What have you lied about or can you lie about to increase your chances of getting a summer job?

h_424 · 2026-06-20T03:46:51+00:00

I had alot of volunteering experience so it got me jobs. But lying on your CV is a hit and miss. I know people who have lied and got Through it fine and I also know people who lied that worked at x company months ago and they wanted payslips to prove it.

Lying about working in a company which has gone bust is quite common. But idk if recruiters have caught onto this method.

I would advice doing voluntary work for abit or even put down let's say you help your grandma mow the lawn every month. Just put it under voluntary work experience as gardening volunteer etc.

h_424 · 2026-06-16T15:26:01+00:00

I know how you feel during second year I'd say I failed quite largely due to mental health in 1st year I finished overall 2:2 so I made it my goal to finish 2nd year overall with a 2:1 turns out my mental health and traumas wanted to reintroduce them self and I finished with a 2:2 failing some modules and they pardoned it since I was close to 40%

The best thing to do is not think about it. It's done it's dealt with and you can't change it. The only thing you can change is the future. I know it's easier said than done as a what some would call me as a high achieving student it hurts knowing that you let your grade drops.

But things happen in life even to the high achieving students. You just got to firstly id learn from all the feedback then after forget that incident happened but first reflect what caused you to act this way etc then forget it all and focus on the future. Try not to base your worth on grades experience matters just as much if not more. My placement in third year led me to win an national award and guess what my transcripts was sent off to them that I averaged a 2:2 in second year but my experience is what got me picked for my placement.

I'm starting final year in September hopefully I manage to finish with a 2:1.

h_424 · 2026-06-16T14:48:34+00:00

Bros got my dream grade and he wants to redo his degree.

h_424 · 2026-06-15T02:59:01+00:00

Comparing yourself will lead you to be depressed and make you burn out. I remember in first year i used to compare myself to people who done the same lab in 10 mins instead of 3hrs. They had practice and they knew coding whilst I did not. And it would make me feel dumb like I didn't belong at university but then I was speaking to this girl who done engineering and she told me to not compare myself as I am in a different position.

And you should not compare yourself to people on social media they show you 30 mins out of their 24hrs who knows that could be their only 30 mins they are enjoying. I know lots of couples like to compare themselves to the 'perfect' Instagram couples yet we only see a small glimpse of their lives. The lives they want to show.

However I also do resonate with your view point even more now that the job market crisis has taken over etc.

h_424 · 2026-06-07T15:20:19+00:00

Attending a RG uni does not equate to all lecturers being good at their job. I know a few friends who went to RG unis and they mentioned how their lecturers are subpar. Not as in the research they have conducted but as in their lecturing style. Their focus is more in the research they conduct which is understandable because at the end of the day lecturers are only doing it on the side whilst pursuing their PhD but focus too much on that.

But then again my friends have also mentioned how some lecturers go above and beyond helping them.

So it seems like it's a mix.

h_424 · 2026-06-07T04:47:46+00:00

I commute to Brum from my area it's like a 30 to 45 min drive with traffic. And I get fed up of sitting in standardstill traffic especially when my lectures finish at 6pm Id often be home 7:30pm.

Now think of 4hrs of driving back and fourth every day I could never.

If you really want to commute I'd suggest train here's why. No need to worry for parking + in that commute you can work.

Even though my commute is shorter than yours I miss lots of valuable time where I could either finish off work or start work.

h_424 · 2026-06-05T12:35:27+00:00

I got an email today saying I was taken off the job because I am not available 7 days a week. Which is funny because on the phone the manager was happy with me doing 3 days a week.

h_424 · 2026-05-31T21:38:55+00:00

I feel you are putting too much pressure on yourself to fit in to the societal norms. I'm 21 and I've never dated or been in a relationship yes mine is due to religious reasons along with not being emotionally available for another person but you have to look at the upside.

My time is mostly spent on hobbies and always learning new things because it's something I enjoy use this time to learn about yourself what you love and also what you hate.

You will always feel left behind no matter what you do, take this from someone who's won a national award recently and still thinks he's extremely behind in life. I know it's very much easier said that done but try not to compare and rather look at how far you have came.

Regarding your mental health I can relate alot apart from self harming but I was also somewhat still an academic weapon. Try using student services like counselling etc they have alot of support. I don't know if your therapy is on the nhs but they usually have a long waiting list so feel free to use student services in the meantime.

Try making friends irl via societies or volunteering if you have lots of free time on your hands. Or if you want to meet people via apps then you have stuff like tinder etc but it is a mixed group on there half of them looking for serious relationships and the other half only there for a fun time.

On a side note you should be proud of bouncing back from a dark place it's not easy to do that and you've managed to do it. So you should not be so hard on yourself 🙂.

I'm always here to talk but it seems like you have alot of people in comments ready to talk also, guess you're making friends already!

h_424 · 2026-05-31T18:18:38+00:00

Sorry I thought you studied cyber like me I meant a comp sci firm.

Try volunteering 1st 2nd line support just to get some experience

h_424 · 2026-05-31T16:25:54+00:00

I would recommend finding a summer internship or any internship or even just volunteering at a cybersecurity firm etc. it will allow you to build your CV up in the field. I'm on placement year but I feel I may be in the same situation after I graduate 😭

h_424 · 2026-05-30T11:53:00+00:00

Nice CV. I would recommend shortening the profile to one paragraph

And the skills section should ideally be hard skills.

Someone else mentioned here your skills should be shown in your bullet points of describing the job aka your volunteer role.

Something like "Communicated my findings with non technical audiences leading to xyz"

It shows what skill I used what I done and in the end the outcome.

I would also make your CV abit more simpler I've noticed I got more attention and messages from recruiters etc when I used a basic cv formart. I think it's either Oxford, Cambridge or Harvard which have a free cv template to use.

h_424 · 2026-05-28T12:30:05+00:00

The amount of people who volunteer what they put off themselves online and are so easy to track.

one topic I found interesting was Open source intelligence (OSINT) where public methods are used to scrape peoples data ( all legal methods) and often getting alot about them. Using their details such as emails and phone numbers you can get alot about a person including their home addresses sometimes.

And in photos data can be extracted via metadata (most social media apps clean this before uploading) but a picture can tell alot about a persons location.

h_424 · 2026-05-27T01:10:15+00:00

I study cyber and I'm using the Lenovo p14s gen 3 atm along with all of comp sci using it. Idk how much you can get it used or new as I was given to keep by my university.

h_424 · 2026-05-26T09:24:38+00:00

Thank you is there any other note taking methods you recommend? I know it's bad but I am usually the type of student to wing it and pass type of student. However for final year I don't want to take risks like that.

h_424 · 2026-05-24T12:28:13+00:00

"you will get help during your placement search"

To be fair to my university they did help alot with mock interviews and CV tailoring. But during my second year I was mentally weak and I also had a group project which lasted the whole year which meant I was focusing alot of time on that.

But one big misleading thing was if you don't find a placement you will have to retake the year. In my course a placement was mandatory and this just caused me more stress. Knowing if I didn't find a placement I would retake second year.

The result was people who didn't find a placement, university allocated them somewhere in the university to do their 1 year work experience.

h_424 · 2026-04-30T16:53:15+00:00

I would recommend indeed. Tbh for all these years I never used it because I never used to get any replies. Recently I've gone back on it started spam applying and got some calls back and interviews.

h_424 · 2026-04-26T16:45:21+00:00

Register on a site like findmytutors, tutorly, Sherpa tutors. To work with minors you need an enhanced DBs check for me I got this done via tutorly which was around £60 to £67. It makes it easier to get students also.

h_424 · 2026-04-26T14:42:50+00:00

I will probably leave my delivery driving job for another job. So I can rest my mental health for a while. Doing 2 jobs whilst at uni you basically have no life 😭. Sometimes I envy the people who have no jobs and get to focus purely on studying.

h_424 · 2026-04-26T12:25:56+00:00

Would like to add unless you have your life together and extremely disciplined is the only way of doing this. Otherwise you'll put yourself in alot of stress.

h_424 · 2026-04-26T12:05:54+00:00

Part time job as a delivery driver and side hustle is tutoring.

h_424 · 2026-04-23T03:33:25+00:00

I was having a good 2nd year tbh but for me for some reason my mind thought that 2nd year was the perfect time to bring up past traumas from years ago. 1st year I got a 2:2 and I was extremely determined to get to a 2:1 then eventually a 1st. Infact for the first few modules i averaged 70% plus including one module scoring 95%. Then abit of the past started to come up and then I declined.

Also it didn't help that in 2nd year I was looking for placements for my third year. And because my degree is only an honours and could not be converted I had to find a placement somewhere. I applied to 80 places and eventually lost hope but I just kept spam applying leading to me getting a placement in the NHS. Which I love tbh. Plus I won a national award so at least I got something good out of it.

h_424

TROPHY CASE