Five Things Not To Put on Your CV

Given the state of the world, in particular the UK banking system coupled with the fact that every few years I need to look for work (I work on a contract basis), I decided to draw up a list of five things you should not put on your CV. A brief reason for each one can be found at the end.

(1) Head of Liquidity - Northern Rock Plc (UK)
(2) Member of the Bush Family - either past, current or potentially a future president (USA)
(3) Data Protection officer- Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (UK)
(4) Human Rights Activist (Russia)
(5) Gay & Lesbian Officer, Iran

Head of Liquidity - Northern Rock Plc (UK)
Well this should be sort of self evident, since the near demise of NR about two months ago the person responsible of liquidity has been off sick. I think most people would feel quite sick if you had to go cap in hand to ask for £24bn.

Member of the Bush Family (USA)
The threat of another member of the Bush family in the White House is not as far off as it may seem. CNN and others have already started speculating that in two or perhaps three US elections-time another member of this comedy household will hold the highest office in the world. The Bush family are if anything consistent in the way they run the White House. Both Jnr and SnR have: caused a ballooning government deficit, increased the trade deficit, invaded Iraq, caused record home repossessions and have chosen interesting Vice Presidents. Although the current holder of the latter post does seem far less amiable than the lovable Dan Quayle.

Data Protection officer- Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (UK)
The UK tax agency recently lost the records of 25 million people. These records include information such as bank details, current and previous addresses plus no doubt many others as well. Apparently the 2 CDs containing these records were sent by normal mail (although using TNT not Royal Mail). Clearly saving money was slightly more important than using recoded or trackable post, I bet the people responsible for these decisions are now (hopefully) shi*ing bricks. You would have to be pretty dumb to do that and also to claim that a database can only retrieve all data and not just for example the national insurance number and name is frankly stupid. Indeed they could have saved themselves more cash by doing a query which only returned the name and national insurance number of each person. If they had done so they would probably have been able to fit all the data onto one CD, this saving even more cash and embarrassment.

Human Rights Activist - Russia
This definitely not something to put on your CV. As Mr Putin rightfully points out such people are clearly only working for foreign powers and are doing so only to undermine the Russian people. Indeed managed democracy (as it is called) leads to stability…. the leader of the Democratic People Republic of North Korea is of a similar view I am told.

Gay & Lesbian Officer (Iran)
Clearly such things do not exist in Iran, a country famed for tolerance and progressive thinking.