What's the oddest thing you've seen listed on a CV?

[FelicityShagsWell]

What's the weirdest thing you've seen on a CV? I received one in application for a job and they had put a hobbies section in which they'd listed "smoking".

I had someone who wrote the reason they left each job, and after one they put ‘left because I don’t like meeting targets’. Not a great way to sell yourself!

Friend of mine listed his life goal on his CV as "early retirement". Unsurprisingly he failed to get any employment and went self-employed, presumably out of necessity.

A student (post graduate) for a pt uni job wrote that she was very adventurous and happy to put anyhh to ing in her mouth. I literally pissed myself for ten minutes in hysterics

😂 I hope you hired her!

Early retirement could mean that he was ambitious wanted to make a lot of money in a short time!

Oh Lordy

This is someone who never wants a job!

Does anybody remember that brilliant thread from quite a while ago and the CV which said -

Invented jam

Shot a man in Reno just to watch him die

It was his part in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when he was 5 or 6. It had a short run at a local theatre so as far as I’m concerned that’s a job.

The one time I referred to religion in an oblique way was when I applied for my Post Graduate Certificate in Education straight out of uni. (I recall that some of my student pals were horrified when they looked at my form.)

One of the sections in the form asked for any teaching experience, so I gave the dates of my time as a Sunday School Teacher... I wasn't a churchgoer at the time of my application, but I assumed that they were looking for evidence of an ability to work with children, and I didn't have any other experience of working wth youngsters. I'd actually been a teenager myself at the time.

I was actually asked about it at the interview and I got in.

So many official forms ask for this. I didn't really notice until I had to tick the boxes that said 'Widowed'.

Someone who put their husband as a reference. We didn't interview them.

ISTR that it continued into the '80s, so far as job applications are concerned.

I had colleagues who were asked about their childcare arrangements during interviews for teaching posts.

I was a very committed Christian for many years, but you absolutely do not put that on your CV. It's very weird, especially in a country like the UK which is far more secular than the US.

Best post on here today! 😂that's what most British people were doing in those days! Now we're all too busy on our phones or watching netflix to do any of that!

But so useful to know if you work in Switzerland, is it really so relatively small? - all of my Swiss friends speak it and I love watching it on TV with Hoch Deutsch subtitles or listening on the radio when driving through Switzerland.
I understand it because I speak German and Luxembourgish (another language you wouldn’t put on your CV unless you were looking for a job in Luxembourg).

"The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there."

I initially read it as "field marshall" and nearly choked on my biryani. Her career in the army didn't quite go to plan...

At least they are honest 😄

Try the Ask A Manager website - doozies there on a regular basis. My favourite was a man who put something about leading a "purity" group, i.e. helping men resist the temptations of masturbation.

And many Israeli Jews of great courage protesting in Israel.

Years ago when the Internet didnt rule our lives a friend went for a really good job interview after working in areas that weren't what he wanted.

He'd put in a lot of prep for it and was pretty confident.

Late into the interview the quite stern older partner interviewer got out a piece of paper and began to read out his friends reunited (remember it?) home page.

But as far as my friend was aware he didnt have a friends reunited account.

Turns out his friends had created the profile drunk one night, filled it with crass, funny but totally inappropriate jokes - which he then had to sit through being read out to him in a disappointing monotone by a senior partner in the industry he was desperately trying to break into.

He didnt get the job.

It became a funny story a few years later.