Rothschilds, Mayfair Magazine and Holloway Prison. What have these three illustrious institutions got in common? (The ears of Rothschilds’ lawyers prick up for the punch line….) Well, it’s nothing like that. It’s that they’ve all been sent my CV and turned me down for a job Fools Though I can’t blame them entirely My CV sucks

I’ve never been very good at accumulating CV points. At school I was thrown out of the Cadet Force for insubordination before I could make it to NCO. At university, the only society I was a member of was the Cribbage Club. Sure, I was president for a year, but somehow that seems to make it worse.
I could, of course, lie Jasper Barnes, 25, lied. He applied to the Foreign Office with an outstanding academic record: Eton, Oxford, a first in history, fluent in two languages – but still he felt his CV was a bit slim He’d never actually done anything.

So he told them he’d lived in Athens for a year, co-ordinating a shipping survey for the Greek navy Good tactic: bluff big and you won’t be called on it Sadly, Jasper wasn’t offered a job. He’d forgotten the cardinal rule: Harrow, Foreign Office; Eton, Treasury.The CV jungle is a treacherous place. So what do employers want to see on a CV? Gloria Barber, graduate recruitment manager at Abbey National, says: “We’re looking for broad-based people who’ve developed personal skills as well as their academic abilities.” She looks for positions of responsibility, and evidence of team-related or social activities, not isolated, lone pursuits. Such as? “Such as hill-walking,” she says knowingly.”I would be less impressed by someone who has stayed at home, gone to university nearby, and never really been tested,” she goes on. “We want people who aren’t looking for a safe, secure environment, people who want to take risks – these are the managers of the future.” Like Mr Jones, deputy branch manager, Swindon.

First name, Indiana.However, you shouldn’t put down anything too adventurous, says Penny Bushell of Careerquest, a city-based recruitment consultancy: “No bungee- jumping, no parachuting and no gliding. You don’t want an employer to think you’re about to die.” And nothing too contentious: “No membership of a political party No Amnesty International No Greenpeace.”No Greenpeace? That seems rather severe I collected for the NSPCC at school. Should I keep that suppressed? What if it comes out at a later date? What if I’m drunk at an office party? “Yeah, I did a bit of NSPCC collecting back in the old days So what? Got a bronze badge for it.” I could lose my job. But no – a lady I spoke to from Graduate Appointments was adamant: “I would strongly recommend against putting Greenpeace.” I asked her why that was “Because I deal with mining companies.” Fair enough. I was afraid to ask her about Amnesty.Another no-no, and one that I can wholeheartedly agree with, is membership of Mensa. “No Mensa,” says Penny succinctly, “you don’t want people thinking you’re an idiot.” She also takes up the clarion cry of keeping solitary pursuits off your CV: “No gardening, no fishing, no DIY, no sitting alone in libraries and definitely no hill-walking.” What is it about hill-walking? It seems to be the main leisure activity of the unemployable.

Maybe that’s why they’ve got so much time to spend walking up and down hills.James Harris, a director of Personnel Consultants, is even more specific in his targeting of this CV taboo: “No fell-walking,” he insists And I can see his point. Hill-walking could just about be excused as a hobby, a weekend kind of thing – but fell-walking? That implies a lifestyle choice .. “Could you pass me my whittling stick, please. I rather fancy carving myself a new fell pipe.”I should say that not all employers are opposed to solitary hobbies. Miss E, of a certain large insurance company located in London, tentatively suggested that “refereeing and playing chess” might be taken as good character points But I can’t help thinking she was just trying to be kind.

It’s like saying of hill-walking that at least it teaches you to tie your own shoelaces.There’s a definite CV code that you can use to suggest the ideal “well- rounded” personality, and, as James Harris says, “most people have got cute to it these days. They try to make out that they’re both a ‘decision- maker’ and also a ‘team player’; a responsible individual who’s also a good ‘people person’.”I find something strangely repulsive about these categories that you have to try to fit into. I don’t know what I’d do if someone asked me if I was a good “people person” Probably punch them and run off back to my tool shed. But these days it has become the trend to put a “personal profile” at the top of your CV, saying something like: “Dynamic young team-playing graduate with burning ambition to forge a challenging career.