A bad case of the CV-geebies

Hello my sweet Lord Blog, oh, how I've missed thee.

It's not as easy as it looks to try to make yourself employable. Teaching jobs in this country are spread more thinly than Bruce Forsyth's steel wire hair. At the moment I feel a bit like I might have to resort to wearing thigh high boots and a backless dress, despairingly shaking my goods under the nose of passing College Principles and pouting. "Go on Mr, take a lick of my CV, it's got the sexiest references and every career gap filled..."

CV's are evil little tyrants. Everyone knows that they're only there to get you past the filing clerk on twelve pence a year who's job it is to separate the cannon fodder from the superstars. Theirs is the job to eliminate the candidates who's only highlights are a GCSE in gardening and a three year gap at "Her Majesties Pleasure" and put forward those with eight years at Oxbridge, with three years curing sick orphans in Africanibeanymoreofaselfrighteoustit. All this happens before the interview process really sorts out who gets the job anyway, so they're pretty much only to jump you through that first hoop anyway. ("I really am at Oxbridge. I live under a bridge in Oxford, eating swan droppings and carving ladies names into my arms... I'll get my coat")

It's a horrible pressure when you have to start writing about yourself in the third person, or writing a 500 word 'Personal Statement' and things can get really tricky on the CV front line when you have to remember it's a balancing act trickier than a blind tightrope walker trying to get his Labrador onto the high wire. Remember, at all times you have to be personable, but professional, work well individually, but also in a team, you have a social life, but are dedicated to 'achieving goals', you use phrases like 'achieving goals' rather than first considering extracting your own tongue with pliers and watching it splashing about in a pool of blood on the floor like a worm cut in half by a spade.

Perhaps I'm not the only one who hates playing the game, but I always feel like such a looser trying to write this way. There's never a shortage of people who give you helpful advice like "if you don't blow your own trumpet then who will?" (Head to a park in Coventry with five quid and a packet of Quavers and I bet you'll find someone who will), or "You've got to sell yourself" (I'm confused, am I the giver or the taker in this arrangement?) but I can't write one of these personal statements without coming across like a gigantic boob and wanting to kill myself for being such a self aggrandising tit.

We should give our CVs over to honesty and tell our prospective employers that we are onto their game and that a chat would be far better. We could write jokes, or include some interesting facts about cinema, or use only the word "kill" five hundred times over in a sort of post-modern ironic statement.

We could do that, but we wont. We all know the truth. CV's are a punishment for the fact that you hate the job you are in now, the one you used to have and probably the one you are going to have in the future, regardless of how many volunteering escapades or internships your cheery, eager little grin can survive without resorting to bashing your teeth out with a bit of pumice stone in frustration of where your life went wrong.

Still, could be worse. You could end up being the poor sod who has to read them all. Try making that job sound good on your CV.

Byebyebyebye. x