Thursday, October 30, 2008

A Curriculum Vitae is not a Resume

I am applying for an academic library job tomorrow. Although I currently work for a university my job is much more corporate in nature. I got the job using a standard resume format that is what they show you in the employment offices of your major universities. I sent a similar resume to a few colleagues at the University for proofreading before I turned it in and soon found that I had woefully underestimated the amount of detail expected in a Curriculum Vitae (CV).

I now feel like my CV will be in much better shape (if I can finish it by tomorrow), but I can't help but feel for those who must read the damn things when hiring for an academic position. I'm going to end up writing every little thing that I have done for the past four or five years and I have some difficulty believing that anyone is going to care about most of it. It feels like I'm going to end up pretty much padding the resume because I don't have a wide variety of actual teaching and publishing experience to draw on. I'm going to write about training manuals that I created, short informal presentations that I made to employees, blogs I created, documents I delivered, etc. Will that be useful or sufficient for the hiring committee? We shall see.

Oh well. Once more unto the breach!

Friday, October 10, 2008

Step Right Up and Test Your Beliefs!

I just took the Belief-O-Matic test from beliefnet.com:

http://bntest.beliefnet.com/Entertainment/Quizzes/BeliefOMatic.aspx

The results are not exactly surprising, but I wonder how many religious people find that their beliefs don't quite match up with their chosen religion. Would taking a test like this encourage them to try out another faith? Somehow I doubt it.

Anyway, these are my heathen, atheistic, highly secular results:

1. Secular Humanism (100%)
2. Unitarian Universalism (97%)
3. Nontheist (83%)
4. Theravada Buddhism (78%)
5. Liberal Quakers (75%)
6. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (66%)
7. Neo-Pagan (64%)
8. Taoism (58%)
9. Reform Judaism (57%)
10. New Age (48%)
11. Scientology (45%)
12. New Thought (44%)
13. Sikhism (42%)
14. Mahayana Buddhism (39%)
15. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (39%)
16. Bahá'í Faith (35%)
17. Orthodox Quaker (32%)
18. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (27%)
19. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (27%)
20. Islam (22%)
21. Orthodox Judaism (22%)
22. Jainism (20%)
23. Eastern Orthodox (18%)
24. Roman Catholic (18%)
25. Hinduism (16%)
26. Seventh Day Adventist (14%)
27. Jehovah's Witness (2%)

So apparently I need to stay away from Jehovah's Witness Churches. Will do!