Guest blog written by Kate, placement student at IBM. She is working within the recruitment attractions team with a heavy focus on the marketing side.

Only four months into my placement I feel I have gained a plethora of knowledge when it comes to the recruitment process in general, so I thought I’d share my top five tips for landing yourself your dream career.

Tip One – Personalistion: Most application forms will have a designated area for you to share why exactly you want to work for that specific organisation. Make it personal, naming specific products, projects, people, advertisements, initiatives or strategies. Try this – if you remove the company name from your answers and still feel the content could be applicable to other organisations, it’s not personal enough!

Tip Two – Social Media: It can hugely improve the personalisation element of any application form. With social media being at the very core of our society nowadays, we have access to a wealth of reports, blogs, videos, podcasts and online lectures, following a company on social media is one of the most effective ways to keep up to date with their current affairs.

Tip Three – The STAR format: For those that ramble when it comes to written communication this technique is great. By identifying a situation, task, action and result of one particular instance in which you demonstrated a particular skill or competency it increases clarity and makes your statement more concise. This is particularly effective for those application forms with a word limit. This framework can also be used in face to face interviews!

Tip Four – Spelling & Grammar: There is nothing that screams lack of care and attention to detail more than poor spelling and bad grammar. Write all applications on a word document as opposed to the template provided, spell check it, check it yourself and ask a friend or relative to as well!

Tip Five – Personality: Don’t be afraid to let your personality show on an application form, we love to see examples of the competencies we measure (team work, adaptability, passion for business, ownership, self-drive, leadership, communication and creative problem solving) that are both personal and professional. Captain of the quidditch team? Solved a customer’s problem in your part-time job? We want to hear about them all both on the application and in interview!

If you want to put these tips to use in our recruitment process then please apply on our website: www-05.ibm.com/employment/uk-en/
Closing dates for IBM’s various programmes are:

12 week Extreme Blue Summer Internship – 31st December 2016  
12 month Placement Scheme – 31st January 2017
Graduate schemes – 31st December 2016