What a CV would really look like without taboo’s:
This morning in the car, I had an interesting revelation about one’s professional path in life and how it is often displayed (aka SOLD) to others in the hopes of securing a comfortable, well-paying position.
Driving around an hour and a half each day to and from work, there are many such revelations to share with whomever likes to read stuff and having recently moved from my WordPress platform to this one, I give all my musings a fresh face and a new start.
That said, on my way this morning, driving through a very lush part of the woods, I thought to myself how pervasive the feeling of being undervalued, throughout one’s professional career, can be and so much so without any relief even in the face of a more adequate working environment. I proceeded to analyse a bit that feeling and came to the conclusion that despite the fact that my CV is a pretty good one, with plenty of experience and some good education, it is only one side of the coin…it is the mundane, socially acceptable side of the coin.
There’s nothing wrong with mundane when it comes to getting a job. Mundane is pretty much three quarters of being a lower-middle working class adult. There is, however, that one quarter that tells the other story. I thought to myself, what if I could write my CV the way I really wanted to write it and sell the skills that were actually built over time in each and every company or individual endeavour where I have ever worked? What do I mean by skills built over time? Well let me share them! And be aware that one, they should be taken with a pinch of salt, and two, these skills developed on demand of others, usually discretely and indirectly, and NOT by my own design!
And without further ado, an extract of what the real one would look like:
Name: XXX
Bio: Thrice immigrant, female, Caucasian, Eastern European mixed ethnicity
Education: High School (top of the class-useless thereafter), University (mash up of courses culminating finally in a bachelor degree in psychology)
Off-the-record Work Experience:
- Soldering microelectronic components onto PC boards (as well as dismantling dysfunctional ones) — Random reparations on various electronic items.
- “Duplication” of CEO signatures on various relevant documents
- Multilingual translations of doctoral theses and technical documents
- Cracking passwords of various “accidentally” locked intranet accounts
- Journalism and photography
- Modelling — nude stills
- Electrical rewiring to house electricity conformity standards
- DJ, Bouncer, Party organiser
- Set, lighting and sound management
- Digital marketing and copy-writing
- Immigration law
- Canoeing, motorcycling, dancing, archery
- Leather works and couture
- HTML, JAVA scripting and Excel Automation
- Client negotiations
- Marriage and relationship counselling
- Basic plumbing and car maintenance
- Basic construction work
There are probably tons more of these little bits and pieces of the puzzle that makes up a real CV but honestly, it just becomes a question of life experience after a while and no longer relevant to the “work market”…or is it?
It’s funny how much official qualifications and standard work experience accounts for initial employment practices and how little of it matters once busy on the job! Of course it’s not the case in every type of career but ask around over a round of drinks and the story often takes a very different twist to the prim and proper LinkedIn mission statements that make so many of feel…just a tad inadequate!
