Our latest blog post is a guest post from Eva Stromsted, who is a postgraduate student in the Culture, Media and Creative Industries department here at King’s. For her master’s dissertation, she’s looking at the impact using creative CVs has on job applications. As part of this, she’s asking for your help – read this post to find out how you can help, and who knows, maybe even land a job in the creative sector……
Hi King’s students!
I am investigating how recruiters in the creative sector are unconsciously and consciously deciding what kind of candidates they invite for interviews, based on how applicants design their CV. I will be using students’ CVs to map out what a ‘successful’ job application looks like for these sectors. Unconscious bias has been heavily scrutinised with regards to sexism, age, racism and other factors, but whether ‘creativity’ is viewed positively or negatively hasn’t. I’m focusing on cultural and creative industries only.
As recruitment agencies aren’t able to share CVs they’ve received with me due to confidentiality policies, I am attempting to collect creative CVs myself! If someone has ever made a creative job application (so not a regular black and white Word-document, but for example a specific design, video resume, drawings, surveys) then it would be great if you’d be able to share it with me
If you have ever applied for a job within any of these industries, then I would love to hear from you! –> advertising, architecture, design, fashion, film and video, music, performing arts, media and publishing, software and computer services, or television and radio.
However, please do feel free to send your CV if it is ‘traditionally’ designed as well, as it might be interesting to show recruitment agencies the whole range! Also, if you know anyone outside of King’s who has created create job applications, please let me know. The more CVs I collect – the better!
Given that creative industries are dependent on creative people, I will then be looking at:
– How do we work out who is creative?
– How do we establish who should be working in the creative industries?
– Is it worth being creative in a job application at all?
Please send me your CV (eva.stromsted@kcl.ac.uk) no later than 15th May, as I will start conducting my interviews with recruitment agencies after this date. If recruitment agencies are particularly interested in any applications, I will (with your permission) be happy to share your details with them.
This study is compliant with the new GDPR legislation that comes into effect on May 20th 2018, and I will delete any CVs from my possession after their use in this study has been completed. I can anonymise any personal details that you wish to be, either when showing the applications to recruiters or in the final write-up.