Aug 2016
Almost everyone I have spoken to with experience of recruitment has described with a sneer the really appalling CVs they have received. These people can generally do no better, believe me because I’ve seen their own efforts—but there is some truth to the rumours and it is the case that any half–way decent CV truly does stand out from the crowd of eccentric and underpowered offerings. What can you do
Jul 2016
Areas covered in this article: The mechanics of producing a decent CV The thought process behind a good CV I want to simplify the subject by keeping away from jargon and concentrating on what a CV is actually for. When I started writing CVs for a living we were just moving from the age of the stencil to DTP and photocopying on expensive paper – CVs looked better but they
Jun 2016
Areas covered in this article: What MUST appear in your CV All the various design options I shall concentrate here on bringing common sense and my huge experience of writing over 4000 CVs to cut through all the myths surrounding what a CV should be. Over the last 10 years people have become confused by whether a CV should be one page, two pages or longer, whether it should be
Sep 2014
Some years ago, I had an office in central London. One lunchtime I was walking down the street when I came face to face with the famous head of a TV Channel. He made eye contact and looked, for a split second, like he wanted to speak. For some reason I never figured out, I put my face into neutral and passed him by. Perhaps I didn’t want to seem
Sep 2014
I was working on a major newspaper that was in a state of transition. Building up my team, I recruited a young man from Pakistan, in his early 20s. His background made him respectful towards the ‘old guard’, especially his elders, including one of the middle managers who were on the way out. Fast forward a big chunk of time. My young assistant was now running his own business, a
Aug 2014
I was looking for the business card of a contact I made recently in India, when I realised I had the cards of many people I had totally forgotten. It made me wonder if others were thinking the same about my cards. I am fairly selective about the cards I seek and even more so about the ones I keep. Yet here was a bunch of calling cards that might
Aug 2014
I came across an apparently random 14-digit number which turned out to be quite interesting: 65359477124183. If you multiply it by 17, you get 1111111111111111. If you are one of those people whose minds close down when face with numbers, please stay with me because it gets even more fascinating. Let’s multiply the original figure by 34 (that’s 17×2), then 51 (17×3) and so on. This is what you get: