All the things my CV doesn't tell you about me

CVs are weird things, and the older I get the harder it gets for me to understand them.

They say nothing about your capacity to persevere through big and small adversities.

They say nothing about your ability to communicate effectively and build bonds with other people.

They say little about your capacity to learn in the specific ways you learn, with all their strengths and weaknesses.

They say nothing about your ability to admit when you made a mistake, or about how you learn from these things, if at all.

They say nothing about your kindness, and the whole palette of softer than soft skills that make you the person you are.

They say none of these, and they omit a thousand other important facts about you. Things that, I believe, determine how successful you will be at work and in your professional life.

I don't believe that a CV can have any of these things, they are, by design, crafted for the fast-food-like hiring process of the modern world. I don't think it's possible to fix CVs, because I am not convinced that it's possible to fix theMacDonaldesque hiring practices of the world we live in.

I don't think it was ever about getting it right, it was just about a process that is good enough. Hiring is expensive after all.

If you ever feel some degree of depersonalization reading an old (or current) CV, know that you are not alone. That's exactly the experience that made me write this.

CVs are weird.