Secretary VUW Apointments Board

If you have read this far. I presume either that you are bored at the moment or that you are interested in the almost inevitable prospect of stepping into the market place of graduate employment. Like any other market place, this one has its own customs and conventions, forces of supply and demand, and consequential advertising and publicity. This careers supplement give you some examples of the latter activities.

How can the University Appointments Board affect things? Is the board a concumer institute, an information bureau, a complaints department, a business consultant, an advertising agency or an entrepreneur in this market place? Without wanting to stretch the analogy too far, I believe that the board fills some areas of all these functions, and. furthermore, this analogous description is certainly not exhaustive. However, the primary aim of the Appointments Board is to help students and graduates more easily to find suitable employment.

Advice and Information:

What will mainly interest you, as an undergraduate or near-graduate, is the board's role in providing advice and information on careers, which includes examining the relevance of particular courses to eventual careers. The word "advice" here can be very misleading. If you expect to be told which choice is better of the public service or private enterprise, small or large firms, sales or production, research or administration and so on. then I am afraid you will be disappointed. However, what the board can do is to give you easier access to background information which might aect such choices and possibly some advice on the criteria most people use when faced with similar decisions.

Good or Bad Jobs:

There is no such thing as an intrinsically good or bad job. There may be jobs which a majority of people think of as good or bad. but ultimately the job you have will be jour job, not your flat male's, your great uncle's, your lecturer's, or mine or anyone else's, but yours. This docs not mean that you should avoid seeking advice, as you will want to make an informed decision, but it does mean that only you can finally weigh the advantages and disadvantages before you. Recognition of ability, freedom for initiative, job interest, community service, money, social status, opportunity to travel, being deskbound, using one's degree subjects—these are some of the criteria which can be applied to selecting an area of employment.

What Do You Want?

Are you expecting too much of a job? For example, you should remember that few people are paid to pursue their hobbies, and thus most jobs have their rather uninspiring periods of routine work. On the other hand, you may be quite unaware of the career prospects in some fields which appear superficially to be inappropriate to your qualifications. Employers are being encouraged to provide the board with detailed descriptions of jobs they are offering, and the growing careers library may contain sufficient information to allow you to study and eventually decide for which jobs you would like to apply. All students registered with the board receive sumarised lists of vacancies as the jobs come to hand towards the end of the year, and these lists can give you an idea of the range of opportunities as well as a guide to which jobs yo would like to investigate further.

How You Can Help the Board:

The best way you can help, the board is to use the services available. The more students use the board's services, the more enquiries will be received by employers and this will encourage then to seek students through the board more regularly. Any increase in enquiries from students or employers will add information to the board' records and the accumulates experience can be shared by all subsequent enquirers.

If you register, you can contribute to this accumulates knowledge by reporting back on your experiences. Feed back information on different people's impresions after interviews and after being appointed to a job can help the board immensely. Unfortunately, most registrant who come back are those who have been unable to find a suitable position. By registering and co-operating subsequently you will be both helping your fellow-students.

Appointments Board Office:

Ground floor, 6 Kelburn Parade (just opposite the bottom of the main drive).

Telephone 44-447 or 46-046 etx. 856, for further information or to make an appointment.