buzzcut

I didn't really post much last week.

That was primarily due to a double whammy of having to get back up to speed / pick up all sorts of stuff that had happened while I was away and applying for jobs.  The applying for jobs bit was the thing that took up most of the spare time I would usually use to do things like write my blog posts.

I finally finished doing my CV while I was on holiday.  The tricky part was coming up with some stuff to match the technical sections in my CV.  I've basically divided the CV up into two parts - technical stuff and bid writing stuff.

The technical part was easy to populate because I could just take the material I use for my work CV (I get put into bids and obviously do technical work as a contractor like I did earlier in the year) and tweak it so it was a bit more appropriate to the format, etc.

The difficult bit was the bid writer side, because I only really do that internally to my company so there was no pre-existing material.  The real challenge was dividing both up in such a way that they matched stylistically.

The technical stuff easily divides up into a series of discrete projects, but the bid writing was better divided up into areas of activity with each project as a single example of me doing that.

In the end I came up with what I think is a relatively smart CV that brings out both sides quite well.  My idea was that by making a CV like that I could adapt it if I wanted to do a technical or bid writing job.

Bid writing is of more interest to me.  I think.  It's certainly been a lot easier going through the job descriptions on the websites and thinking whether I could do the role or not.

The technical / analytical searches have generally produced loads more results (probably a ratio of 20 to 1!) but the big problem is that I don't have much of the specific experience with the analytical software like SPSS, SAS or SQL.  So while I could learn and probably have all the other skills, that means it's not even worth applying.

One thing that's also been interesting is the salaries.  The analyst roles are reasonably well paid, but it's broadly similar to my current salary.  Unless, that is, it's in the financial sector, and then the money goes quite high.  For the bid writing roles the worst salaries are equivalent to what I'm currently on and generally are a bit higher (backing up one of my issues where I currently work).

As part of this whole process I also had a rather significant haircut - the buzzcut of the title.

I've been thinking about getting it all trimmed off for a while as I've actually started to thin on top.  This wouldn't be so bad but unfortunately my hair is really fluffy and tends to stick straight up unless it's more than an inch long or so.  The trouble there is when it gets that long it tends to acquire some weird curliness, but only in certain parts.  My sideburns get very curly, but more on the right than the left, for example.

The buzzcut is also super easy to maintain and I can also now do it myself, saving myself money.  I mean, it's not a lot of money, but given how long a haircut takes it's surprisingly expensive.  We're talking an equivalent day rate in the order of £350 a day and that's a lot for the type of level of work it is.

I am a little worried though as I fear it makes me look too aggressive / thuggish.  A part of the issue is that, while my hair is thinning it's not receding, but also I have quite dark hair so it's not a subtle thing.