Five CV-friendly skills you can gain through temping
Temping: a glimpse of the world of work
Working in an office for any length of time gives you a good idea of how organisations work and the different functions departments and people have. This type of work experience will help you hit the ground running when you start your first graduate job as you’ll already feel comfortable with basic office work such as e-mailing documents and entering data.
Words to make your graduate CV stand out
Temping often involves getting stuck into a job and learning quickly. Highlight this on your graduate CV, along with the other skills you’ve learned from temping to show employers that you’re able to fit in quickly and do a good job.
- Administrative experience including working with colleagues, using administrative software packages.
- Teamworking skills including following and/or issuing instructions and contributing to everyday tasks.
- Communication and interpersonal skills including working with new people, understanding your assignment and asking questions when necessary.
- Attention to detail through taking accurate messages, researching documents or maintaining records.
- The ability to learn quickly and absorb information quickly while working on different assignments.
Adding value to your temping work experience
Temping isn’t just about filing and data entry – you can get deeply involved in projects and may even be taken on long-term if you impress your colleagues. If you’ve worked on a project that captured your imagination or taught you something new, tell graduate recruiters about it. This will give them an insight into what makes you tick as well as showing that you’re keen to learn.
Make graduate employers happy
Target your graduate CV or application form to each job you apply for so that recruiters can see that you can offer everything they are asking for. If they’ve asked for someone with good communication skills who can work in a team, show them with examples from your own work experience that you have these attributes. This also means not including information – however interesting you may think it is – that isn’t relevant to the job. We have plenty of advice on graduate CVs (including downloadable sample CVs) if you need to see examples of what to include.
