This post is potentially a little bit of a rant – I hate the word ‘cv enhancers’ and I hate it even more when students tell me they are going to undertake some work experience or voluntary work because “it will look great on their CV”.
Whilst it might look good on your CV, that shouldn’t be a reason to undertake work experience – you should be wanting to undertake work experience to broaden your skills, help people out, volunteer and make a difference, learn something new, gain new experiences, and have a better understanding on professions and work.
Also, when you then sit in an interview or at a networking event and try and tell me all about this work experience you have done, it can be quite obvious if it was just a ‘cv enhancer’ by the way you talk about, and even worse when you actually tell me that was why you did it!
I am not sure how undertaking work experience just as a ‘cv enhancer’ benefits you, fine it might look good on your CV but what happens when you have to explain what you did, but you can’t say much as you weren’t really bothered when you were undertaking it!
Let’s try and do work experience or voluntary work for the right reasons (and benefitting your career is a perfectly good reason!), but please stop using the word ‘cv enhancer’.
Rant over.. (for now!).
Rebecca x