described to us. If you are good at what you do (we cannot tell of course); you stand chances to be free lancing for small businesses and organizations. You should not expect to approach a bank or a large company like Unilever or Midor, but hundreds of small firms or retail outlets may seek simple applications to track sales & inventory, or a web site to present their products etc…. These cannot afford full time IT staff, and they may find the cost of bringing in a large Software House too high for their taste. This is you niche, we know of people just like you, and in Alexandria in particular, who did a number of application development jobs for brokerage companies, pharmacies, schools etc… You will have to present yourself in a professional way and make your potential clients trust you. The question is you must be able to show some track record, such as a system you have developed for an organization or a web site for a company etc… This is very important, people do not want to feel they are the first ones to try you. Even if you have to work free of charge for one or two entities to build your track record, for example a non for profit organization (they will appreciate the free IT solution, a club etc…). Alternatively, you may seek a training (part time) position with an already established IT company in Alexandria, tell them for x months you do not want a salary but you are in for the experience. Some people would not refuse free help, specially if they know you want to prove yourself and thus will give double the effort and attention compared to a regular employee….. think about this.

We hope the above was of some use to you.
Good Luck

Q3: I am in love with marketing… what should I do?

First of all I would like to tell you about how wonderful your site is. Although I still didn't get lucky finding a job but I always enjoy visiting skill-link.com to read about your activities and browse the articles you publish.

I am a young Egyptian in my early twenties; I have a university degree in economics (2001).

I'll tell you my problem, though I don't like to call it a problem I'm pretty thankful to what I have. I am currently employed as an Office Manager & Assistant to the Chairman of a two sister companies in the field of media buying & entertainment in general... The thing is...I'm in love with Marketing. I'm studying for a diploma in Marketing at the AUC (CIM : Chartered Institute of Marketing in England). I'm very passionate about the Marketing field but was not lucky finding a job in it.

Some of the job vacancies here on skill-link.com, like Shatex for instance seem to be a great opportunity but they are senior posts such as Brand Manager.

So here's the question...Should I approach senior position in spite of my young age and limited experience in the field of marketing? How do I become passionate about my present job without being distracted or discouraged by the thought that I want something else so bad?

N. N. (Cairo)

Replying:

Dear Miss. N.

Thank you for your words of praise for skill-link.com. Actually it was not meant to be just an online job web site. A key aspect of our role is to provide useful content for our visitors addressing career, training and other employment related issues.

Now, to your particular concerns:
It is very healthy and useful for you to know what is it you like: Marketing! Age is not the issue, it is experience that counts. No just the years of experience, but also the quality and diversity of that experience. For example working for seven years in a marketing role within a small appliances company, could provide a person with less experience than the one gained working three years with another aggressive company launching numerous new products / services to a variety of segments. Similarly those working in marketing firms and advertising businesses get more exposed to a variety of markets / methods / tools than their counter parts working for an industrial or trading company. In summary, experience is measured by lessons learnt and not in number of years.

In your case you should not be targeting now senior marketing positions, it is normal for someone like you to be seeking entry-level positions in the marketing function. Of course the degree from the Chartered Institute of Marketing will help. It will give you more insight into that function, more importantly, it will demonstrate to potential employers that you are serious about this subject and you are keen on self-development.

In you current job, you are not that far from marketing, being aware of media and entertainment is definitely useful. Lots of marketing campaigns, sponsorships etc. involve media and entertainment. As a professional, you also owe it to your current employers to work hard and do your best in your job. This does not mean you are not allowed to seek other career opportunities, subject that you give them an adequate notice when you decide to leave.

Sales jobs are usually a good preparation for a marketing career. There are more entry-level job vacancies in sales than marketing. The experience gained in selling, understanding clients' reaction, feeling the heat of the competition, and knowing a particular industry well etc… are all key tools to a successful marketing professional. So may be this could be an option you would like to consider.

We hope the above was of some use to you.
Good Luck

Q4: I need your advice on how to write a professional CV?

I would like to ask for your help to write my own C.V. in a professional way and if there are samples I could follow.

S. H. E. (Egypt)

Replying:

Dear Miss E

There is no such thing as the best CV or a model CV; it should reflect your character and be informative to the reader. There are however guidelines, from reviewing tens of thousands of CVs over the last few years, you may wish to consider some of skill-link.com's key recommendations:

• Never ever, send a CV without a cover letter. It is unfortunate that a large number of graduates ignore the importance of the cover letter.
• A CV must be both brief and informative, for a recent graduate or a junior professional; a one page CV is adequate. More experience individuals may require two pages. Therefore you should avoid some of the following common mistakes:

  1. Including all the courses you have attended as part of your university degree

  2. Wasting the first 1/3 of the first page to display your personal information and contact details (these should be in 4 or 5 lines at the top of your CV)

  3. Dedicating a whole paragraph to your PC skills, numerous people who have the usual PC software skills, would dedicate a line to windows, another one for Words, a third for Excel, a fourth for Power Point etc… just have one line saying: "working knowledge" of PCs and Office applications instead.

• Start your CV with the more interesting information. Your university degree, and where you went to school are important, but what is more important - and will further differentiate your CV - would be work experience (even if it consists of summer jobs or internships).
• Avoid using colors in your CV or clip art decorations. A CV must be conservative. The font used should not be too small or too big. Times New Roman 12 is a safe choice. You may have section heads in bold or underlined, do not do more than that.

The above had to do more with the layout and content of the CV. A more important aspect is that you should avoid spelling mistakes. Employers, expect you to be at your best when writing your cover letter and CV, therefore it reflects very poorly on you to spot mistakes in that supposedly carefully prepared document. If it has mistakes, an employer will think that most probably on the job you would have an even lower quality of work.

Once you have prepared your CV, "Your Career Advisor" would be happy to review you it for you and send you comments of any. Please do not hesitate to send it by email. Meanwhile, your CV registered online on skill-link.com will be available to hundreds of corporate subscribers using skill-link.com to fill their job vacancies.

We hope the above was of some use to you.
Good Luck

Note from the editor: 
Employer names and inquiry sender names were withheld for confidentiality

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