Matthew Kimberley

… and another tool for your CV-writing kit.

Guy Kawasaki makes decisions about people, as an employer and an investor. He’s endorsing the advice of Glen Kelman – CEO of Redfin. His advice is a comprehensive overview of how to write a CV.

1. Verbs ending in “d”: shipped, launched, built, sold.
2. Results: not responsibilities or experience — but what responsibilities and experience helped you accomplish.

And his take on the length of your CV? “Two pages, max. If you’re under 30, one page.”

Read the whole post, and bookmark it.

If you don’t know who you need to speak to, say exactly that.

“My name’s Bob and I’d like to become a supplier, but I don’t know who I need to speak to. Can you help me out, so I won’t need to bother you again.”

and if you’re speaking to the right person for the first time, don’t waste anyone’s time:

“My names Bob and I’m a recruiter. I’m phoning to sell you something, unless you tell me that’s a bad idea, in which case I promise I won’t sell you anything today. I would, however, be grateful for any pointers for the future.”

An astute look at ten archetypes of recruitment consultants from the always interesting Andy Headworth at Sirona Consulting:

9. The Order Taker: I hate them! They phone up and say (exactly),” Have you got any vacancies today?” then you say “no”, and they reply, “Ok then, goodbye”. They need to be put down – they are not recruitment consultants!!

Read the whole list over at Sirona Says

Your CV belongs to you. The data in your CV belong to you. You alone can choose who you want to share your CV with.

The agency wants to send your CV to a client company of theirs, and thinks you’d be “great for the role”, and “is certain” they can get you an interview, and has “never met a better candidate”, and “will buy you a beer” when they see you next.

But they won’t tell you the name of their client.

Time to find a new agency.

There is no good reason to withhold this information. There are plenty of bad reasons – you’ll cut us out of the loop, you’ll get another agency to represent you, you’ll tell your friends who’ll go directly to the client – but not a single good one. It all comes down to trust, and the question of whether you can trust an agency that doesn’t trust you.

No recruiter likes to hear  “I’ve already received this CV from another agency”. A lot of hiring managers bin any CV received from two different sources, which puts you out of the picture altogether.

And even worse, there are agencies out there that send your CV off for open roles without even telling you that much.

The key frustration for me, from a recruiter’s viewpoint, is that even though we’re offering full disclosure, and even if 90% of other recruitment companies are, it only takes one agency to “do the dirty” to make it look like none of us are doing our jobs properly. CV arrives twice, therefore recruitment agencies aren’t screening their candidates properly.

We had a case like this last week. Our candidate was dropped from the running after the client received his application from two sources. We had written authorisation to represent the jobseeker at the named client. The candidate hadn’t spoken to the other agency in eight weeks, and they’d never mentioned roles in Belgium, let alone with the company in question.

The market’s pretty tough at the moment, and we’re seeing more and more dirty tricks, but this is one that’s dressed up as “company policy” far too often.

As a jobseeker, insist on this information. Don’t expect it until the end of your conversation with the recruiter, but make sure you get it then. It will save you heartache, and put the pressure on the non-compliant to get their acts together.

I’m sick. Whilst I’m well enough to lie down and mope about, the minute I start to think about anything too hard, it bites me in the bum. The number one choice of illness for the indolent, it would seem.

Sick-leave is normally a great excuse to catch up on reading, but this time I wasn’t up to my normal (dick?)heady intellectual standards, and I tucked into a handful of kids’ books I’ve been meaning to tackle for a while.

My mother-in-law, perhaps presciently, bought me a copy of Isabel Allende’s Kingdom of the Golden Dragon earlier in the year. It’s written for young teenagers, which is probably why I loved it. Straightforward storytelling, heroes, baddies, Yetis and the Himalayas.

But what I really got my teeth into, albeit belatedly, is Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy.

Three excellent books – the Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife and Amber Spyglass – which met with no small amount of controversy when published.

Depending on who’s doing the reading, they’re either about a young girl who lives in a fantasy world, talking animals, magic doorways, witches, angels and snowy environments (so far so Narnia), or they’re about the role that organised religion plays in stifling free will, curiosity and accumulation of wisdom (ha! Narnia, take that!).

The books are both of these things. A cracking story, effortlessly written and absorbing, and simultaneously far-from-subtle essay on what the author perceives to be dangerous shortcomings in theism, which will be lost entirely on the younger reader.

When I was fifteen, my geography teacher used to read us Winnie the Pooh stories. He said they were so much better the older you get. My reckoning is that the His Dark Materials trilogy is the same, and should figure in your kids’ libraries, if only so that you can read it when they’re not.