Lloyd brought up a few good points in his response to my previous post titled Life after Graduation, so I thought I would take this opportunity to discuss it in more detail.

Social Media is nothing new, but it’s something that has grown exponentially in the last few years, it’s hard to walk down the street today without seeing some form of Social Media at work, even large news corporations are starting to use Social Media (rightly or wrongly) as a conduit for gathering news worthy stories.

Almost everyone now has a Facebook account, well not everyone, there are only 350 million Facebook accounts and many billions of people on the planet – but chances are most if not all of the people in your group of friends and family will have one. Social Media isn’t just about having an account though, it’s about how you use it.

For recent graduates Social Media can be a very powerful tool to increase your exposure and employability. The technology industry is an extremely fast moving and competitive place, and as everyone says, the more employable you can make yourself, the more chance you have of getting a job.

This is where Social Media comes in, how better to show employers that you are passionate about the industry and show off your talents than taking advantage of some of the most popular tools on the web?

The main goal of all of this is to create a brand for yourself, when someone searches your name in Google you actually want them to find something, your blog, your twitter account, your LinkedIn account , and the content that lives there go towards helping you get your name out there, and gets you associated with the industry.

Blog

Blogs have also been around for years, but I’m surprised how many of my fellow Computer Science graduates don’t even have one! It’s is one of the first things you need to do in order to get your name out there.

Think of something you’re interested in or find interesting about the industry and create a blog about it, use it to share interested things you’ve found on the subject, or add your own opinion to commonly discussed topics.

Use your blog as an avenue to show off some of the work you have done, if you’ve a designer, show off your designs, if you’ve written a cool piece of code, share it, it all helps a potential employer get an idea of the work you are capable of and how passionate you are about the area.

Twitter

Twitter is a fantastic tool to help you drive traffic to your blog and to share interesting links with your followers. While Twitter isn’t going to be able to get you a job, using it will get you more exposure, and at the end of the day that’s what you need to do, get more people to see your work and skills.

Facebook

For most people Facebook is a walled garden, I personally prefer to have my privacy settings as high as they go, but that doesn’t mean that Facebook doesn’t play a key part in using Social Networking effectively. Recently Facebook has opened up many of the News Stream features to behave much like Twitter, meaning that it’s another way to get your name out there.

LinkedIn

If your goal is to use Social Media to get yourself a Job outright then LinkedIn is probably the most important place to start. LinkedIn is a bit like using monster.com except it focuses more on the business relationships you have made – but it doubles as very useful job hunting tool. Fill out as much your profile as you can, take things from your CV and try to sell yourself. From there you can go to the Linkedin Jobs section and apply for some in the same way as you do on monster.com.

To get the most out of LinkedIn I would recommend searching the Groups Directory for groups in the field you want to pursue and join as many as you can. A while ago I joined a PHP Developer group and ever since then I’ve got quite a few recruitment consultants contact me, so it does work!

Having said all this Social Media isn’t just a way to promote yourself, it’s a chance to learn from influential people in the industry, stay up to date on what’s going on and learn new skills.

Marking the end of my university life was the Graduation ceremony that took place a few days ago. Over the past few years I have taken part in a lot of different schemes from Student Ambassador to the Study Abroad & Industrial placement scheme. By some huge amount of luck I managed to get a job strait out of university, in fact it was only a few weeks after my final exam that I started at Miniclip. Of course, I applied to quite a few different places before I got offered the job in quite a few different types of companies. I thought it might be useful to share some basic tips that helped me along the way.

1. Have a good CV

Obvious right? Well not really, I’m often baffled by what some people pass off as ‘good’. Before you do any applications go through your CV and read it! give it to a friend to read, or even better send it to the Kingston University Careers Team to have a look over. While reading it, ask yourself these simple questions:

1. Does it make sense?
2. Are there any grammatical errors?
3. Are there any spelling errors?
4. Does it look professional? (ie. NO clip art, word art, page borders etc)
5. Is the information actually relevant?
6. If you were the employer, would the CV get you interested?

I’ve seen quite a few CV’s for various reasons and some of them have had me rolling on the floor, simply because they couldn’t be bothered to read through it before giving it to employers. It all really comes down to this; Why should someone give you a job if you can’t be bothered to check it through? Like me I’m sure there’s not much you can put on a CV that isn’t university work, but a good way to make your CV stand out is to do more than just the course, become a Student Ambassador for example or do a placement – it all helps your chances.

2. Use monster.com

Kingston University offers help when looking for jobs but don’t rely on it and expect everything to be done for you. Putting my CV on monster.com was the reason I found out about the job at Miniclip, you will get called by lots of recruitment agencies but it’s a mutual relationship, you want a job and they want a position filled. It’s worth doing even if there isn’t a job you want up there at first – give it a few days / a week and there will be, they are always being added.

3. Many Eggs != One Basket

Just because you’ve applied for a few jobs doesn’t mean that’s it, apply for more – and keep applying, the more interviews you get the more chance there is of you getting further. It’s easy to pin all your hopes on a few applications, but applying for more even if it’s a few every night will improve your chances significantly.

4. Do Your Research

Research is your friend – even thought it might not be fun. Don’t go into an interview with no idea what the company does, it’s always a good idea to research as much as you can before just in case you get a question that catches you out. Use Wikipedia, the company’s website or Google to find out more information, including latest news and basic facts about employee numbers / market sectors / new products etc.

A bit late, but better late than never I believe the saying goes.

I have now completed my Kingston University course and have come out of it with a First Class BSc(Hons) Computer Science: Digital Imaging degree.

After all the craziness of the last 10 or so months all of the effort I put into my final year project paid off, and I was rewarded with another A and a first class degree at the end of it, a pretty good return on investment if you ask me.

Since I have now finished my degree I have also been lucky enough to become a Web Developer at Miniclip, where I am currently working on some cool Facebook related projects.

So there you go, the end of university, the end of being a student. There are a few people that I would like to thank that helped make the days more interesting, the first is Roger Andrews for all the fun we had on the Open Days, and for listening to the feedback we gave. The second is Jonathan Briggs for being such a great and inspiring lecturer. And lastly of course Lloyd.

Good Times.

Following on from my previous post previewing some of the things that I’ve been doing for my final year project I wanted to highlight a recently finished feature that started out a small addition but ended in a nicely polished and useful feature to the project.

The Holiday Planner is part of the Customer Centre, the idea behind it is that customers can choose from a predefined list of activities to do on their holiday, these can be scheduled in either the morning, afternoon or evening. It is a visual representation of the activities that a customer wants to do while they are on holiday, viewed as a calendar. The calendar view makes sure that the customers holiday is always in the centre of the grid, calculating the amount of days needed before and after to fill the 7 x 5 grid.

Holiday Planner Calendar View

The activities can be added by clicking on a day that falls within the customers holiday, these activities can then be edited / deleted by clicking on them and using the AJAX pop-up that appears.

Edit an activity

The main reason the feature exists is to strengthen the business case for the project by providing customers with a value to booking online beyond the convenience of using such a service. If there is any left over time there are a few additions I would like to make, the first one being the ability to export the calendar as a PDF for example.

Of course as a V1 feature there is no ability to customise the activities or add activities beyond the days of the customers holiday, however I think even without these things it provides a benefit to customers who will take the time to use it.

You will probably be seeing a similar idea on my Events area sometime in the future once I have the time to integrate and modify the code.

Note: The site is still under development and some of the things shown in this post may be incomplete and unpolished!

Part of my Computer Science degree involves the design, implementation and documentation of a project of our choosing. As most of my projects seem to be along the same lines it only makes sense to keep it that way.

The site is a completely different site to the one that is currently online. I decided move away from the overload of photos and simply move towards a more clean and commercial style rather than a mere showcase for photos.

Homepage

Now a simple site obviously isn’t good enough for a degree project, even with some Google Maps integration and the implementation of the data provided by my own custom Event API it still needs more, a lot more.

So the site also includes an online booking system with PayPal integration for payment processing, availability checking and suggestion engine to suggest alternate accommodation if the one they choose is unavailable. Not only that but it also offer a Customer Centre to customers who book a holiday, allowing them to manage their booking, generate a parking permit for the duration of their holiday, create customisable lists of things they need to bring with them and a holiday planner so they can plan their holiday. Of course, all this is protected by the membership and login system that is also used on this site (one of the advantages of writing on Object Orientated code).

Customer Centre

And of course on top of all that there is a backend administration system that allows the owners of the business to manage bookings, create campaigns, view detailed reports on key aspects of the site to analyse the effectiveness of key areas and generally mange the entire site.

I’m sure I will share more once it is fully complete.

In not to much of a distant future my Final Year Project will be due in, that includes the actual implementation and a 60 page report (on top of a 14 page PID that has already been handed in and marked), but after spending the last few days slowly trying to make some sense of the intricacies of some of the things I have been trying to implement I think I have finally got the desired result, although there are a few more things left to sort out and probably way more tables to be added as and when I think they are necessary, but it’s all looking like it’s on track.

Just thought i’d share the piece of paper i’ve been starting at on my desk for the past few hours