Wednesday, January 7, 2015

The Longer the CV, The Better

[for part 1 of this series, click here]



As we said, the prevailing Whiz-dumb thinks a long CV sucks.

But this is wrong on several fronts.

To see a real CV, and simply to demonstrate that TheHackerCIO never "Makes Shit Up", please click here, to see a real CV. This is Donald Knuth's example.  Academics understand what makes up a real CV. They live and die by them. They are an essential tool.

Now, is Donald Knuth an idiot for having a 40 page CV?

Or, are these Recruitment Pundits who tell us to keep it down to one page missing something?

Short answer: it's the pundits who are wrong.

Yes, Donald Knuth needs a CV. A long one! He needs to catalog everything he has done in the course of his career. Every book, video, audio, and paper he has written needs to be stated, whether refereed or not. That's hundreds of papers!

Now, maybe you're saying at this point, "But I'm not an academic. I haven't written three or four hundred papers. I have no need to itemize all of this." And I'm sure that's probably true. But if you're a senior technologist, you have worked on hundreds of projects. And every single one indicates  your unique skills, learned context, and achievements. All of that has contributed to make you the technologist you are. Why should it be ignored or forgotten? Is what contributed to making you the technologist you are now unimportant?

Far from it.

I know that this series is starting out as a bit of a teaser, but bear with me ...

Next time, we'll look at further reasons why all this detail is MANDATORY, for your own personal career development.

Until then, I Remain,

TheHackerCIO