Its almost laughable. You spend hours quibbling over the layout. You worry about whether to include your paper round from 5 years ago. You export it to a PDF, close the Word document, unsaved, then spot a mistake. You have to then faff around with the PDF to get the content back into word, then amend, then re-export (remembering to save the word document this time), only to change your mind about something else, and then start the process all over again. I have phillip_hayes_CV(1), phillip_hayes_CV(2), phillip_hayes_CV(3) ad infinitum saved on my computer. It is beyond a joke.
And now they tell us that employers look at the document for 9 seconds.
Deep down, we all knew that the little piece of paper is, what the french call, inutile. A Document of little purpose, of no use, nor ornament. Like Monty Pythons parrot it has ceased to be; its passed on; bereft of life, it rests in peace. Its pushing up the daisies. It should go to meet its maker. It is an EX-IMPORTANT-DOCUMENT.
Greg Hursts article in the Times confirms the importance that employers place on the document so outdated it still has a latin name. He mentions a macabre likeness to Tinder, the dating app where you scroll through potential romantic partners with the flick of a thumb, clicking green for Like (read: highly attractive), or red for Dislike (read: looks like Gollum). The thought is macabre, as people are so much more than a piece of paper. The same can doubtless be said in the dating arena; that judging a person by their looks alone will never result in a meaningful relationship, but alas, we are here to solve the worlds employability crisis and not the junk food direction the dating world is heading.
Peoples personalities are of immense importance to employers. After all, if you are successful, they will have to spend 8 hours of their day working with you. Also, so much of our time at work is spent selling. You may not agree, but scientists sell their projects and ideas, accountants sell themselves to their co-workers and if you are vying for a promotion, you sell yourself to your superiors. Selling is about personality and your ability to build relationships. You cannot get that ability across in a CV.
So whats the solution? In a day and age where you can upload a video of you tipping ice cold water over yourself in the name of charity, or you can start a campaign to knock Simon Cowell off the Christmas number one spot, replacing him with Rage Against the Machine, we surely can create a better method than the CV? We all, freely and easily, upload content to the world wide web on a daily basis. This content provides a tapestry of information about our personalities, interests, likes and dislikes.
We can use our uploads to showcase what we can offer an employer. By doing this creatively, we provide a greater insight into the skills we possess, and why we would be successful in a given role. Employers can then sift through these candidates, using intelligent computers to do the hard bit for them, ranking potential candidates based on the wealth of information they have provided. Google ranks web pages with frightening accuracy, placing the most relevant pages at the top of your search results. Why arent we able to rank job applicants with the same accuracy, placing candidates most relevant to our vacancy at the top of the list so we can look at their credentials for longer than 9 whole seconds?
Well, that is what Kloodle can do. The CV is going the way of the rest of the latin language. Kloodle is providing candidates and employers an alternative. An alternative that does more justice than a piece of paper written in Times New Roman and has all the charisma of John Major discussing cricket. And for those who havent seen the Monty Python sketch and didnt get the reference earlier, here it is.
