CV

Four steps to a CV, three steps to a bio

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I suppose I can tell you this now, since it is regrettably a hell of a long time since I did it, but when I was in college I wrote CVs for people. Anybody. Everybody. I did it as a favour, I did it for free – though nice people bought me meals for it – and after a while I wrote them very well.

That’s the thing. I practiced writing CVs by writing them for, I don’t know, a couple of dozen other people. Then I wrote mine and I’d learnt how to do it.

That may be mumble mumble years ago but the things I found out have stayed with me since. Here’s how to knock up a CV, especially if you’re a writer.

1) Bollocks to modesty. There’s a difference between boasting and lying by omission. You got on the New York Times Bestseller List? Say so. It’s a fact. Don’t qualify it (all US book writers were on strike that week), just state it.

2) Nuts to academic good practice: you are not applying for a university post, everything they tell you to do on CVs is wrong. Nobody gives a damn about how you’re interested in ballroom fish photography, they want to know you can do the job. Tell them that by leading with your latest work and then follow with the next most relevant thing. Divide it up into sections if that means you can group two long-apart events without looking strange.

3) Remember that the job of the CV is to get you an interview. Don’t put so much in there that they can effectively interview you on the page. The CV gets you in the door, nothing more than that.

4) Be plain, be simple, don’t go over a page.

That third point is key: remember the job this document is there to do and make it do just that. CVs get you interviews, The End. Getting the job is down to you in the interview.

Equally, a bio has a specific job, it’s just harder to define. You’ll get asked for bios for your books, you’ll need one for your website, it’ll just keep coming up a lot so having one ready is handy. As I write this to you, I need to write a new bio. I’ve got one ready to send when it’s needed quickly but because I’m tailoring this one specifically to the company that wants it, I’m going to rewrite it. The thing is that rewriting won’t take me much longer than copying and pasting the regular one because I do bios in the same way every time:

Look at who the bio is for or what the event is. Find two things you’ve done that are directly relevant and a third that is as far away from it as possible. Then write as little about each as you can.

You end up with something like this:

William Gallagher writes Doctor Who audio dramas and books on television media. He once had afternoon tea on a Russian nuclear submarine and regrets calling the place a dive.

Writer’s Notes: how to write a bio

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Your editor wants one, the festival you’re appearing at wants something for their brochure, you’re mocking up a new website, the list goes on and each one demands a bio. What a good thing that writers are ego-machines able to trot out a swift self-praising eulogy at the slightest hint of a request.

It is egotistical to write your own biography, even when you’re just talking of a paragraph for a theatre programme. But it is also a writing job. More than that, it’s a selling job. Now, this won’t exactly help you when you sit down to write one but each time you are asked for a bio or you see a place you can send it, you are not actually writing a bio. You are writing a pitch and you are writing a sales proposal and you are writing an advert.

There’s nothing like putting the pressure on you, is there?

If you’re sending a bio to someone along with material, if you’re pitching yourself and your material then your bio is very much part of that. It is factual in the sense that it must be true but it isn’t factual in the sense that it has to be a dry chronological chronicle of your career. I think schools and universities have a lot to answer for with the damage they do to how people write CVs.

Whether you regard yourself as a commercial writer or not, your bio is commercial. It is selling you – and then it is selling them, the editor and the organiser and the producer. Bios need to be something they can pop straight into their brochure or programme and forget about. Know that they will make them, the editor and the organiser and the producer, look good for having got such an interesting writer.

Oh, and it has to look different to the place down the road where you appeared last year.

As with all things sales, too, you need to do every bit of this selling business quickly. The fewer words, the stronger the words – though this is a family show – the better. Twitter is great practice for writing with flair but precision. Poets are fantastic at loading words with enough meaning to fill books. Scriptwriters are superb at dialogue that sounds natural yet conveys immensely important information.

It’s only novelists and academic text writers who are screwed.

For them and for every type of writer, though, do the Three Strikes Bio. I’ve mentioned this before, including in the book The Blank Screen but have only this moment thought of a name for it.

Here’s what you do to dash off a Three Strikes Bio.

1) Decide what and who you need the bio for. What is it selling? Your latest book, your first play, their workshop?

2) With that in mind, look through your CV for two things that are in some way relevant. If you need the bio for your workshop on teaching nuns to write about the ocean, that novel you wrote set in a convent has got to go in there. And so has your round the world yacht trip.

3) Look through your CV for one thing that is not relevant. Not relevant to the thing you’re pitching and not relevant to writing, either. Something that is so not relevant, it is far, far away from anything even approaching relevancy. For that nun ocean workshop, if you’ve once been bodyguard for a daytime TV celebrity, that’s the one.

Write these three things down and do it simply, do it straight. No embellishments, no quotes, no detail. Just third person you did this, you did, you do the other:

Susan Hare wrote first hit novel Convent Sunset while cruising the Mediterranean during her charity round-the-world race. She has also been a bodyguard for Cash in the Attic star Curt Jaw.

That’s a pretty good bio: you’d go see her, wouldn’t you? But it’s straight, factual, easy. I wanted to embellish the first line with the name of her boat but I was just after telling you not to add details, so I didn’t. But between you and me, I think her boat would’ve been called the Pink Baracuda.

Seriously, there is something about being concise that is strong. Too much detail means desperation, I think. It’s like CV: we think a CV has to get us a job but it doesn’t and actually it mustn’t. The job of a CV is to get us an interview. No less, sure, but certainly also no more. People must not be able to consider and then reject you on the information you’ve given them on the CV, they must be tempted to bring you in for a chat.

Bios are true but they are not evidentiary or documentation, they are sales.

Dear Sir or Madam, you don’t know me, but…

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That headline sounds like I’m sending you a poison pen letter. Which is interesting, because the crux of this is how you can and how you should give someone a certain impression within a very few words. Just hopefully a good one. Hopefully a good impression that leads to work. For this is about those times when you approach a company or a person cold. I want you to see an article from Contently that talks about how you do this approach.

But first, note that it is an American article. That shouldn’t matter except that it does have certain assumptions about freelance life that I think are particular to the States. Even its central tenet has a term, “letter of introduction or LOI” which I’ve not heard before today. That could be me being thick. But then it could also be me being the person who hasn’t written an actual letter to a company in over twenty years.

I think all this still applies to emails of introduction, or I wouldn’t be suggesting you read it, but just take a look and see what you think. Here’s how the article starts:

The letter of introduction, or LOI as it’s known among freelancers, is our written equivalent of an elevator speech, the 20-second blast job-seekers use when shaking hands at interviews. Instead of pitching a new story idea—the classic way freelancers seek work—a written intro describes a story you already know by heart: your professional experience.

LOIs can be vital assets to freelancers because they initiate a relationship instead of a single assignment. And to get results, they should be precise, not flowery or filled with your life story.

Freelance Formal: How to Write an Intro Letter That Maximizes Your Chances of Scoring Work – Holly Ocasio Rizzo, Contently (17 October 2014)

Read the full piece.

All writing reveals us, even our CVs

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From the school where funny and true are uncomfortably rubbing up against one another, this is just the smallest extract from The World’s First and Only Completely Honest Résumé of a Graphic Designer. I chose this extract not because it is the best but because it’s a segment that works by itself – just you go read the whole thing to see how excellent the entire article is:

Lucid Concepts (2004-2007)

I loved everything about this company, and regret I worked only three short years there. It was run on chaos in the morning, fear in the afternoon, and Ritalin at night, all qualities for producing great design. Lucid is where I produced my most misunderstood piece, the one-hundred-and-twenty-two page deck explaining why Citadel Airlines should change their logo’s main colorway from one shade of red to another.

McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: The World’s First and Only Completely Honest Résumé of a Graphic Designer. – Marco Kaye, McSweeney’s (4 June 2012)

Read the full piece.

Writers’ notes: how to write a CV

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We are taught – if we’re taught at all – that we write CVs in a certain way with chronology of work, every detail in sequence with gaps explained. References. Interests.

Bollocks.

Do this instead:

1) No modesty. There’s a difference between boasting and going too far the other way. Of avoiding boasting by instead lying by omission. You got on the New York Times Bestseller List? Say so. It’s a fact. Don’t qualify it (all US book writers were on strike that week), just state it.

2) Nuts to academic good practice: you are not applying for a university post, everything they tell you to do on CVs is wrong. Nobody gives a damn about how you’re interested in ballroom fish photography, they want to know you can do the job. Tell them that by leading with your latest work and then follow with the next most relevant thing. Divide it up into sections if that means you can group two long-apart events without looking strange.

3) Remember that the job of the CV is to get you an interview. Don’t put so much in there that they can effectively interview you on the page. The CV gets you in the door, nothing more than that.

4) Be plain, be simple, don’t go over a page.

5) References. Let them ask for those. Have them ready if you can and if you must but nobody needs them to take a look at you.

And that’s all a CV is for. Now it’s up to you with your writing and your pitching in the interview.