Top tips for finding the right placement for you by Ellie

This is a guest post by 2nd year YIB student Ellie, who is studying BSc Management with Human Resources at Royal Holloway and has just secured an HR placement. She shares details of the recruitment process she encountered and offers tips to fellow students.

Hi! My name is Ellie and I have just secured my 3rd year placement with Jacobs Douwe Egberts (JDE) as HR Talent Intern. In this post I’m going to offer my tips and advice to help you succeed in finding the right placement for you. 

I applied for several placement opportunities before securing the one at JDE and all application processes varied slightly. Some asked for video interviews whereas others asked for a phone call. My first tip would be DON’T GIVE UP. I faced plenty of rejections before receiving the phone call from JDE to say I had been offered the job - trust me, the feeling of being offered that placement made all of the rejections and being disheartened worth it.

CVs

My advice when it comes to your CV is to definitely book a CV appointment via the careers@ portal. They have some really great documents that helped me to make my CV more concise! I took a gap year and gained some experience in HR and therefore my CV was about 4 pages long! With the help from Katharine (Placement team) and the Careers team, I managed to pinpoint the most important aspects of my experience and halved my CV to 2 pages. 

Cover Letter

When it comes to cover letters, I found it was great to have a rough template that I would come back to and edit it with the skills to match the specific job application I was applying for. It isn’t a great idea to just send out the same cover letter to all applications as employers are looking for the relevant skills in your cover letter which should be addressed to THEM (or Sir/Madam if you don’t have a specific name to address it to). Tailoring your cover letter to the application will make you stand out from those who may have sent out a generic letter. 

Application Processes

In this section I’m going to talk about my specific process with JDE. This included a video interview, teams interview, a phone call, teams meeting, final interview and then a call - I am aware that some processes ask to go to assessment centres and/or present a presentation on a topic however I didn’t experience this so can’t offer any advice other than to dress professionally!!

Video interview

So, after I sent off my application I received an email from Sanctuary Graduates who are the recruitment agency that JDE uses for applications to cut hundreds of applications down to the final 4 or 5. This email was a link to a video interview in which I had to open the link and answer some questions in my own time. 

Top tips for video interviews would be to research the company first and plan potential answers, dress professionally, speak clearly, find a quiet, non distracting environment and don’t sit moving around too often as this can distract from your answers. The questions would come up on my screen and I had a set amount of time to think of an answer (I think about 2 minutes), then another 2-3 minutes to click ‘record’ and film my answer (once you hit record there's no going back so if you mess up on a word, carry on - don't hesitate looking for a way to restart because very often there isn't a way!!). 

There were 4-5 questions to answer and this process took about 20-30 minutes before it was submitted and I awaited further updates.

MS Teams Interview

Next, I was sent an invite to a teams interview with a representative from Sanctuary Graduates. Again, my tips for a teams interview would be the same as the video interview in as far as dressing professionally, being in a quiet environment and having a background that isn't distracting (try to find a blank wall or somewhere in front of a blind/curtains that can be shut). If this isn't possible, you can use the blur effect on teams that blurs out everything around you! During the interview, I was asked questions that dug deeper into my experience. I was also asked some competency questions that require you to answer is STAR format which is where you explain the:

Situation that you were in,

the Task you were doing,

the Action you took

and the Result.

When answering any questions, it is important to use “I” and not “we” as the interview is only interested in yourself - if it's a situation that didn’t have a positive outcome, that is fine as long as you acknowledge how you learnt from it and do not lay blame on anyone else. 

Phone Call

I won’t go into too much detail here but after the teams interview, I heard back to say I had been shortlisted and would be getting an invite to an informal meeting over teams in which I would meet the current intern (whose job I would be taking over), as well as the other 3 candidates who were shortlisted.

 MS Teams Meeting

This meeting was more of an informal chat with a cup of coffee (JDE are of course a coffee company!!). The current intern  went through a presentation explaining in depth who JDE were, what the job would entail, and gave us an opportunity to ask any questions ahead of the final interview.

Final Interview

The all important final interview. I’ve made it this far, to fall at the last hurdle would have been gut wrenching! The informal meeting was on Friday and the final interview on Monday, so I spent the ENTIRE weekend doing some research, preparations, more research and more prep. By Monday, I felt fairly confident that I had done all I possibly could, and whatever the outcome I’d be proud of my efforts. The interview was with the current intern and the placement manager (the person I will go to for everything next year!). They both made the interview process less daunting and pretty enjoyable. It was a formal interview in as far as again, dressing appropriately, having a plain background, quiet place etc.. but they made it nice and chatty so there weren’t any awkward silences. We spoke about the job I would be doing, my HR experience, and then I was asked both competency and situational questions. After the interview which lasted an hour, I felt confident with how it all went and was told that if it was a clear decision, I would hear back tomorrow but if not I would be made aware of another interview with “The Big Bosses”!!

 The next day, I got an email from the placement manager asking if he could call me with some news. 20 minutes later he called with the good news to say I really stood out in the interviews and he would be delighted to have me as the newest intern for 2023/2024, and just like that I had secured my placement!

To sum up, here’s a list of my top tips and advice:

-        Research the company you are applying for

-        Dress professionally (no hoodies lol, I love a hoodie but opted for a plain black top and jeans) - even though on a teams meeting they can’t see your bottom half, I suggest still wearing something smarter than pj bottoms as it helps you get in professional mode!

-        Plain background or use blurring effect on teams

-        Use headphones/airpods as this limits the amount of background noise

-        Try not to fidget too much! If you are nervous, it may be useful to have something off camera you can subtly fidget with but don’t make it obvious (wobbling or constantly playing with hair etc will be distracting to your interviewer)

-        Eye contact - obviously don’t spend the entire interview staring into the interviewers soul, but equally don’t spend it staring in the complete wrong direction

 

I hope this helps, feel free to email me or message on LinkedIn with any questions or extra advice!! www.linkedin.com/in/ellie-graziano-6470a7177