Introduction

I’m unemployed (proudly, fuck capitalism), but I understand to survive you do need a job to make money. Whenever I go to look for a job I’m probably more than skilled to take on, I go through the application then see this one thing called a CV. For a normal person, this is probably run of the mill, but its not for me.

note: i’m probably not even mentally stable enough to take on a job anyway? i mentally shutdown like 3 months into the only job i’ve ever gotten

Generally speaking, a CV is a way to demonstrate yourself in a standardised way to employers with past experience and interests, so why is this such a problem? There are a few roadblocks for me that always get in the way and prevent me from ever writing one.

Self-Confidence

A lot of CV writing involves you explaining what you did in the past in a positive light, this seems pretty simple right? HAHA NO! Introducing: self-esteem. I’ve written to the mountains and back about how much I hate myself and my lack of confidence in, well, anything (except programming), now translate that to a CV where you need to be positive the whole time. It’s literally torturing my brain.

This isn’t even to mention trying to put into words things you barely remember because it was 3 years ago and you never took the effort to write it down, because why would I? It’s not like you actually expect me to put things down in words when my brain is literally shutting down from mountains of stress.

Fitting the “mold”

Its well known that autistic people like to fit patterns and do things the “right way”, thats no different here. Meanwhile, CVs are just a document with no “correct” way to write them (though computers would say otherwise nowadays, employers dont care). I know CV formats exist out there to help this issue, but they really dont.

You have to put it in your own words, this is like a death sentence to my brain. This is different from technical documentation because there, I have a “correct” way of doing it. I dont for CVs, and this also probably feeds into me being very locked down in my interests, but its easier for me to write three paragraphs on how bitshifting works at a processor level, instead of trying to write down past experience in my own words (i mean im doing that here LOL).

But besides those issues, there’s other problems with CVs generally. There are some great articles on the internet that explain how CVs dont actually prove a person’s skill, and is just creating a persona. I know most websites say “dont lie” on how to write a great CV, but who isn’t, actually.

If you’re an employer reading this, I hope you realise that me, a neurodivergent person, absolutely despises CVs and would wish you’d provide another way of explaining people’s interests and skills, and no, cover letters dont count, those are worse.

Conclusion

fuck CVs, fuck capitalism, come up with better ways of accomodating neurodivergent people