Another fine mess

Just when we were thinking that the EU was a complete waste of money, news reached PharmiWeb Towers this week about a ground breaking plan concocted by bureaucrats in Greece to standardise all cvs/resumes/Zusammenfassung across the continent. The plan, which emanates from CEDEFOP, www.cedfop.gr, The European centre for the Development of Vocational Training, aims to create an environment where employers in all member states can easily compare experience and training of prospective employees regardless of their country of origin in order to create a genuinely level playing field of work throughout the EU. Obviously CEDEFOP think reading cvs/resumes/Zusammenfassung is too taxing an undertaking for the average HR employee and they need to have a standardised format so they can have two cvs/resumes/Zusammenfassung on their desks at the same time and compare the entries in each category for which has the biggest words (a clear and reprehensibly unfair advantage for German candidates). Harsh cynicism aside though the idea does have it’s merits, at PharmiWeb we often see CVs from talented Europeans that are let down by their formatting and lay out, immediately creating a bad first impression despite the reams of papers these people have often churned out in Spanish/French/Slovakian. It might even be worth the average British job hunter putting their cv together in this format and raising the point at interview, although the 50/50 chance of being seen as ‘absolutely on the ball’ or ‘tremendously anally retentive’ might preclude this. The eucv also stresses the importance of language skills, and for this reason alone it’s unlikely to be adopted by many in the UK, after all no-one wants huge gaps in their cv. The CEDEFOP website also boasts that their format of cv, ‘the European CV’ provides information on ‘work experience’, ‘education and training background’ and ‘additional skills and competences acquired outside formal training schemes.’ Although any cv/resume/Zusammenfassung that didn’t would get pretty short shrift from most HR people I know. Opinion in the HR community is, for once united, in it’s vehemence against these proposals, one HR Manager we spoke to at a major ethical pharmaceutical company in the UK told us there was no chance that they would give a candidate extra kudos for using the eucv format and that hopes of a level playing field for candidates throughout the EU were misplaced. It seems that while we can hope to standardise bananas and chocolate, the cv will continue to be an area reserved for individualism. You can view the English form this standardised cv will take at the following address; http://www.cedefop.gr/download/transparency/CV-ENfin08-03-02.doc