Pictures Of Me

I spent quite a bit of yesterday rewriting my CV, which a friend who knows about these things took a look at the other day and said it read like a job description rather than a CV. This same friend sent me a guide to CV writing which included a list of active words that one should use, like 'developed', 'set up' and 'trained', and rather more randomly 'doubled up', 'sparked', and 'trimmed'. So guess I should include some sort of reference in my CV to the time I doubled up in pain when I sparked out the electricity in the conference room and then had to take the CEO to A&E to get his burnt beard trimmed off.

I also took some time yesterday searching the web for advice on how to write the perfect/killer/optimum CV. Didn't learn a great deal in this exercise to be honest since the advice was either really obvious or contradictory - lie/don't lie, make it short/tell them everything, stick to the information you think they will want to hear/tell them about that time you were fire marshal it will indicate you are comfortable with authority etc etc. And as is always the case with any sort of web-based research, I got completely distracted and ended up looking up stuff on how to manage your boss. (There is a whole other story to this, which I will share with you another time.)

But since I am going to do this cold letter writing to househusbandnot top 50 prospective employers, I realise my CV is going to have to be pretty engaging. I wonder if there are other means of getting people to understand where I am coming from. Maybe a photo of me and mrs househusbandnot at our wedding, or a cd compilation, or just a link to househusbandnot - now there's a thought. But not sure how human any prospective employer is going to want me to be. And if they read househusbandnot they would see also see how often and casually mrs househusbandnot uses the C word and would maybe be concerned about what she might say to the boss at the office Christmas party.

Mind you, I would be pretty interested in working for someone who had read househusbandnot and still wanted to interview me. ("Tell us a little more about the floors you painted in your bedroom. It sounds like just the sort of experience we need in a communications manager here at Google." "Hating jazz musicians is pretty much our most important mission here at Nike. We'd like to talk to you some more about a project we are setting up in the Maldives." )

Or maybe I should just get a portrait painted of me, and send it round like they did with prospective brides for Henry VIII. Not that that did much good for any of them in the long run. (Relevant experience: probably fertile. Reason for applying for the post: my dad doesn't want to get his country invaded. Other interests: not getting my head chopped off.)

Thanks incidentally to my mate Bad, who sent me an email yesterday reminding me about his brother in law's experience of being sent by a headhunter to an interview at the organisation that had just made him redundant and getting a better job there. It's the sort of opportunistic chaos I need to hear about right now.