I was sent away to learn advanced PowerPoint, and no I don’t
know why either, I’d have thought the last thing industry needs was another
person who can do a wipe effect with a whoosh noise between slides but there
you go. Having suffered many interminable PowerPoint presentations, some folk
need to be told to keep it brief and to the point. As for those past
presentations, I believe they have been collected by some government agencies
for use when milder forms of torture like waterboarding fail.
But it is something I have completed and could put on a
CV along with all the other courses I’ve collected pieces of paper to prove just
how brilliant I am. Unlike the former CEO of Yahoo! Scott Thompson who was
caught out telling a little fibbie about his degree effectively providing a
cautionary tale for anyone in any profession. It was a rather unfortunate way
to go given he seemed to have a good track record and tons of experience more
than enough to show suitability for the role and the CV probably shows there’s
a spark of creativity which they probably needed.
For someone toiling away in the corporate salt mines that
had to provide ludicrous amounts of evidence judiciously verified, it surprises
me that Yahoo! didn’t do similar; it might have spared them a lot of
embarrassment and the inevitable exit of their search committee chair.
A lie on your CV will certainly get found out long before
you get to perform that open-heart surgery you’ve been dreaming of and will
result in the sack. Stephen Hawking told me that after I suggested he might
sell a few more copies if he changed his book title from A Really Long and
Boring History of Time.
