You can guess my conclusion.
For a start it is an ugly, cryptic word - like "restroom". I suppose the CV served a purpose in the old days of handwriting and postage stamps when it provided a quick way of shortlisting potential candidates for management and administrative careers. What employers say that they want are candidates who can innovate and contribute in fluid teams. Looking at traditional Resumes isn't going to find them. But still they do it. Why? because what they really want are managers (definition: unnecessary conformist robots who follow procedures, process emails and summarise and filter other employees contributions) and the CV quantifies your level of conformity. There is a whole industry and millions of articles for those of you who want to produce a bland resume. Lifehacker keeps an eye on the best, most recently showcasing a comprehensive howto from Mahalo
What is the alternative?
- Have a passionate range of interests which you turn into documented actions in the real world
- Summarise your experience in a lively and visual web presence
- Make sure that you can control what people see first when they google you
- Use a tag cloud instead of a CV
A tag cloud is a matrix of words whose position and size shows their relative importance. I am investigating the many tag cloud generating applications and will spend a couple of weeks checking these out and provide you with a personal and prejudiced conclusion and will apply it to my CV.
You will notice the justenoughtechnology approach here - a real blogger would have produced a quick summary of "80+ tag cloud tools you can't do without"
Interesting post about resumes, and definitely helpful! I also came across this video series on the same subject--it's a bit dry, but the expert clearly knows what she's talking about: http://www.monkeysee.com/play/3738-how-to-write-a-resume
Posted by: Matt | May 12, 2008 at 03:18 PM