Taking Advantage of…

Making the most of the things I need to do I decided to post my medial report of my grant becase this blog was born with vocation to stay, but having how his first duty to promotion periods like I am enjoying. And I love to do this because I can kill two birds whit one stone (and I love this).

In general I am very happy with my experience since now in every sense. Firstly because I think my English in improving a lot, in fact this week (the second since I come back from Christmas holidays) I think I made a qualitative leap (some people say me this and I noted!) thus summarizing, later of a piece of months when at the beginning was hard and at the eng exhausting, the holidays I think was very good for me because I come back whit fresh start. To study in the website platform “Tell me more” (as a part of the grant) sometimes could be somewhat difficult because everyday I need to spend minimum 2 hours travelling in bus to work (because I live in Cardiff, being the University where I work in in Newport, specifically in Caerleon Campus is when the library when is located the office of the Careers and Employability service of which I am part), if we plus eight hours of work and the dayly duties in home, the result is I have a very few time, but even so, this month I am trying to go on in the minimum hours I need to do (thanks to the sausages that my grandmother give to bring with me, ehich permiss me to eat something easily),  in relation to personal relationships I am also very happy because  from my house (where I live with Vaida Andrijauskaite who is Graduate school administrator in University and her boyfriend Dan, I am learning a lot of think from them and I feel very confortable living with them) to the office (where I share space with all my colleagues of tem Careers team Sharon, Jing, Kate, Shally and Lloyd and building beside of my housemate Vaida –in the trird floor- with all the team of library, all of them very nice and friendly people: so I feel very integrated into the environment in which I move everyday, I only sorry not being able to go  to the christmast dinner because I was cold).

Finally in the professional scope I am very happy, because I am where I wanted to be and it is being how I wanted or better. In the first place appreciation that people confidence in me despite the obvious difficulties of my ignorance (every time less, but still big) of the language, I am part of the meetings, informal chats about the ongoing of the service. My colleagues give me all the help I could need even I am part of the training plan for the new workers of the University (in which I assisted to a seminar about “effective review” and I have plan to assist to “An introduction to commercial&external services” and “customer relationship” the next week and some more in my long stay here) I also going to assist to a course about “Management”. At the beginning of my internship I did “shadowing” to all my team colleagues and to David Hodgings (Head of GoWales department wich manage placements scheme of the Welsh Geverment) and to Lawrence M Wilson (Head of student services) with whom I taken part of the interview of the new chaplain William Ritchie  I would like to give the welcome.

Inside of my day to day task, I import the vacancies employers input in our system, I input vacancies what we received and I look for part-time jobs for our students, I also help with tasks that may arise inside the service or maybe in the events or presentations (for example promoting) of the service. I try to use twitter to have interesting information to  contribute to my team and I write in this blog (what is promoted by my service in his website) when I try to talk about my experience and give my point of view about career and employability development. Now we are plan to introduce some time in the library main desk (to have more contact with students and improve my speaking skills).

Apart from these routine tasks, I am part of several projects (some of them cross, which affect several departments of the university):

Abroad opportunities: the goal of this project is to promote some kind of abroad experience who can improve the employability of students (gap years, volunteering, internships, study or work). Inside of this project I am doing a questionnaire around the students (the results of which I will try to inform the European office, with some Conclusions) also try to develop and restructure the information available on our website, trying to find new opportunities. Finally this long-term expected to do some promotional activities, it may related to international relations.

Following up of users: with this project we are trying to understand about the impact that the serve has on its users (and the ways we can improve the service), to this at the moment I develop a questionnaire, and we plan to do a sample of users, the idea is to do at least follow-up after this.

Illness interview: I have plans to conduct a research focused on helping to implement a formal meetings of heads of services with the office workers when tem return from a period of sick leave this is an internal project of the University beareth out with the Department of Human Resources (with whom I have had some previous contacts ahead of their formulation).

In conclusion I can highlight I like the development of my internship and I’m very happy with the environment (not only with the organization where I am) but also the country itself while driving because some information with respect to labour market I can analyze as there is grater mobility, and my analysis (although brief) is that thanks to this mobility allows for grater competitiveness and greater professional development. However, companies seem to believe more in the maintenance and education of its employees as a way of add competitive structure and the public sector seems to be endowed with a structure that makes it more efficient. This is not to say that British society is without problems, there is it, but in terms of values within the scope of work in which I move, I must say that I am very satisfied, which has beaten my mind and my future plans, so we’ll see…

To finish I can not say goodbay without invite you to the Creative Futures wich Career Service is runing the next week:

To finish I can not say goodbay without invite you to the Creative Futures fair wich Career Service is runing the next week:





And I can not say goodbye without advice you to have the same experience as me if you liked what you read, in ECTARC it is extended the application deadline for this phase to Monday January 30th and there is 37 places available , so I encourage you to take a lok to http://www.ectarc.com/european-training/working-abroad_117.html on the ECTARC website for information or you can reach the same page via the GO Wales website. The application form is available on the ‘Downloads – Applications’ page along with more information, including a clear table showing the elements paid for by the Leonardo and HEFCW funding. GO for it!