In the words of one health service manager, it is the CV "to die for". It helped its owner, Nigel Crisp, recently land the biggest management job in the public sector, the post of NHS chief executive. But does his resume cut the mustard?
What did it tell health secretary Alan Milburn about its owner when it landed on his desk tucked inside the application form for the top job? Is the CV as slick, professional and technically proficient as Crisp himself?
"It's not a bad CV, but not neccessarily a good one," says Douglas Fraser, managing director of search and selection specialists KMC international.
"It manages to stack up his skills and achievements. But it is too long and wordy. As a general principle, a CV is basically a selling document and it's got to be direct. If the purpose of the CV is to grab someone's attention, you need something on not more than two pages of A4."
John West, head of Kingston Smith executive selection, disagrees. "It's absolutely brilliant. It does not give me an impression of power; I get an impression of professional achievement, good political antennae and experience managing big numbers and resources."
Both experts praise the way Crisp cleverly makes every job he has had appear to be a dry-run for the kinds of decisions he will be expected to make as an NHS chief executive in charge of radical organisational change.
Thus when he is production manager at a Trebor sweets factory in Colchester between 1978 and 1981, he is not merely making sure mints and jelly babies taste nice and are packaged correctly; more profound endeavours are going on.
As the CV puts it: "The new factory was designed to breakup semi-autonomous working groups. I was responsible for running the first production unit and setting in place the new systems. The factory was successful in achieving production targets and an evaluation by Sheffield University demonstrated improvements in job satisfaction, recruitment and retention of staff."
Introducing flexible working, breaking up staff demarcations, re-engineering the delivery process, improving productivity, introducing evidence-based decision-making, and keeping staff happy - Trebor Colchester, it appears, was a mini-NHS plan, 20 years before the event.
Further on in his career, as director of the NHS London region, he lists his achievements using language which is astutely calculated to hit all the right buttons among New Labour ministers. Thus, he "enables the NHS to play its part as a corporate citizen" (held meetings with London mayor Ken Livingstone); he supported NHS change with "a series of learning partnerships" (persuaded GPs to address the health needs of their local population).
The resume also makes it clear Crisp is a man of substance. Says West: "Look at the breadth and scale of the jobs. He's given them all a good whack, it says he's not an opportunist or a flitter. This is a good CV."
There is even what appears to be a deliberate mistake. Crisp fails to correctly spell the name of the exclusive public school he attended (he spells it "Upingham").
Fraser is worried about this blemish: "It is a minor irritation - there's a question of how meticulous he is."
But West is much more sympathetic: "I wish I had a pound for every grammar school boy who could not spell grammar!"
• Mr Crisp's CV was provided by the Department of Health
