THE FOSTERS, TALKING ABOUT LABOUR INSERTION (II)

Today, The Fosters and The Grandma have talked about how to create a modern CV using Canva, one of the most popular software to create and design all kind of brochures, CV and other. They have also talked about the importance of communication skills in an interview.

Canva is a graphic design platform that allows users to create social media graphics, presentations, posters and other visual content.

More information: Canva

More information: How to Use Canva

On average, recruiters spend just 8.8 seconds reading your CV. This means you have less than a sixth of a minute to sell yourself and your strengths to the reader. This is easier said than done: three quarters of CVs are rejected due to bad grammar, spelling and poor visual layout.

More information: The Balance (I)

So what makes a successful job application? We asked career experts for their tips. Here is a step-by-step Guardian Jobs guide on how to create the perfect CV.

It's vital your CV is as tailored and concise as possible. One of the simplest mistakes job hunters make is not matching their experience to the new job role. It's essential to look down the list of requirements and show against each points how you can do each one, says Jon Gregory, a job search, application and interview coach.

It's also important to drop the clichés. Words like passionate and phrases like 'I'm excellent at' are overused, says Gregory. Show your passion rather than say it. Don't use subjective statements like 'I can hit the ground running' instead use objective proof that you have demonstrated those skills – such as a list of numbers and achievements.

Lis McGuire, founder of Giraffe CVS, agrees you should avoid clichés: The most important thing to leave off a CV is white noise – essentially anything that isn't directly relevant to the job role you're applying. For non-relevant work simply give the bare bones and instead focus on explaining relevant experience that will win you the role.

In summary, your writing style should be professional, concise and specific to the job you're applying to. Make it as easy as possible for them to scan your CV and tick boxes, advice the experts.

More information: The Balance (II)

The personal profile is often tricky. How can you strike the perfect professional yet enthusiastic voice? Without a profile your CV is just a list without context, points out McGuire. Use it to show the reader who you are and the value you can bring.

But how exactly can this be done? Your CV profile should strive to provide abalanced complement of skills, achievements, and softer attributes that will engage the reader, advises Debra Wheatman, founder and owner of Careers Done Write. I generally recommend that the summary comprises 4-5 lines with a relevant example to quickly engage the reader.

Your profile should sum up exactly who you are and whether you're a good fit for the role, says Gregory. Likewise, Sarah Archer, career coach and co-founder of CareerTree, says: Make it specific, interesting and relevant to the job. Highlight the key skills and experiences you have and the kinds of environments you have worked in.

Finally, the family has assisted to the Labour Conference Talk English organized by the International Labour Organization.

They are worried about the real situation of working after the global economic crisis which has affected lives of millions of people severely. 

They have taken information to help other people to find a work. This is the reason because of they have to find the best, and not the best thing, about all of them.

 

More information: CVMRK

 

Job-interviewing is just a skill. 

Like any skill, 

some people have more of a predisposition 

for it than others.

Dale Dauten

BRAUNY STONE SEARCHES A NEW JOB IN MANCHESTER

The Stones and The Grandma continue searching Mireia Stone. They start being desperate and they have asked for help to all their friends around the world. Really, they can do nothing except waiting for police's work.

Brauny Stone has communicated to her family that she is not continuing this travel with them. She has decided to search a job in Manchester, a place that she has discovered she loves.

The family is going to lose two members in a few days if the authorities are not able to find their beautiful lovely Mireia.

The family is worried about the real situation of working after the global economic crisis which has affected lives of millions of people severely.

The Grandma has been reading about labour insertion, especially about the importance of the CV, the most important gate to access to a job interview.

More information: Speak Languages

A curriculum vitae, Latin for course of life, often shortened as CV or vita is a written overview of someone's life's work (academic formation, publications and qualifications).

Vitae often aim to be a complete record of someone's career, and can be extensive. They are (depending on country) used in the same way as a résumé, which is typically a brief 1–2 page summary of qualifications and work experience for the purposes of employment, and often only presents recent highlights.

In many countries, a résumé is typically the first item that a potential employer encounters regarding the job seeker and is typically used to screen applicants, often followed by an interview.

Vitae may also be requested for applicants to postsecondary programs, scholarships, grants and bursaries. In the 2010s it became popular for applicants to provide an electronic text of their CV to employers using email, an online employment website or using a job-oriented social-networking-service website, such as LinkedIn.

Download English for Job Interviews & Interviewing for a Job

More information: Preparing for a Job Interview in English

More information: Improving to Find New Chances

Canva is a graphic design platform that allows users to create social media graphics, presentations, posters and other visual content.

It is available on web and mobile, and integrates millions of images, fonts, templates and illustrations.

Users can choose from many professional designed templates, and edit the designs and upload their own photos through a drag and drop interface. The platform is free to use, and paid subscriptions like Canva Pro and Canva for Enterprise offer additional functionality. Users can also pay for physical products to be printed and shipped.

More information: European-CV & Canva

Take all the courses in your curriculum. Do the research. Ask questions. Find someone doing what you are interested in! Be curious!

Katherine Johnson

THE WATSONS, TALKING ABOUT LABOUR INSERTION (II)

The Watsons' Canvas

Today, The Watsons and The Grandma have finnished their collaboration together. They have been several interesting and amazing weeks working with this wonderful family and The Grandma is going to miss them a lot.

They have been talking about how to create a modern CV using Canva, one of the most popular software to create and design all kind of brochures, CV, posters and other. They have been also talking about the importance of communication skills in an interview.

The Grandma hope her family has good luck in a closer future and she knows they are going to meet together very soon perhaps in another adventure.

Good luck Watsons (Elisabeth, Neus, Mariana, Judit, Maria, Elisabeth, Yolanda, Raquel and Sònia) and thanks for these unforgettable moments! See you very soon!

More information: Comunica't (Catalan Version)

Canva is a graphic design platform that allows users to create social media graphics, presentations, posters and other visual content.

It is available on web and mobile, and integrates millions of images, fonts, templates and illustrations.

Users can choose from many professional designed templates, and edit the designs and upload their own photos through a drag and drop interface. The platform is free to use, and paid subscriptions like Canva Pro and Canva for Enterprise offer additional functionality. Users can also pay for physical products to be printed and shipped.

As of 2019, Canva last raised at a $3.2 billion valuation and has over 20 million users across 190 countries.

In June 2020, Canva raised $60 million at a valuation of $6 billion almost doubling its last valuation from 2019.

The company was founded on 1 January 2012 in Sydney, Australia by Melanie Perkins, Cliff Obrecht and Cameron Adams. In its first year, Canva had more than 750,000 users. Social-media and technology expert Guy Kawasaki joined the company as chief evangelist in April 2014.

In 2015, Canva for Work was launched which gave businesses a tool for producing marketing materials.

During the 2016-17 financial year, revenue increased from $AU 6.8m to $AU 23.5m, with losses of $3.3m. In 2017, the company reached profitability and had 294,000 paying customers.

In January 2018, Perkins announced that the company had raised $40 million from Sequoia Capital, Blackbird Ventures, and Felicis Ventures, and it was valued at $1 billion.

In May 2019, Canva experienced a security breach in which data of roughly 139 million users was hacked. The exposed data included real names, usernames, addresses and geographical information, and password hashes for some users.

More information: Speak Languages

During May 2019, the company raised another round of funding of $70m from General Catalyst and Bond and its existing investors Blackbird Ventures and Felicis Ventures, valuing Canva at $2.5 billion.

It was reported that Canva, among other Australian businesses, supported employees attending the Global Climate Strikes that took place on September 20 and 27, 2019. The strikes called for the Australian Government to take greater action on climate change and transition to renewable energy.

In October 2019, Canva announced that it raised an additional $85 million at a valuation of $3.2 billion, and launched an enterprise product.

In December 2019, Canva announced Canva for Education, a free product offering for schools and other educational institutions intended to facilitate collaboration between students and teachers.

Canva received praise in January 2020 for releasing a comprehensible privacy policy written in both Legal English and common language, with the intention of abiding by their brand mission of simplicity while making their practices understandable to everyday users.

In June 2020, Canva announced a partnership with FedEx Office. In July it announced a similar partnership with Office Depot. As of the end of June, Canva's valuation had risen to $6 billion.

In 2018, the company acquired presentations startup Zeetings for an undisclosed amount, as part of its expansion into the presentations space.

In May 2019, the company announced acquisitions of Pixabay and Pexels, two free stock photography sites based in Germany. These sites allow individual photographers to share their work for free, and the photos can be used by Canva users in their designs. 

More information: Canva

 Job-interviewing is just a skill.

Like any skill,

some people have more of a predisposition

for it than others.

Dale Dauten

AIR-RAID SHELTER IN GAVÀ, SURVIVING THE BOMBS

The Grandma arrives to the bunker, Gavà

Today, The Grandma continues her computing course in Gavà. She has learnt new applications very useful to create word clouds.

One of them is Wordle. She has also learnt new web pages where she can choose and download hundreds of fonts to be used in her documents.

Finally, she has created a wonderful CV using Canva, an amazing web application that helps her to design and create her own CV with her own style and she has also created and edited new administrative documents using Microsoft Publisher, one of the editors of the Microsoft Office.

After her classes, The Grandma has had a meeting with Claire Fontaine, one of her best friends. Claire loves Design and History and she has proposed The Grandma to visit the air-raid shelter of Gavà and discover its history, that it is the history of the common effort of thousand of people to survive to one of the most terrible events of the last century, the Spanish Civil War.

More information: Canva, Wordle & JavaScript

More information: 1001Fonts, DaFont & FontSpace

The air-raid shelter of the Rambla de Gavà is a refuge that was built during the Spanish Civil War to protect the civil population of Gavà during aerial attacks carried out by fascist aviation.

Rediscovered in 2008 due to the works of the initial section of Rambla of Salvador Lluch, the refuge has been recovered and adapted to preserve it and to recover the historical memory of Gavà, as well as to pay homage to the victims of the Civil War. Open to the public since 2013, it is musealized and it is one of the spaces of the Gavà Museum.

At the beginning of the war the owners of Roca Radiadores Company, the Roca family, fled to Burgos and then to Paris.

Aerial view of Gavà, 1937

With the fleeing proprietors, the workers of the factory organize a Committee of Workers Control that performs the managerial functions of the company and manages the factory.

The production of radiators and bathtubs continues until the factory is converted into a war industry and integrated within the Commission of War Industries created by the Generalitat de Catalunya, the Catalan Government. Taking advantage of the foundry, at the beginning of 1937, hand grenades and later shells were started to produce -5,000 shells per day-, but without machining them, action that was taken in another factory.

After May 1937 Facts -a period of civil violence in Catalonia, when factions of the Republican side engaged each other in street battles in various parts of Catalonia, in particular in the city of Barcelona- the Government of the Spanish Republic will eventually assume control over the Catalan war industries.

Workers at Roca factory had a category of militarized war industry workers, so it was not necessary to join the ranks when they called for their promotion. 

More information: Visit Museum

The conversion of Roca into a projectile factory will cause the towns of Gavà and Viladecans to suffer air strikes on several occasions during the year 1938 by fascist aviation.

The conversion of Roca Company into an arms factory turned it into a military objective. This caused the populations of Gavà and Viladecans to be victims of bombings by fascist aviation during the year 1938. These attacks also formed part of the offensive that Franco commanded over the Republican rear.

Savoia-Marchetti S.81, Italian Legionnaire Aviation

The first attack suffered by Gavà and Viladecans was on March 16, 1938. It was midnight and the population was surprised while sleeping in small aircraft formations Savoia-Marchetti S.81, belonging to the 25th Night Bombardment Group of the Italian Legionnaire Aviation of the Balearic Islands. The purpose of these planes was to bomb Barcelona, but before arriving they bombed the Roca factory, its surroundings and part of Viladecans.

In Gavà, 7 people died in Viladecans 15, and there was an undetermined number of wounded and damaged. In Viladecans Can Sellarès suffered serious damage and Cal Sileta and Cal Magí were completely demolished. On June 30, Gavà is again bombed, with the Roca factory as a target. There was no deadly victim.

More information: La Xarxa (Catalan Version)

On July 4, another attack on Gavà and Viladecans was carried out. The objective was also the Roca company. It was 9:30 in the morning, in a working day. Five Savoy 81 trimotors threw 25 projectiles that caused 12 dead, 25 injured and the destruction of some buildings. The vast majority of the victims were workers of the foundry, neighbours of Gavà and Viladecans.

The majority of bombs fell in the part of the factory belonged to Viladecans, causing damages to the facilities. Also the Italian airforce dropped projectiles in areas close to Gavà installations and offices, without impacting on them, and at the factory of the Hules. This attack was published on the cover the next day in La Vanguardia.

Masia de Can Sellarès in Viladecans, 1937

Shortly after this attack, the president of the government of the Spanish Republic, Juan Negrín, visited the factory, proving the strategic importance that it had.

The next attack on Viladecans was on September 11. It was at 22:30 and it took place on the factory of Llevat, which suffered significant damage. Several houses were also affected. There were 3 injured and no fatalities. Gavà would still suffer two more attacks, one on November 6 and another on December 3, without causing any fatalities.

On June 9, 1937, the Generalitat de Catalunya created the Passive Defense Committee of Catalonia to supervise the construction of refuges and to coordinate and give technical guidelines and advice on the protection of the civilian population. In Viladecans neighbourhood and private refuges were built on the outskirts of houses.

In Gavà, apart from local and private refuges -Escola del Sagrat Cor in Santa Teresa Street, the Vaghi family on Carrer d'Àngel Guimerà, and the Balsells family on Boada estate-, the Roca and Serra i Balet factories' Committees of Companies built new ones in their facilities for the workers.

Download Sota la llei de les armes by Sandra Garcia (Catalan Version)

In addition, there were two public refuges: one on the street of Salvador Lluch with a branch on Carrer del Centre and the other on Rambla de Salvador Lluch. There were also refuges-trenches (zigzags of a meter or meter and half of depth) were made in some streets.

The pinewood, the agricultural area, the surrounding mountains -where caves were excavated- and the surrounding farmhouses also welcomed people during the attack warning. Some people went to spend the night in these refuges in fear of being surprised at home if they slept but there were people who decided to stay at home during the attack.

The project of the air-raid shelter of Rambla de Salvador Lluch was commissioned by the Company Committee of the Roca factory to the Unió d'Arquitectes de Catalunya. It was built by the workers of the Roca factory under the supervision of municipal engineers and engineers of the Roca factory.

The Grandma & Claire visit the shelter, Gavà

The date of the original project is from March 1937 but it was not started until the spring of 1938. This shelter gave refuge to the workers at the offices of the Roca factory, neighbours, pedestrians and people waiting for the train and the bus.

The refuge is formed by a gallery of 124 metres long, 2 metres wide and 2 metres high, located in the middle of Rambla de Salvador Lluch at about 4 metres deep.

To build it the technique of the lost formwork was used. Two parallel ditches of about 40 centimetres thick were leveraged on a base of 80 centimetres in depth, which were filled with concrete without covering the walls without wood or slats. Once the concrete was removed, the floor was left in the middle of the two trenches forming the gallery.

This operation was done by sections, which can be distinguished. We also see the negatives of peak marks. Once the walls were made, the vault was built with reinforced concrete. It is  2 metres thick and can withstand a weight of 40 tons. The ground is also made of concrete.

Download Viure a Gavà durant la Guerra Civil by Joan F. Martín (Catalan)

The refuge had three perpendicular accesses to the gallery, which was lowered by a section of stairs: one located on the corner of the Rambla with the Santa Creu de Calafell road, another on the street of Salamanca and the third on the courtyard of the offices of La Roca. The entries made a curve to avoid the entrance of the shrapnel. They have not been preserved.

The walls of the gallery are not lined, with the exception of a section located near the access to the offices of La Roca, which are whitewashed. The walls of the sections of the accesses were covered with a layer of cement without smoothing, leaving a granular vertical wall for the impressions realized with the pallets.

The refuge did not have any comfort. No seats, kit or bathroom, it only had electric lighting and two ventilation wells. For this reason people left blankets, jugs with water and oil lamps.

Graffiti Estat Català, Gavà shelter

Due to its size, 250 metres square, it could accommodate up to 700 people. But considering that people were on the floor and wearing mattresses and blankets, the occupation would be about 400 people.

On January 24, 1939, the Francoist army occupied Gavà. He entered by Begues road and Santa Creu de Calafell road and they arrived to the Rambla. In their advance, men and young men suspected of being Republican soldiers, were being arrested and imprisoned in the shelter of the Rambla for days.

Shortly after the end of the war, the two main accesses were closed, demolishing the entrances and dumping rubble, but the access of the offices of the Roca factory remained open.

In 1951 a neighbour asked for authorization to the City Council to reuse the space to grow mushrooms. The City Council granted permission for a rent of 300 pesetas per month. This activity would not go beyond the fifties, when the entrance to La Roca was demolished.

Throughout the entire gallery, the negatives of the peak marks from the excavation of the ditches are observed. The soot produced by the oil lamps that were lit when the electric lighting of the refuge failed during the bombing was also preserved on the walls.

In a section of the gallery, we can observe some footprints that occurred when the concrete was still moist.

In the access section of the entrance to the Santa Creu de Calafell road, there is a graffiti that was made when the cement was still tender. The name of the political party Estat Català is written in capital letters.

Download Un pasado común: La Roca by María Catalán (Spanish Version)

Every war when it comes, or before it comes, 

is represented not as a war but as an act of 

self-defense against a homicidal maniac.

George Orwell