A former colleague and I were chatting about our resume layout and I asked for his take on the skills and interest section of a CV. Some people like to list their skills (Word, Dreamweaver, Power Point… sorry, I just fell asleep) and their hobbies (netball, skydiving, taxidermy) and I kind of wondered why. Surely if you’re applying for a particular role, if you’ve had some experience in the area, you wouldn’t need to list down the fact you can use a computer and why would a potential employee give a flying fig that you like to knit outfits for your cat and participate in fight club behind the supermarket every Friday night?
I’m not really a person with a lot of hobbies and definitely nothing worth listing on a resume. I don’t think walking the dog, being an active member of a girls’ basket bike* gang, reading an obscene amount of crappy chick-lit, watching an unhealthy amount of television and squeezing my husband’s blackheads count as hobbies. Then I started thinking about skills, yes I can use a computer and sometimes construct a grammatically correct sentence, but I am capable of far more than this. I possess mad skillz that need a whole new section of a resume… very mild superpowers!
DISCLAIMER: I cannot claim the term ‘Very Mild Superpowers’ as my own. David O’Doherty is the inventor of the concept. Mr O’Doherty’s song ‘Very Mild Super Powers’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghxnKDBadSk talked about the brilliantly mundane and mundanely brilliant skills we have.
My very mild superpowers or VMSP may not seem to be the most useful skills, but here is why they should be included on a resume.
VMSP #1 – I can guess most popular songs within the first couple of introductory seconds. This makes me incredibly useful on trivia nights and most workplaces have a social club that have nights dressed up as trivia comps to thinly veil excuses for binge drinking, arse groping and angry co-worker rants.
VMSP #2 – I make a mean cupcake, including rainbow themed ones. So not only would I be incredibly useful in a gay-pride cook off, you know I could bring it for workmate birthdays and farewells and surrupticiously make nasty workmates fat by caking them to death.
You wanna piece of this?!
VMSP #3 – I can iron a men’s business shirt with gusto. I am however incredibly grateful I live in a non-sexist household where my husband does most of his own ironing because there isn’t much of it as he wears a non-crush uniform everyday. Not sure how this goes on a resume, but if I was a fella wearing business shirts to work everyday, you can bet your sweet bippy they’d be fresh to death, just ignore the Milo stains, please.
VMSP #4 – I can ski. Which may not appear useful for a born and bred Queenslander, but you know if I got caught up in some corporate espionage and was being chased by an evil mastermind down the Swiss Alps, James-Bond-style, I won’t fall down – well, I MIGHT not fall down. I can’t promise anything.
VMSP #5 – I can make up a song about my cat to most top 40# songs. ‘Peggy Cat’ to the tune of ‘SexyBack’ demonstrates my lyrical genius. Not quite sure how this would benefit a workplace, but every office needs a crazy cat lady, right?
See, this is all really useful stuff for a future employer. You don’t even need to interview me, you know I’m an excellent hire just from the list of my VMSP.
How could you not write a song about this stunning lady?
Your VMSP don’t just have to be useful for employment, they can be great life skills also. My mother’s VMSP is being able to fix most small fabric tears in a fashion that is undetectable to the human eye. My husband’s VMSPs include constructing a dog house for the grand total of 87 cents.
So, what are your very mild superpowers?
*Basket bikes are bikes made for style rather than speed. Imagine a push bike in Paris, well that’s what our bikes look like. Minus the beret, baguette, flowers and accordion music. Oui oui.
It's Claire as mud 