This is a thought which I have been thinking about over the last few days, whenever you look up jobs online it is always required that a curriculum vitae (CV) be sent in.

I used to have a CV, but for the last 4 or 5 years I have not had a need for one and it became outdated and I have also misplaced the original file. So now I am thinking of should I bother with one, last semester in college we were told that the CV is not really the top priority especially when it is a job related to IT.

Image by r(t.) via Flickr

What is considered most important is not the qualifications / degree that you have but what the quality of the work is that you can produce. This is why a portfolio, preferably online, is recommended.   Don’t get me wrong in thinking that a degree is considered nothing to the employer, it is important, but what I mean is that it is not the most important part, the main part of whether you get the job or not will be based on your work you have done.

I set myself up a portfolio last year, and it comes in handy for showing what I can do and what qualifications I have, everything about me that a potential employer or client wants to know can be found on my portfolio, and if need be I send it off to any job that I want to apply for, I have not got my CV ready yet so I am using my portfolio instead.

This brings me to whether I need a CV, I think that although it comes down to what you can do based on your portfolio, it is also good for the employer to see it written clearly in front of them in a more printable / readable format. So I am most likely going to begin working on my CV over the next while, I will have more to add to it than the last time and since I will be beginning it again I have to find out what exactly I should be adding in.