L33T Index Newsletter
What Jobs Are Around You?
HMV
Sales Assistant
A sales assistant is someone who is on the shop floor and performs a number of different task throughout the day. This can range to working the till to restocking and replenishing the sections for customers. All these roles are different however all will involve some form of communication with either another member of staff or a customer.
Required Skills
The skills required for HMV are very limited. The applicant is required to have minimal experience in retail as they are needing new and fresh faces to join the team. However, the more experience in retail the better. More experience will be appealing to the company as this means the applicant should go into the new role with more confidence due to the past experience dealing with a variation of different people.
Although not required, HMV said they like to see an form of external first aid or manual handling training for what they call “extra credit”. There is some training on such things like manual handling and fire safety after the applicant is successful however the more training that has been completed before the applicant enrols, the better.
General Skills
Working in retail, there are a wide range of different general skills needed to ensure that the job is done correctly. Most of these skills will develop as the applicant is in the workplace. Firstly, the applicant is required to be till trained which is a very simple process. Secondly, the applicant is required to have a good base knowledge of the store layout and the products within the shop. Although there is no specific area that the applicant shall be working in, getting a good grasp on all areas of the store will show that he or she is willing to take on any roles and shows they are ready to take on my responsibilities.
One of the most key skills needed in retail is the ability to adapt yourself for multiple situation and people. For example, explaining a set of earphones to an older person may be different to the way you explain the same information to a younger person. Neither is better than the other however it is important to get your point across no matter what the circumstances.
Attitude Skills
Working in retail can be very stressful at times and there are many things can make your day go from bad to worse. However, there are key skills that retail employers look for to see if the applicant can withstand the public.
Being able to keep your cool and ask for help when needed is key in this retail. Often situations can get a little aggressive when an outcome isn't to one person’s desire. However, being able to keep to standard and explain why certain things are not in favour of a customer is one of the most important skills that anyone can have in retail.
The perfect candidate will be confident, motivated and determined. A combination of the previously mentioned attributes will mean the applicant will be confident enough to deal with any situation, motivated enough to go the extra mile in some situations and determined enough to hit targets consistently.
Junior Web Developer
Web developers design, build and maintain websites and web applications to meet their client’s needs. Jobs can range from creating a staff intranet for a school to building a payment web application for a busy online retailer.
Required skills
A junior web developer has to have quite a lot of experience to get this position. Although there are not many actual qualifications for coding languages, experience can be measured on trial days. For this specific position, it is required that the applicant has experience in HTML5 and CSS3 with framework. The applicant also needs to be able to make responsive designs and has simple knowledge in other coding languages such as PHP, SQL and jQuery.
General Skills
Although not required, there are some skills which are needed for the job that aren't needed but are possibly desired by the company. For example, if the applicant could present some work in a portfolio, this would allow the employer to see the potential of the applicant. If the applicant has lots of experience with many coding languages, this shows that they are able to write code effective and efficiently. This will mean, the work he or she produces in that company will be closer the the industry standard making it overall better than the average code.
Attitude Skills
Being a web developer whether it is for a company or freelance requires a certain mindset and attitude skills. For example, you have to very professional at all times when working in web. A client is pay you to develop a website of which they are expecting good results. The professionalism could carry through throughout the whole project. In both the designing, communication and throughout the development of the website.
The applicant should also have a high level of self-motivation. Especially when you are a freelance web developer. This job role will require a lot of hours at a desk or looking at a monitor. Often, there will be lots of bugs that need to be fixed which could take hours however, the candidate will need a high level of motivation to get the job done on time and to a deadline.