The CV trick that guarantees you an interview

Sometimes the opposite of a good idea is, as Niels Bohr said, another good idea. But the converse is also true. The opposite of a bad idea can easily be an even worse idea. Something like this seems to have happened with the expansion of British higher education.

When I left university in 1988, if you wanted a reasonable first job, a degree from a Russell Group university was probably sufficient but not necessary. Now it seems to be necessary but not sufficient. The result is that a large number of perfectly capable but non-academic people are excluded from having a stab at many jobs, where for all we know they could be brilliant. But it has also led to the emergence of bizarre and wasteful forms of hyper-competitive behaviour among those who play the credentials game. And it has become a game.

To give one example, when applying to top management consultancies, it is widely known that various text-analysis algorithms are used automatically to sift job applications. Now here’s the thing. Many of the nerdier applicants know this. So they start by composing perfectly sensible applications to email to prospective employers. But before they send them (and I promise I’m not making this up) they type a series of positive adjectives and descriptors — ‘Nobel Laureate… Double Olympic Medallist… Becomes mildly aroused by the sight of a spreadsheet…’ at the bottom of their CV; then they change the font colour of these words to white. This way, they are invisible to the human eye, but remain legible to the computer which is making the decision.

This kind of thing is nuts.