Tips on promoting yourself in the fashion industry from GFW

Graduate Fashion week is almost upon us, running from Sunday 2nd June 2013 - Wednesday 5th June.

We strongly suggest any budding designers, or those thinking about going to uni to study fashion, head over to Earls Court at some point - either grab a ticket to a show or just wander round the exhibition, its guaranteed to inspire you.


To accompany the exhibition, Graduate Fashion Week have lots of top tips on their site from industry leaders. Covering everything from how to write a CV to finding the right job, they've got some great advice.

 

We will be reposting some of it here as a resource for you guys, have a read:

Key tips and tools for promoting yourself to the industry...

Promoting yourself applies not only to those who are new to the job market or may be lacking in confidence but also our culture impacts on our modesty and our comfort talking about ‘we’ rather than ‘I’.
The below advice will provide top tips on selling yourself across a variety of areas to help get that job.

• CV: Your CV is your personal marketing tool and it needs to stand out from the crowd. Think about successes you had in the previous/current roles, key contributions you made, over achievement of targets, how your performance was measured and how well you did.

• Get a Linked In profile: Linked In is used by recruiters to search and connect with prospective employees - it is also a great way to search for jobs. Whilst your profile should not simply be a cut/paste of your CV, it offers the opportunity to include a condensed version of what you have done in each of your roles. Focus on the main achievements, along with specialities and skills. With these last two points, you can add skills to your Linked In profile and also have those in your network endorse you for you strengths on these.

• Interview: think about your responses to the difficult, open ended ‘sell yourself’ questions. These are the ‘why should we hire you over other candidates?’, ‘tell me about yourself’ and ‘what are your strengths and why’ type of questions. Be careful not to simply list strengths but also an example that demonstrates these. The responses you give to these types of questions show there is something to know about you and that you believe in yourself. Keep eye contact with your interviewers and be positive.

• Stay away from your weaknesses: if at interview you are asked what you deem to be your weaknesses, pick one or two areas that you are developing on.

• Ask for feedback: do you have a trusted advisor, a mentor, someone who knows you well professionally? Ask them for their feedback on your strengths and what they perceive your major success areas to have been. Often people observe things in us we may not see ourselves.

 
Feeling confident = being confident. If you believe in yourself and portray assurance, others will believe in you.

See more here!