Don’t post your CV online!
Here at chancerylane.co.uk we take an opposing view to just about every other job board on the web. We think that no self-respecting professional should ever post their CV on a job board or CV bank. We think this can lead to career suicide, it makes you look cheap; it means anyone can access your details and possibly pretend to be you, and also de-values your brand, for want of a better term.
Fraudsters can Impersonate You
Some years ago I was telephoned by an extremely posh London estate agent asking if I had just been in to one of their offices. I explained that I had not, and had no knowledge of their offices or where they were, and the estate agent indicated to me that a man pretending to be me had just been into the office and had a strong Nigerian accent, which had raised suspicions when they had background checked me, and the man who had been into the office did not match my photograph online on our website. The other Jonathan Fagan who had been into their offices had given some details about me which I can only guess came from an old CV that had been posted many years before onto a job board at some point, and this is where he got those details from. I suppose this because the details he had given was a postal address I had not lived in for at least 10 years. In fact the only place with that postal address on it still was an old CV on one of the various job boards, which shall remain nameless but do seem to like Mondays.
Anyone Can Read your CV if they Pay the Job Board
If you post your CV onto a job board then, provided somebody has a subscription to that board, regardless of who they are, including any of your friends, your current employer, anyone wanting to check you out or do background research on your circumstances, any conmen with connections to the recruitment industry who can access a recruitment agency’s job board account, can simply access your CV, download it and get all your personal details off it. In a worst case scenario like the one above, they can masquerade as you.
Secondly, anyone who has a subscription to a job board or CV bank can immediately download and view your CV, regardless of who they are. You cannot specify who sees your CV on the job board – and chances are if you work for a company with more than a few employees then the HR department of that company will have a subscription to some of the job boards, if not a good number of them. This means that they can access your CV and note that you may be looking for work and hold this against you. We do not think this is in your interests, although it is always interesting for employers. I admit that at times over the years I have looked at friends’ CVs which have cropped up on the various CV banks if I have been looking for staff in local areas, and discovered various interesting things about those friends which I would not have otherwise known if those CVs had not been posted onto the CV banks. Do you want anyone and everyone to know your personal details – where you want to school, what your interests are, where you’ve worked, possibly any salary levels you’ve earned if they are on your CV, and/or your personal contact details?
Dilute your ‘Personal Brand’
Thirdly, we think posting your CV onto a CV bank or job board dilutes your personal brand.
Like it or not, everyone has a personal brand. This is basically your positive points marketed out to the world. Personal brands are boosted by well written Linked In profiles, firm profiles, your details that crop up in court hearings say if you are a litigation solicitor, or in recommendations that have come from clients if you are a property solicitor. Your personal brand has a value, which is not always obvious but you can guarantee that if anybody is meeting you about a job they will have done a bit of background on you and discovered any positives and negatives surrounding your personal brand. In order to protect that personal brand you need to be careful as to what information you put out there and who gets to see it. CV banks are easily accessible by employers as previously discussed, and you don’t necessarily want all employers to be able to see it.
Avoid CV Banks – Post Directly to Job Board Vacancy Advertisements
It is much better to control who gets to see you and the fact that you’re looking for work, simply by attaching a CV to a specific job application or registering with a recruitment agency on a one off basis so they can keep you informed of any vacancies cropping up. Some agencies of course are very passive in the way they do this, and it is a good idea to try and hunt these out, and at this point I include a plug for TP Legal Recruitment who are possibly the most laid back and passive agency on the market, and to recommend you avoid any of the more aggressive ones who phone you all the time trying to pester you into applying for vacancies you are unsuitable for.
So do not post your CV onto job boards or CV banks. Here at Chancery Lane we believe passionately in ensuring that candidates only apply for vacancies that are of potential interest to them, and not to generally post their CV onto the CV bank.
In our experience most CV banks are full of CVs that are utterly irrelevant for most vacancies, because a good number of people have long ago realised that posting their CV onto CV banks is a terrible idea and should be avoided at all costs. We support this and suggest never posting your CV onto CV banks under any circumstances, as you simply do not know who is looking at the CV and you have lost control of your personal data.
