The Ultimate Housing Guide – Birmingham Pt 2: After Renting

Honestly many students have a problem with their current rented property but either don’t care or think they don’t have the right to complain. I only know a few people that ever complained to their agency and I am one of them. And if we keep our mouths shut about the current quality of living it will never improve.

The Ultimate Housing Guide – Birmingham Pt 1: Renting

Even though I claimed that I’ll start a series that will give you tips and some information on housing and writing applications, applications are all I have been writing about. So I decided to finally write what I’ve been aching to write for months. A guide on how you can avoid renting a crap property (Pt 1) and if you already did, what you can do about it (Pt 2). I know it might already be too late for this years students but it might be of use to the following. (This took ages to write.)

Note that I am going to focus on renting a shared house as you already get enough support from the company/university if you have any troubles with student accommodation.

The Viewing:

This is the “first” step after you have gone to an agency or checked various websites. You arrange a viewing to be able to see the actual building in reality. I greatly recommend doing that as friends of mine that didn’t had got quite big shocks when they arrived at the house after not viewing it.

Even if you feel like you are intruding into somebodies privacy, you have to be aware of the fact that usually you only have one viewing so you need to make sure to have seen everything of the house. I made that mistake and once I moved in I noticed so many flaws that I wished I never signed the contract.

Bloomberg Stage 2 – Telephone Interview – Software Development Placement

Now when I was complaining about how hard the interview with Nomura was you have to consider that this was my very first interview so I did not have much experience. If the interview at Nomura was bad that the telephone interview with Bloomberg was a complete, absolute and epic disaster.

It was my very first telephone interview and absolutely nothing like I expected it to be. 2 days ago I received the call, I was already patiently waiting for it in front of my laptop (more like completely panicking). Then I still believed I was well prepared. But then the Software developer that was interviewing me started asking me questions.

Why did you choose to apply for Bloomberg?

So… you’re applying for a Placement? (Pt. 1)

You probably have enough resources that tell you about the format of you cover letter and CV or about how you should complete application forms. So I’m not going to get into that.

I will tell you about the things I consider the most important in getting to the next stage of an application, the first stage interview may it be a telephone or face-to-face interview.

1. Time
   You have to invest a lot of time into your applications, otherwise they will not end well. But be reassured, once you finished your first application it only gets easier. You end up getting used to the questions companies ask and you can reuse some answers you have written.Personally I spent a whole month writing up my applications. In total I sent 15 applications and I’ve gotten 10 replies by now 40 days after sending off my very first application. Of which I got 4 rejections and 6 invitations to an interview.
2. Accuracy
   Make sure to filter information properly. When you apply for a certain role you want to write your cover letter in a way that shows you are informed. This could mean a similar writing style, using the companies keywords and the like.This is even more important when you are asked questions in the application process. Eg.: Give an example of where you’ve applied initiative. You don’t want to ‘waffle’ you need to get straight to the point only giving extra information if it is necessary in order to understand your point. It is advantageous to read into the STAR and the IDEA approaches of answering questions.
3. Online Assessment
   Honestly I personally think this is the applicants greatest enemy. A standardised test to asses if you’re skilled enough for the company. They range from just one test for an application to 4 different ones. There is the Verbal, Numerical, Inductive reasoning and E-tray test. Each of them could be required individually or in combination. I honestly recommend practising these before attempting them for your application. One of the reliable places to get practice tests from is SHL. They actually provide a lot of companies with the tests so practising the ones on their page helps a lot.

I believe these were the three most important things I had to consider while going through the first step of the application process.

Helpful Links:
TargetJobs generally is really helpful if you’re looking for a placement they give you tips and information about the employer
The University of Kent has a really good careers page with loads of helpful information
The University of Bradford same as Kent with extensive information, the difference is that this information is a bit more ‘modern’
Of course there are much more pages just Google Good CV or cover letter and you’ll find a lot of good sources.

Finally I wanted to introduce you to LaTex. Latex is a document markup language and document preparation system which is mainly used in Computer Science and Maths. To use latex you’ll need a Tex distribution like texworks – my favourite by the way – and a some time to research and practice. In the end it is worth it to use Latex since it’ll give your CV & Cover letter a professional flair.

New Post Series: Tips for housing and placement/internship applications

I’ve decided after thinking about it for a while that I’ll start a series of posts related to housing and job applications. All of this will be based on my experiences and will be very subjective but it might help somebody.

The reasons for this decision were based on the fact that I basically have completed a massive amount of applications and have managed to get to the second stage for some and failed for others. And that I’ve been having housing troubles for a long long while now, troubles that I could have avoided.

I’ll start posting about everything soon, the posts will probably end up being published in very short intervals so be prepared.