The CV, one of PR’s biggest lies, may be dead. Honest.

By , May 1 2012, 8:18 am 4 Comments

There was some great banter doing the rounds early today stirred by Dirk Singer of The Rabbit Agency about why he and his colleagues never read CVs any  more.

It must have been a little disconcerting given the first experience many PRs have of the factual distortion that may become a hallmark of their careers is when they ‘craft’ their first CV.

I’m being deliberately provocative of course, but Dirk’s point did strike a chord and makes a lot of sense. Having looked at CVs from thousands of eager pups, jaded flacks and everyone in between over the years, I think I can smell achievement inflation when I see it. Let’s face it, it’s practically expected that a PR CV will include the stretching of the truth at some point. Doubtless most CVs in other industries are the same. If you undersell yourself on your CV, you’re hardly teeing yourself up for editorial success are you?

I don’t advocate mistruth or untruth on CVs, but many of us push the limits. ‘A decade of frontline experience in media-oriented industries’ seems striking for a 22-year-old, but do bear in mind that it probably started with an (underage) paper round.

Instead, many agency employers these days are looking at LinkedIn data, connections in social networks, blog content and visible achievements laid bare online. In the age of transparency, this stuff is easy to find and (albeit that LinkedIn data can have the whiff of CVitis) tends to be factual, or at least more factual than CVs send one-to-one, because it is so open to scrutiny.

Many other agency heads I’ve talked to about this have said the same: the CV tends to be stuck in the HR files as a document of record, but decisions about whether to interview tend to be taken based on the data that exists about the candidate online. And as the process proceeds and offers are contemplated, expect more data to be put under the microscope, with Facebook content typically first in line.

The CV doesn’t need a funeral just yet. But its days as the centrepiece of the application are over. It’s little more than contact details with a few pointers, because the real shop window has moved to the internet.

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  • Dirk Singer

    Hi Steve, indeed we don’t read CVs and we ask candidates to please not send them to us.  

    Personally I don’t find them that illuminating and if someone really wants to send us a list of what they’ve done then a link to their LinkedIn profile works much better.

    What we much prefer is a series of relevant links.   Campaigns candidates have worked on, blog posts or articles they have written, Flickr or Instagram profiles (assuming they want to share), a Twitter account and so on.    It gives us a much better picture of what they can actually do and, especially as a social media agency, proves to us that they use the tools we use in campaigns on a day to day basis.

    Finally, it gives candidates scope and creativity to showcase their experience in the best way that they see fit.   Recently we’ve had people send us Pinterest boards about them, a personal ‘Storify’ story, YouTube videos and QR codes linking to a site – just to give a few examples

    • Steve Earl

      All makes perfect sense. I’d like to see more of candidates conducting (though it’s risky from their perspective) ‘hire me’ social campaigns rather than just slapping on a CV that they’re familiar with “tools like” Facebook. The latter doesn’t cut it any way.

      I will miss the clumsy CV boasts though, they always brighten the day. The “I am a strategic thinker, I act strategically and immerse myself persistently in the heady waters of strategy” kind of guff.

  • Steve Ward

    Ahhh – the CV is dead subject raises it’s head! :)  
    Amongst the network of us `futuristic` recruiters (inhouse and agency), this is a hot topic. At the recent #truLondon event – it was debated heavily. The result of the discussion? No, they are not dead – roughly by a margin of 57 to 3 in the room. 

    The reason is because 99% of employers still want to see a CV. I take Dirk’s point, but the LinkedIn profile is dour, standardised and often incomplete. It doesn’t encourage `CV type` achievement content – it encourages mere task lists under jobs. 

    Where the 2 combine, is that there is actually nothing wrong with CVs, if the jobseeker has displayed the links Dirk refers to. CVs CAN be dynamic pieces of presentation – in the social age, they need to be catalysts for information, social footprint, proof, evidence of work, and downright boasting of visual online brilliance. It is also a demonstration of how the jobseekers likes to present information, how they write, and how they prioritize and emphasise relevant content. (On that note, I consider infographic CVs as mindless nonsense) 

    The black and white one-dimensional CV should be close to dead to those of us operating in the creative industries – but an optimized, multi-dimensional platform for links to their online existence certainly is not. 

    Let’s please not kill the CV – part of my job is educate people to do them better.

    Steve Ward | CloudNine Social Media & Digital Talent | @CloudNineRec:twitter  

    • Steve Earl

      Perhaps it’s the static CV that needs to die then? A ‘platform’ for a person doesn’t need to be a CV. Yet the very vast majorit of CVs I receive ARE static, formulaic, fairly meaningless standard fare. I point this out not to grumble, but to encourage applicants to think about what they’re trying to communciate and how they’re trying to do it.