So, little bit of a rant here guys and well... bugger me fucking sideways.
I used to work in recruitment and have long specialised in CVs - literally, every one of my friends asks me to help me with their CV and one of Liverpool's major educational establishments still use my CV as guidelines for their students. I have worked for quite a few companies in my time and have a good degree of experience in this field - in my time, I have proofed, edited and created more CVs than I can count.
A friend of mine recently got in touch to ask me to help with his CV; I gladly obliged and began to use my go-to template that I have been using personally for over five years.
Wanting to adopt the correct syntax and wordology, I looked up on Google for some buzz-words and terms within his field. First hit, first fucking hit, a company (who I won't name), had my CV design on their site; charging £5 for the template.
It is so blatantly ripped off that they have even shifted the context cells to make it look slightly different.
The sentence structure, dialogue and even font, font colour and cell colour are exactly the same. They even have a sub-section where they even give 'tips' on how to write a one-page CV, which basically extracts the 'formula' of how my CV was crafted.
There are those amongst us who will, of course, see this as a 'he said, she said' type of scenario and (rightfully) state that if something is public, it is fair game. Some may even wonder if I had been 'inspired' by their layout and crafted my CV to suit.
But, think of the internet and think of the auld arses that fester on it who take the required shortcuts to make a quick buck and then try to think of a time when something that you yourself have created had been used for profit without your knowledge.
Not going to put mine or the companies CV on here, but it is just (A) quite savvy of them and (B) quite daft of me to expect anything other than having to 'get over it'.
Just really needed to vent that - I'm sorry, but the internet never fails to amaze me! My fucking lowly CV being sold for £5 to people who may not even be able to afford it. Honestly? I'd have gladly fucking gave my templates away to anyone who asked. Job seeking is one of the most stressful endeavours that people can partake in and I've a mind to ask my friend to 'ethically test their defences' and fucking take all of their CV's, create a wordpress site, ripping off their site, and publically making their templates free for all to use.
I know this kind of shit goes on the world over and there is very little we can do - but without sounding like a bitter fool - this is not the first time that I have experienced blatant ripping off of work.
Anyhow - to qualify the starting of this thread (and not putting it in the Jobseekers thread, which is a totally different kettle of fish), what are people's thoughts on CV authoring? (In general) I, at least hope that some good will come out of this and if any of my fellow Rawkites use any of the tips in this thread, rather than pay these vipers who obviously scour the tinterweb for CVs; then I will be a happy man.