Bah!
I missed the article itself, but the comments reflected some personal hot-buttons so went back and read it.
Given this article was really just a rant, it would have been nice if somewhere, just somewhere in that article Our Dominic had said something along the lines of "I provide a stylesheet for CV submissions at (URL) and expect people to use it when submitting them to me".
That way, since Dominic clearly doesn't know that people are taught to write long CVs in other places, he could add some obviously much-needed advice on How To Do It Right as opposed to simply whining that Everyone Is Doing It Wrong.
I shouldn't have to tell him this. I'd think it was self-evident that increasing the pool of CV-literates (at least, to his standards) would increase the pool of potential commission earners.
Word to the wise, Dominic, many of the stylistic CV things you complain of are things I've either been told to do by recruiters or things the recruiters have done to my CV and which have had to be undone in the interview by me in real time. I could never pad my CV like my first agent could.
And I wish your relative good luck should she ever look me up on Google. I have what turns out to be the most common christian name/surname in the universe. Google me and I guarantee you'll find not-me.
Only last week my lawyer was explaining to another who followed your relative's idea of research that a Google search does not constitute due diligence when issuing summonses, and that perhaps the small matter of a differing middle initial was more important that would seem when it came to empowering process servers.
But by all means look. Most of the me-alikes are way more impressive, CV-wise, than I. There's one bloke invented a new kind of aqualung in his time off from being a noted bio-chemist with a list of patents as long as my arm. I'll be him if you like. He's dead impressive.
And if you use a credit rating service, well, good luck. When I bought my house I got to see the query results that the best-of-the-best gave my mortgage banker, and was appalled. Rarely, outside of an Amazon search, have I seen a worse set of matches for my name and social security number than was shown on that roll of paper.
More than half the information was casually discarded by the banker as "irrelevant", lines that matched only my surname, only some digits of my social security number, that sort of thing. Why the programmer responsible thought that would be helpful I don't know. Whatever he or she was paid it was too much.
The article was fun, but hardly written by someone "trying to help". That would require positive advice. Word documents are bad? Okay, I'll take your word for it, but I don't Use The Force so could you at least hint as to the format that has the Dominic Seal of Approval?
And as a man talking about placing staff internationally, why are you referring to "A4"? A word count would be more helpful in places where A4 is a mystery that probably has something to do with English roads as much as a sheet of paper (whatever that is - it *is* the 21st century after all and if a prospective employer isn't reading my CV on better kit than I have myself he isn't impressing me at all).
I hope you won the pool on how many comments you'd generate with the article, Dominic.