Life is riddled with a procession of minor impediments

[Cthulouis]

I know it's against the law to lie on your cv and claim you have degrees that you don't but is it against the law to leave things off?

The problem with leaving things off is that in interviews people will ask you things like "What were you doing with yourself in these missing years?"

I guess you could start tweaking the dates here and there, but those metaphorical tinned worms come to mind.

[SmallBlueThing]

Paul, simply because you made me laugh with 'cafe de milf', i will pop into poundland tomorrow and see if they have any robocop tv series dvds. If they do, i will buy them for you and post them on.
But last time i looked, when i mentioned it in the first place in fact, they only had one- vol three i think. Of course they may have had a delivery since then.

Of course, by delivery, i mean four fat chavs with swag bags, heaving them in the back door after dark.

SBT

[Rog69]

I've lost yet another memory stick  .

[Kerrin]

Can you remember where you had it last?

[Peter Wolf]

I know it's against the law to lie on your cv and claim you have degrees that you don't but is it against the law to leave things off?

I still have a sore throat lingering long after the main tonsillitis cleared up. It's getting on my tits.

Fill up any awkward gaps that are difficult to fill by saying that you were travelling as that cant be disproved or verified.

[JayzusB.Christ]

Cafe Le Milf.

Is that really its name?

[House of Usher]

Although if I were interviewing somebody and they covered up gaps on their CV by saying they had spent the time 'travelling' I would presume they were a bit flaky and unreliable, and I would question the benefit of the experience and want to know what they had learnt from it and how that learning would be of use in the position they were being considered for.

If it actually said 'travelling' on the CV before I even got round to interviewing, the CV would most probably go in the bin before shortlisting. I've never been travelling myself, so I wouldn't see the benefit of it if I were an employer.

Now, if a candidate were to say they hadn't worked for a few years because they had been raising a family, that would make sense to me and I'd be able to see how someone might have developed important skills through the experience.

[Albion]

....because Mrs Albion never did get her toast this morning as our cooker went up in flames.

Mrs Albion threw a wet towel over it and shut the kitchen door and we legged it outside and turned the gas off. The fire brigade said we did the right thing.

The cooker is dead of course and there is some minor smoke damage but nothing too bad and we lived to tell the tale. Now waiting for the insurance company to get back to us about a new cooker.

[Tiplodocus]

MMmm. I'm just doing my CV now and it does have a year in the middle where I was travelling. Because, well, I was travelling.  I thought it better to put it than leave a gap and I even filled in teh details and said where (it's just one line).

What I don't like is this trend to have a load of bullet point bullshit at the start of the CV. "Proven communication skills", "Excellent Track Record of Team Leadership" etc.  Just doesn't feel right or British.


And SBT, don't worry too much about everybody getting more famous and successful than you.  I used to get a little pang in my heart everytime that somebody I worked with on teh comedy circuit made it to fame but now it bothers me not a jot (in fact, good on 'em). 

Mainly because I can see that most of the people that made it have put *a lot* of work into getting there (and had to put up with a lot  of crap and rubbish).  And most of them are nice people (or they were when I met them) who deserve it (Simon Pegg, Lucy Porter, Frankie Boyle). And a lot of them have also ended up completely wrecking elements of their life to get there.  If I'd followed that path and thrown myself into it completely, I wouldn't be here now with Mrs Tips and the various sauropodlets.*





* I'd be shagging page 3 burds, snorting coke and rolling around on a bed of fifty pound notes 

[COMMANDO FORCES]

* I'd be shagging page 3 burds 

I had to look twice then, as I was worried that you had written that you would be shagging me. Then I realised that an 'i' was missing 

[Peter Wolf]

Although if I were interviewing somebody and they covered up gaps on their CV by saying they had spent the time 'travelling' I would presume they were a bit flaky and unreliable, and I would question the benefit of the experience and want to know what they had learnt from it and how that learning would be of use in the position they were being considered for.

If it actually said 'travelling' on the CV before I even got round to interviewing, the CV would most probably go in the bin before shortlisting. I've never been travelling myself, so I wouldn't see the benefit of it if I were an employer.

Now, if a candidate were to say they hadn't worked for a few years because they had been raising a family, that would make sense to me and I'd be able to see how someone might have developed important skills through the experience.

It seems like we disagree here on this because i have travelled and it had nothing to do with my work whatsoever and not only that there are quite a few gaps when i wasnt doing very much and i would rather not be asked what i was doing.

I have never written out a CV and anyway with what i do you are judged purely on your work and how well you can do it as anything else like what i do in my spare time is totally irrelevent. Checkable references are important as well but thats about it and being able to work on your initiative and an active interest in the work.

Thats all i would be interested in as an employer and i would screen potential employees with a questionaire of 50 random questions that are elementary or maybe even 100.

This is because you get chancers and if they cant answer the majority of the questions correctly then they will be disregarded.

[TordelBack]

I wouldn't hire anyone that listed a year-or-more's traveling on their CV because I'm a vindictive jealous so-and-so.

I'm lying of course: people that have actually seen a chunk of the world and done interesting stuff while doing it often bring useful ideas and experience back with them, not least some notion of what they want from life .  I watched my brother blossom from a slobby druggy miserabilist to a hyperfit confident contented man when his peripatetic life finally collided with somewhere he truly wanted to be. For myself, I foolishly chose work over travel, always thinking that I'd get a bit further along with developing the business so i could leave someone else in charge for a year, then there was a mortgage and children and now no business to speak of.  However, I am supremely happily married and enkidded, and I've done a lot of intensive local traveling in the three weeks a year I managed to steal over the 'boom' years, and I'm certainly not going to begrudge anyone the chance of doing things differently.

Note: 6 months hanging around the Irish bars of Bondi, Long Island or Phuket does not count as 'travel'.

What I do hate in a CV is the aforementioned "i am so great" list and "personal mission statement" at the start.  Every time I read "I work equally well in a team or independently" and "I have excellent communication skills"  I find myself thinking "I'll be the judge of that", which is a bit unfair since kids are forced into writing that shit these days.  If I 'm honest I generally look at CVs for evidence that someone doesn't mind getting stuck into whatever kind of work presents itself - I have a morbid mistrust of "career path" CVs - much happier to see 6 months in a fish cannery or a year with the forestry service than ten unbroken years of ladder-climbing.

[Tiplodocus]

I'm just having to write that bit now.  Apparently I do have "Excellent Communication Skills" (or so my feedback keeps telling me) but it just feels so wrong to stick it up front on the CV. Especially as every fucker that quite blatantly does not, puts it on theirs next to their "proven ability to work under pressure and rapidly learn new skills". 

I almost feel like sticking "except in c.v. writing and interviews" as an addendum. And that might help qualify my "Good Humoured" comment as well.

As for my faults, I guess I'm just "a perfectionist and a workaholic". ;o)

[Paul faplad Finch]

On a course I recently attended we were repeatedly told that we absolutely should leave things off our cv's if they were qualifications not needed for the job because employers are wary of overqualified people being unmotivated in jobs they feel to be beneath them.This didn't apply to me of course because I'm not over-qualified for anything.

In my last interview I was asked about weaknesses and I said 'lack of ambition'. I explained that I didn't see that as a weakness but that my previous employer had so I thought I should mention it. 

What I meant was that I have no great desire to climb any ladders or do lots of courses with an eye to self-improvement and getting promotions. I am perfectly happy being quite low in an organization so long as I am trusted to do the job and the work is appreciated.  I went on to explain that I thought this should be an attitude that employers would like, given that their are only so many promotion prospects in-house so they would inevitably lose ambitious types to other firms and also any climbers or leavers have to be replaced and the replacements trained etc.

I stressed that not wanting to climb the ladder did not mean I wasn't willing to work bloody hard on the bottom rungs and a couple of people like me could be the 'core' of a team when others were coming and going. I thought I made sense but it was obvious he wasn't buying it. 

Perfectionist and workaholic it may have to be next time.

[House of Usher]

MMmm. I'm just doing my CV now and it does have a year in the middle where I was travelling. Because, well, I was travelling.

I think you can be allowed one year! Anything more says 'slacker.'

If I 'm honest I generally look at CVs for evidence that someone doesn't mind getting stuck into whatever kind of work presents itself - I have a morbid mistrust of "career path" CVs - much happier to see 6 months in a fish cannery or a year with the forestry service than ten unbroken years of ladder-climbing.

Oh, you'd like mine then. I've never got more than a single rung up any ladder I've been on!

What I meant was that I have no great desire to climb any ladders or do lots of courses with an eye to self-improvement and getting promotions.

For that they tick the box marked 'lazy.' Truth.

Perfectionist and workaholic it may have to be next time.

They hate perfectionists. No time for that. Workaholics are popular though, especially if you'll do it for £5.80 an hour, plus a bit of unpaid on top.