Whether you’re an employer who wants to build a relationship with Reading students or a knowledgeable career consultant, a skilled content writer passionate about career advice or a Reading student or alumnus/alumna keen to motivate others by sharing his career journey, we would love to have you contribute to our careers and employability blog.
Every week, almost 300 users visit the Careers Blog looking for reassurance, advice and insights into career success. So, if you have answers to questions about employability, the future of the world of work, career prospects and achieving success, why not write for us? In addition to having your article featured on our blog, it’ll also appear on our other student channels such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, gaining popularity and bringing you more followers.
To make everyone’s job easier, we have created a set of clear guidelines relating to the themes we encourage you to write about, our audience, tone and style, as well as post length and the submission process. We’ve worked hard to make this useful, so, please, read it carefully before getting started on your article.
First-years Middle-year undergraduates Finalists Types of posts we accept and posts which aren’t suitable for our blog Content submission and the review process The Careers Blog managed by the Careers Centre at the University of Reading was created to support the Careers mission, vision and values. Our objective is to inform Reading students of their career options, professional development opportunities, how they can gain relevant experience and how to succeed in the competitive graduate labour market. Everything we write about is aimed at helping students boost their career prospects. The world of work can be daunting and feel too big to navigate. This is where you come in to support our mission. Whether you want to inform students about your business and new opportunities, or you have something exceptional to share that might help them achieve their career goals, we are happy to invite you to write for our blog. Every week, almost 300 users visit the Careers Blog, read and share our articles. We are proud to confirm that so far we have welcomed over 20 guest bloggers to our platform. From International Careers experts to students and employers in a range of sectors, they all play a part in sharing invaluable careers insights with our student community. This guide is here to help you write clear and concise posts in line with our content strategy and our organisational objectives. Please take some time to review this page as it contains all the necessary information for writing and submitting your guest blog post. If you belong to one of the following categories, then you can become a guest blogger: This a list of all the things to consider before writing your article. The articles on the Careers Blog are written to meet the needs of three different audiences. Before writing the post, please choose a group and focus on one or more of the following topics relevant to them. For them, developing their career is not a priority so they need our understanding, patience and encouragement. In our communications, we direct them towards activities designed to grow their experience and gain skills for the world of work. Activities suitable for first-years meant to help them gain work experience and skills, work shadowing, volunteering, soft skills – what they are and how to gain them, identifying career options, attending insight days, career aspirations, early preparation (top things to include in a CV which will help them land a job at your company), meeting and shadowing a mentor, why internships are good for students, what to do when you don’t have work experience, skills you need to work in a certain sector/industry. We encourage them to start thinking about what they want to do in the future. We focus on motivating them to take action and to be excited about their future. Identifying career options, enhancing your experience (extra-curricular activities which boost their career prospects), application preparation, doing internships/placements (what employers think of students who do an internship), vacation work, making contacts, doing a conversion course, making the most of your degree, gaining qualifications. They are under a lot of stress. When communicating to them we are optimistic, supportive, encouraging and reassuring. Being a student in your final year doesn’t mean that they have run out of time to get their career sorted and this is what we try to convey. Career planning, gaining work experience and skills, combining academic work and professional work, how to balance a job and academic work, job hunting techniques, CV/Cover Letter writing for different industries/job sectors/roles tips and tricks, assessment centre preparation, qualifications to enhance your degree. We are also interested in themes which can apply to students at any stage of their study, particularly around the area of dealing effectively with transition management; this could include effective decision making, how to narrow options down, positive/growth mindset, avoiding procrastination and resilience. We want our students to gain valuable insight into the world of work, and we are on hand to help them prepare for the future. We try to achieve this by sharing only information which is up-to-date, clear and truthful. That’s why: To help you write meaningful content that appeals to our readers, we have picked a few very successful articles for you to be inspired. This is a very successful article about how to pass the Civil Service situational Judgement Tests, written by one of our Careers Consultants: https://blogs.reading.ac.uk/careers/situational-judgement-tests-civil-service/ Here are other articles which generated exposure and interest: http://blogs.reading.ac.uk/careers/all-you-need-to-know-about-psychometric-testing/ http://blogs.reading.ac.uk/careers/summer-jobs-on-campus-for-students/ http://blogs.reading.ac.uk/careers/work-with-charities-not-for-profits/ Before writing an article, please check the theme with us. Contact us at careerscentre@reading.ac.uk, with ‘Writing for Careers’ in the subject line, and tell us who you are, which company you represent, why you want to write for us and what your article will be about. We will reply within 48 hours. Once your theme has been approved, you have two weeks to write and submit the content. We take the liberty of reviewing your article and suggesting changes. Before publishing the post, we will send you a reviewed version for approval. The content which you write for the Careers Blog cannot be used on any other platform either you or your employee own. We will share the content on our social networks and in the newsletters we send to students. We also encourage you to share content from the Careers Blog. If you post on social media, please mention us: @UniRdg_Careers on Twitter and @UoRCareers on Facebook. We hope you are happy to proceed and we are looking forward to hearing from you. Happy Blogging!Click here to see the complete guideIntro
The guide
You can write for us
Before writing
Audiences, themes and topics
First-years
Themes and topics
Middle-year undergraduates
Themes and topics
Finalists
Themes and topics
Guidelines
Types of posts we accept and posts which aren’t suitable for our blog
Successful articles
Content submission and the review process
Repost and sharing policy