Welcome to CMD

Week 1: CMD Launch, who we are what we do

TLDR

• CMD is a passion project founded by two brothers willing to provide free resources and advice to students and early career seekers

• We offer CV, cover letter, and LinkedIn reviews and want to build a CV library from willing contributors across a range of fields. These resources will be anonymised and free to all

• We are in discussions with a range of educational institutions to establish partnerships from secondary schools to university.

• Liam and Paul both have experience in recruiting for more than 10 companies across a range of sectors with a focus on London and graduate careers.

• Explore the co-founders experience and story below

  
  

CMD aims to take a more personal and accessible approach to helping students understand and be competitive in the world of early careers. We have experience at both ends of the spectrum as employees, recruiters and employers and noticed a miscommunication and alignment between schools, universities, students and employers. Schools and universities often give out poor or outdated advice on how to land a role and firms often have misleading assumptions about candidates. We want to help change that misalignment. Coming from a state school in Northamptonshire we aim to close the gap between private school, grammar school and state school resources and networks to help create a more even playing field. The aim of CMD is to have the conversations and provide the resources that would have benefited us in sixth form but were not available.

Below you can read about the co-founders stories and experience

Liam-Elio CMD

Liam joined the University of Nottingham studying Geography with a focus on data science. First year was largely characterised by COVID 19 but Liam was determined to make the most of the opportunities at university despite this. He worked a 9-month internship for the Human Rights and Law centre publishing work on an endangered academic in India and hosted an international university partnership conference to raise awareness. In second year, Liam joined two societies with three committee positions. These committee positions were marketing and outreach secretary for Hacksoc (the coding and ethical hacking society) and the outreach secretary for Geogsoc. The lingering impact of COVID provided a challenge for organising events and speakers as part of these committee positions but were important learning experiences. Liam then gained a passion for ethical hacking and coding interviewing with GCHQ for a summer school aimed to helping grads land a role there.

Liam was in second year but decided to apply anyway believing that the experience even if unsuccessful would inform his ability to apply to jobs in the future (a method that we advocate for heavily). Liam was unsuccessful in the final coding interview but again learnt from these experiences. In third year, Liam joined 180 Degrees Consulting Nottingham, working for a range of charities and small businesses in providing technology, marketing, finance and strategy advice. After graduating with a first-class degree in Geography Liam accepted a deferred graduate scheme with Atkins Realis in the geospatial team for consultancy. Liam deferred this scheme to pursue a master’s in research Sci (Mres Sci) degree studying novel satellite science applications for monitoring modern slavery in the Indian brick kilns. Alongside this masters he worked as a team lead consultant for two more 180 DC projects bringing his total project count to 4 and worked professionally for the University of Nottingham as a contract technology consultant. This role saw Liam provide data analysis and design geospatial dashboards to help law enforcement and other stakeholders in Nottingham understand crime and student risk. Liam gained experience recruiting for 9 companies in London as part of the Wiser Academy in which he supported students with applications, CVs and interview advice. Now he seeks to pay forward the mentoring opportunities that helped him carve out his own career offering advice and support to students while balancing an analyst position at a top engineering and project management consultancy firm.

Paul-Nino CMD:

Paul joined the Royal Hollow University of London and is currently completing his undergraduate degree in Politics Philosophy and Economics (PPE). His focus is in financial economics with a dissertation investigating the Japanese economy in the 90’s. Paul has represented 11 firms in London for early careers development including working with partners in the management consulting, finance and legal industry. Paul joined the URNU last year and serves as a university officer cadet having participated in seminars and conferences across Europe. His experience with early careers has seen Paul drive a considerable LinkedIn following from which CMD grew its current client base. The student spotlight has been running for a month which has helped 4 students gain exposure and review their cv and early career preparedness. Paul is aiming to pursue a graduate scheme in marketing and sales having built a close-knit group of clients which he represents. Between his contact in 2023- 20204 In his role at Wiser, Paul bought in 300,000 views as an ambassador and referred dozens of students to career partners.

Using our experience, we are aiming to provide accessible solutions through community and mentoring to students. These solutions help challenge misconceptions of the hiring process and aim to bring out the best in a client’s experience.

Solutions

• Career consults focus on reviewing a client’s CV, cover letter and providing a framework to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of a client in the recruitment cycle. Once this has been identified our 20-minute sessions are used to brainstorm solutions to improve this weakness and get the ball rolling

• Social media community containing guides, templates and planners

• CV library for different industries

• Public speaking events and workshops for schools and universities

  
  

Using our combined network of 10,000 people split across students, recruiters and working professionals we want to show students the opportunities available and pay forward the mentoring we have received. We provide student spotlight posts as part of our repeat careers consults customers where we work through your LinkedIn and CV pages to then build up to a post on our personal and business LinkedIn pages outreaching to our connections in hopes that you’ll gain attention from recruiters & likeminded individuals. See the posts from our 7 social media outlets containing information about companies we work with, best practices we see, and people within our community with experience in your desired field.

Please check out what we do and if you like it consider supporting us

Thanks for checking us out,

CMD Careers:

Liam-Elio CMD

Paul-Nino CMD