IT CV

Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson accused of lying on CV

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Another chapter in the ongoing saga of people that lie on their CV;
(Reuters) – Yahoo Inc’s board convened on Monday afternoon to discuss the mounting upset surrounding Chief Executive Scott Thompson, who has apologized to employees after being accused last week by activist investor Daniel Loeb of padding his resume, a source with knowledge of the matter said.

The source, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue, said the board meeting was expected to address aspects of an internal review, including which board members would participate.

Thompson issued an apology for the fallout from disclosures about his academic credentials in an emailed memo to Yahoo employees on Monday, a copy of which was seen by Reuters.

The memo came hours after Loeb, chief executive of hedge fund Third Point, which holds 5.8 percent of Yahoo’s shares, formally demanded in a letter that the Internet company turn over all records related to Thompson’s hiring.

“I want you to know how deeply I regret how this issue has affected the company and all of you,” Thompson wrote in his first extended memo to employees since the disclosures emerged on May 3. “We have all been working very hard to move the company forward and this has had the opposite effect. For that, I take full responsibility, and I want to apologize to you.”

Thompson added that he would “respect” the board’s plans to conduct a thorough and independent review.

“I am hopeful that this matter will be concluded promptly,” he wrote. “But, in the meantime, we have a lot of work to do.”

Yahoo, whose revenue slid by more than a fifth last year, brought in Thompson, former president of eBay Inc subsidiary PayPal, as chief executive in January, five months after Carol Bartz was fired.

BOARD INVESTIGATION

Third Point, which last week revealed the discrepancies in Thompson’s education record, wants Yahoo to publicly reveal the process by which Thompson was vetted and disclose all minutes of any board meeting in which his candidacy was discussed.

Yahoo’s board has said it is investigating the issue.

“We believe that this internal investigation by this board must not be conducted behind a veil of secrecy and shareholders deserve total transparency,” Loeb said in his latest letter on Yahoo.

Loeb cited Delaware corporation law that allows a shareholder to inspect a company’s books if that person has a proper purpose and meets procedural requirements.

Loeb started out as a trader. He opened shop in 1995 with just $3.3 million in assets under management and operated in space borrowed from David Tepper’s Appaloosa Management, a New Jersey-based hedge fund.

Yahoo’s latest troubles come as it is likely weeks away from selling 15 to 25 percent of Alibaba Group’s shares back to that company after months of negotiations. The deal with Alibaba, parent of China’s largest listed e-commerce company Alibaba.com Ltd, is expected to be designed to avoid the complexities that had hindered earlier talks, a source told Reuters last week.

Loeb has been credited with sparking previous changes on Yahoo’s board, namely the resignations of co-founder Jerry Yang and former chairman Roy Bostock.

Yahoo’s board has come under fire from investors impatient with the company’s persisting inability to effect a turnaround, and indecisiveness over how to handle its investments in Alibaba.

Adam Seessel, director of research at Martin Capital Management, which owns Yahoo shares, said that while he was a fan of Loeb, the move by the hedge fund chief executive to oust Thompson was a “head scratcher”.

“If it were normal times, this would warrant a dismissal,” Seessel said of Thompson’s padded resume. “But he’s so new and the company is in such a sensitive spot.”

“Sometimes in the heat of the battle, you can’t get rid of your commander … and a battle is going on.”

Shares in the company were flat in after hours trade after closing at $15.35 on the Nasdaq.

(Writing by Gerry Shih; Editing by Phil Berlowitz, Steve Orlofsky and Chris Lewis)

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The IT CV – the knot weed of the CV world?

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The IT CV, where do I begin and where do I end? And there it is in the proverbial nutshell. IT professionals need to have a CV that can run to the length of a telephone directory. Listen carefully, you are very, very wrong. What you need is a Professional CV that is 2 or 3 pages long. Nobody wants to know how much cat5 you have seen in your career or how much coffee you consume while thinking about mainframes. Recruiters and employers want big punchy numbers, names and associations. Before you all start writhing around on the floor in terror at the thought of cutting down your 10 page CV its not all good news (get your heads around this, it IS good news). The bad news is that you can show the detail of the projects as supplementary information that you send with the CV, or, similar to how a reference would be used make it available, as a technical document, upon request.

Convinced yet?

Of all the people in employment or looking for employment you are the ones that should know better. You are in competition with others of your kind and you ALL do the same thing, you list and list and list. Even though you are in competition with each other you need to consider what all those lists look like; Pages from a telephone directory? A field of Knot Weed? Tech people like to try and prove they have ability by writing every conceivable project detail on their CV. We, as Professional CV Writers, understand this but we are here to help you walk into enlightenment.

For businesses it’s all about the lovely numbers first.
If your project saved £3 million with a deployment budget of £10K then make sure this is what you say first. How you achieved this is needs to be highlighted too but keep it to a couple of points.

You now have 2 options:

 

If you want, as mentioned earlier, create a technical document that follows the same timeline as your CV. Within this put as much technical information as your heart desires but make sure it is clearly headlined, segmented and follows the same chronology as the CV. This will allow anyone that wishes to look at the technical aspects the ability to do so in a very simple and quick way.

 

 

Or you can use a Core Capability/Career Highlights CV. With this CV we create impact by seperating and defining key areas of your Core Capabilities and your Career Highlights which give the reader a very clear and succinct profile of what you are capable of and what you can potentially add to an organisation.

Need more convincing?

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This is usually where someone at the back of the room would shout that their talent will not be spotted if they use a short CV. Yes it will, but only if you have the ability to cut the CV down and emphasise the quality. If you can manage your CV into 3 pages then use the last page to highlight all your technical qualification.

Simple.

We used this system for one of our clients a couple of weeks ago and within 2 days she had landed a job with HP in New Zealand. A true story.

Remember this:

You can break the rules and have a CV of three pages.
You can have an IT CV of three pages.
You can show your qualifications AND your talent.

Consider this; When you condense something correctly it will become stronger.

Call us now 0800 612 4416 for a confidential discussion on how we can optimise your IT CV.
Or choose an an appropriate level package below:

Bronze CV Suitable for Graduates/Junior Management or Short Career History
Silver CV Suitable for Middle Management or 10 year+ Career History
Gold CV Suitable for Senior Management and Board Directors or 15 Year+ Career History

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