I Want A Job... But Not With You

Being the recent not-quite-official-but-in-limbo graduate that I am, I have been obliged to join the tax-paying masses and search for a job.

So I went in to town and signed up with a few; It went from optimistic to shite. I'm not going to slander them, so I've changed the name to Adecci. I sauntered in and all 3 staff seemed to be pre-occupied with the same 1 client. I waited. After a while, some young girl came over. We'll call her Gretel.

"Can I help you?"
No you daft bint, I'm standing here in a recruitment agency for shits and giggles. "Hi, yeah, I've just finished my degree in Marketing at Uni and saw that job in the window for a marketing assistant?"
"Got a CV?"
"Yeah sure, here you go..."
Ponders over it for 5 seconds... "No sorry, I can't see what you've done or anything, hold on a minute I'll show you." Goes to print one off...
"This one is mine. Go away and do it like this? See? Then just email it over to me" Does some pointing.
"Erm, okay yeah sure. Cheers."

I foolishly walked home and after a cuppa, looked over hers.

Rule 1. Never give out your own CV to a client. If you must, make sure it's half decent.

Shocking was an understatement. It was riddled with typos, grammar was awful, layout was poor, it was inconsistent, and catastrophically text-heavy.

Rule 2. If you're going to lie, be consistent about it.

Quote: "Job from summer 2005 - I worked as a something-or-other before going to University..." but then that's it. No other mention of University. So presumably either a) you didn't get in, b) you went but dropped out, and assumptively c) your CV is around 4 years old.

Rule 3. Make it exciting and don't be repetitive.

All I learnt about our mug here outisde of work experience was that she was good at sales and liked netball. That was it.

Rule 4. Don't have a unique name. (And if you must, keep your Facebook locked down)

Out of sheer curiosity, I googled her and her Facebook profile popped up. Haha... drunken skanktily clad pole dancing photos. Fool.


So I thought... I can't be fussy. I'll mildly adapt my CV and send it over, see what happens. I got this response:

I gave you a copy of an ideal c.v for you to model yours on. This looks nothing like the one that I gave you and also I still cannot make out what your exact job titles were. Re-do you c.v how I asked you to.

Hmm. Both stupid and rude! I was pissed off and couldn't be arsed anymore. I sent back this response:

Your C.V. makes no sense. It lacks structure, seems to thrive on vagueness, and is extremely text-heavy. For example, it begins under ‘Uniform Coordinator’ with ”Before I went to University...” yet it states nowhere what you did or even if you went to University. It is also riddled with typographical and grammatical errors. All your C.V. tells me about you is that you like netball and are good at sales.
I shall be taking my C.V. elsewhere.

Kind regards,
Rob Smith

N.B.: It is a wise idea to keep your personal and professional lives separate. If I can see what you did in Zante last year, then so can prospective employers.


Needless to say, I received a highly apologetic email back from her. I'm no model client, nor have a perfect curriculum vitae. But this is an exemplary lesson in precisely not what to do.