"Gizza job! I can do that!"

When life deals us lemons, rather than heating up the steam juicer and start making lemonade; perhaps it’s only natural that first, we seek someone to blame; I blame my CV. Just lately it’s been the focus of all my anger. Never have so few words been rewritten and edited so many times. Beaten, pummelled and hacked into submission.

So much so, I’ve formed the opinion that the Curriculum Vitae must be one of the lesser-known ghastlier brainchildren of the Marquis de Sade. For only a sadist could revel in the linguistic torture I’ve inflicted upon the English language in the name of creating the textbook CV, the kind of semantic cruelty I’m constantly instructed is the mandatory vernacular to craft the optimum CV; The perfect CV? Could such a thing even be possible?

Let’s face it. No one can agree on the optimum number of pages, let alone its syntax. Clearly, Sir Alec Issigonis never had to struggle with points and picas on his CV, before famously saying, in what seemed the perfect way to explicate this diabolical document's evolution; “a camel is a horse designed by committee”. If so, he might have abandoned his archetypal articulate ungulate analogy and had something else to say about unintelligent design.

Every seminar or workshop is different. Nobody agrees on anything. There are no common standards. Everyone contradicts one another and when it comes to a CV’s layout Boris’s nonsensical and lampooned “Stay indoors. If you can work from home go to work, don’t go to work, go outside, don’t go outside. And then we will or won’t, ah, something or other” seems to make more sense.?

However, when it comes to one thing they’ve all spoken with one tongue; encouraging you by subterfuge to speak with a forked one. Mentoring you in the art of lying, subtly and not so. I was blissfully ignorant of Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) before Covid hit the scene; now its very mention razes my hackles, making me as cranky as a small bag, chock-full with particularly bulky cantankerous badgers. I’m no expert; so forgive me if I say this, but as far as I can tell it's simply a way of automating laziness and incompetence.

My loathing for so-called ATS “technology” grows with every course I finish, every job application I complete and with every trite rejection I receive. According to jolly old Google, applicant tracking systems are the software programs that manage the recruiting and hiring process, including job postings and job applications.

However, that just sounds like a job description for some Human Resources sidekick of Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz. To those who don’t speak “Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy” the life-changing (well it changed mine) book by Douglas Adams, he was a particularly officious and vile civil servant from the planet Vogsphere. Whereas Adams wrote a humorous parody of officialdom going mad, it’s not a laughing matter that ATS HAS gone rogue. Put simply, it might do on ashy and derelict planets, but it has no point in any civilised world.

Sometimes I feel like creating a LinkedIn profile in the name of "Yosser" Hughes just so I can say, Gizza job! I can do that! I fear such irony would be lost on my grim-faced Vogonesque ATS operatives. This soulless, humourless computer software is crushing, grinding hope down into a nameless faceless homogenised recruitment smoothie. Perhaps I should stand on the roof naked and shout out, "there is no place for this kind of automation in recruitment. I am not a number. I have a soul and feelings; I am not made of stone". Yet here I am. Categorised, sorted and rejected with a level of compassion seen only in a Vogan HR department, as gleefully they complete the stocktaking paperwork and count the staples.

When did recruitment become monetised to the extent that it can only function as a volume business? Is it really too much to ask and expect that a human reads my CV and they acknowledge my job application? Does it cost too much to be polite and civilised? Is it too much inconvenience to recognise that I exist? Does it really cost too much and take too much time to offer real constructive feedback? After all, I thought that was your job. The very raison d'etre for human resources. Or is it simply, too bothersome, even to say thanks, but no thanks and for just once and actually mean it. Especially, after you have taken the time to attend some pointless interview after jumping through every hoop requested like a performing poodle with St Vitus' dance owned and trained by a Russian bloke named Pavlov. Suffice to say, saying ATS is not fit for purpose is an understatement worthy of comparison to Captain Lawrence Oates’s polite declaration “I am just going outside and may be some time”.

To the profiteers and spivs in the recruitment industry who have leapt on my misery and suffering like manna from heaven, ATS is a godsend. Like snake-oil salesmen they peddle their wares, offering sure-fire, under-the-counter methods to beat the system. In hushed tones they say, you mustn’t lie… But apparently, it is legitimate and fair to bend the truth. Yet no one ever explains that the truth is a fragile construct. Bend it too far and it breaks the bonds of trust. Until now, I was under the impression you can’t polish a turd. However, you can cover it in glitter. Recruitments' magic fairy dust.?And that’s what we are groomed and coerced into doing. Liberally sprinkling keywords over our CV like sparkles on a gaudy Christmas card and encouraged too. Whilst it may not be said explicitly, the subtext is in plain sight; lies are fine if it’s all for a good cause. Through subterfuge and spin under the guise of how to beat the system, we are implicitly taught how to lie. Where does it stop? With everyone so busy polishing up their CVs and bending the truth to breaking point all ATS does is reward the most convincing liars rather than find the best candidate. It has to stop.

I don’t want, nor do I need to lie. Take a look at my CV and you will see I’m not asking for much. All I want is a job based on my own merits. I believe I’m worth it. What’s more, given my wisdom and experience, I think I deserve it. Now, I don’t begrudge anyone making a fair profit. All I ask is that they deserve it. It’s simple. Just deliver the service you promised. The one you tendered and everyone will be happy. Not just your shareholders. Stop treating the unemployed like coal or data, a grubby old-world commodity or new-age resource to be mined with minimum effort for maximum profit with little thought to the collateral damage that causes.

Stop thinking about short-term profits and play the prosperity long game. It’s better for me, it’s better for the country, and that must be better for you. Should I get a job, it saddens me to know that all the agencies who have played a part in making me so bitter and twisted will fight like Spitfire pilots claiming a kill over my victory. More than likely, my one success will miraculously become four or five as they each claim my credit to boost their bottom line. For the record, they are not all bad. The standout good guys have been BAPEI Training and Room for Work, who did and do go above and beyond.

I didn’t get where I am today, without realising such dedicated organisations are rare beasts indeed. No matter how much they may attempt to change the world to most of the companies who dish out disjointed training, ladling conflicting advice like soup at the workhouse, or who spew acronyms like a pair of new-age Tony Webster’s or David Harris-Joneses I am, and always will be, a commodity. It’s not great or super.

At the receiving end, the services delivered by these snake oil salespersons and quackery brokers is more or less worthless; yet I’ll wager it’s a little more lucrative at the other being paid to create and deliver this tripe. Like a wasp wedged in your sandals, this is the thing that really stings. Imagine how much they must be paid to come up with these conning concoctions? Given the greed, and given how much cream is sloshing around, and the potential to skim it off. I’m surprised that moggy mushroom clouds do not surround us as the fat cats gorge and explode. It’s shameful.

I’m nothing more than the difference between profit and loss and the bottom line on a spreadsheet to these felines, flabby, detonated or otherwise. Yet we the unemployed are worth more than this. Stop treating us like data to be mined, cows to be milked and cream to be consumed and please, please, treat us like the worthwhile human beings we are.

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