The unique fame that Leonardo Da Vinci enjoyed in his lifetime and that has remained undimmed to the present day, rests largely on his unlimited desire for knowledge, which guided all his thinking and behaviour. He applied his creativity to every realm in which graphic representation is used: he was a painter, sculptor, architect, engineer and modern scientist.
On the day of his 564th birthday, BBC Capital asked two experts to take a look at Da Vinci’s CV, taking into account the things so many of us get wrong when we prepare our own documents for a job search.
The answer: although a genius, da Vinci would have a hard time getting a second look from a hiring manager, based on his negative, too-thin and misguided CV.
"although a genius, da Vinci would have a hard time getting a second look from a hiring manager, based on his negative, too-thin and misguided CV"
Leonardo Da Vinci - Unemployed in 2020 (Courtesy of image BROKER)
Question: do we have Da Vinci's CV?
The answer is: yes!
In 1482, at the age of 30, Leonardo Da Vinci wrote out a letter and a list of his capabilities and sent it off to Ludovico il Moro, Duke of Milan. Having yet to establish his reputation as perhaps the Italian Renaissance's most respected polymath, Leonardo spelled himself out.
Results of the BBC experiment
Laura Smith-Proulx and Webber Kerr point out two main critics:
Da Vinci's CV lack of synthesis, which is incompatible with nowadays amount of resumes HR needs to scan. Accordingly to ZipJob An average of 250 resumes are sent for a single opening. This led many firms to adopt ATS softwares (Applicant Tracking System) to automatically scan CVs in search for key words specifically linked to the position. Quoting: "Given today’s age of light-speed, we need [a CV] to be reviewed quickly while establishing tailored credibility." And again: "The document [needs] to be skimmed and received in a matter of seconds, rather than minutes of reading paragraphs.”
His lack of specialisation: Leonardo's interests embraced painting, architecture, engineering, biology and physics. In a modern society where every job requires vertical specialisation, Da Vinci's broad interests would be seen as a problem. Quoting: “more on his success than his ventures into seemingly unrelated subjects” and again “An employer who needs an engineer, for example, would find [da Vinci’s] technical drawing and designs for bridges, flight, hydraulic pumps, and a steam cannon fascinating (...) But, his penchant for investigating designs for walking on water or 'studied faces and emotions, depicted babies in utero, and wrote in mirror-image text’, just don’t have the same ring.”
Conclusions and critics
BBC's social experiment reveals something about a society that has clearly changed since the Renaissance. Two main aspects seems to clearly emerge:
Human and Business interactions appear to be greater in volume and this obliged everyone to dedicate less time on a single conversation (a conversation mediated by a SW more and more frequently). That's why, we at Holborn Consulting believe in a Human to Human (H2H) interactions, acting and communicating as imperfect humans as we are. Despite the increased volume of connections through social and business media (e.g. LinkedIn), we all still crave for human connections.
Large organisations (especially) tend to strictly define the framework of responsibilities each member has. Thus, when looking for a new hire, they look to a specific group of experiences that exactly fill the opening. However, humans are larger than a job qualification and this should be regarded as a positive aspect both by HRs and managers. At Holborn, we look at people's interests to create meaningful connections. We too are passionate about different topics (e.g. the writer is passionate about stories and has written a book some years ago) and we love to mix what we are with our daily job, when it can be meaningful.
A couple of critics about BBC's incredibly creative job. An editing of Da Vinci's resume would be advisable to appear "believable" to modern HR. Moreover, it would be interesting to extend this research to a larger group of CV experts, in order to find meaningful statistical data out of this activity.
About Holborn Consulting
Holborn Ltd is a consulting firm specialised in supporting high-tech companies in the B2B business development market through Lead Generation, Business Development Outsourcing, Market Research and New Market Entry services.
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