I get sent CVs from potential employees all the time. Most of these are traditional, paper-based CVs. Perhaps one in ten of these are any good. The rest are devoid of useful information. I’m not interested in the positions that people held, or what projects they worked on. I’m interested in how they applied their skills to their role, what they achieved, what they learnt and how they contributed to the success (or failure) of the projects they were working on. Sometimes I get sent CVs by e-mail. These are usually of the same dismal quality.

People who are looking for graphic design or web designer positions sometimes have their own on-line portfolio. I tend to visit these rather than look at the CVs. To date, I’ve not seen one that indicates they could bring anything new, interesting or innovative to my company. Why is this? Well, the main reason is the work is either too focused in one specific area, e.g. Flash animation, or their portfolio does not look good, that is, either their own website, or those they’ve produced for other people.

As a case in point, today I received an e-mail from someone who has a “lot of creative energy and a history of delivering projects to the highest standard”. So I visited their website and this is what I found:

• A initially visually appealing website. Good.
• No on-line samples of work. Just a placeholder for samples. No matter of clicking on the various sections gave me any links to websites, graphic design, print work or anything.
• At this stage I thought maybe it was a browser issue. So I switched browser and found that the site is full of JavaScript errors. Now, I’m quite open to graphic designers not knowing much about web design. But this person promotes web design on their website and refers to the website as the primary source of information. Very bad news.
• I then found their CV, under the ‘Contact’ section. Of course. But no telephone number either on the website, or the CV. Whilst I could read the Microsoft Word version of the CV, it was poorly laid out, written in yellow and black Courier font. A graphic designer no less! Always be suspicious of someone who sticks ‘conceptualisation’ in a CV. Be very suspicious if they stick the word in five times.
• Finally, I looked at the PDF version of the CV. One page of a few yellow and grey rectangles. There was no other content.

I’m now off for a lie down.