A naughty CV trick
This is my first post and I won’t introduce myself at this point, sorry. Maybe in the future.
I was reading reddit today and found a discussion about CVs and I remembered a trick I used to do with my own CVs in the past. I have been thinking about starting a programming blog for a while (it is about time!) and I have decided to do so, and to start with this trick.
OK, I dislike .doc CVs. Maybe it is an old-time fear but when I see a .doc file I always think about embedded virus. So my options are pdf files, plain text files and html. I have used all of them at one point or another but lately I have favored html files.
I have used simple, clean html files without images or javascript. Just html with embedded css to help formatting. Being of a curious nature I want to track how many times the CV is being read, and when and where. To do so I thought of embedding an external image but that might be suspicious and anyway I do not think images belong into [programming] CVs. So I decided to add a link for an external empty css file. This file is not needed to read the CV properly formatted since all actual css code is embedded into the CV html.
I host that css file in my own server, where I publish the CV, and the CV has a link to that file as well. I set up a quick python script to serve that css file and, at the same time, email me some information about the computer requesting the file (ip, timestamp, referring page, browser used and language). Then I may use a reverse dns service to locate the ip. I have not automated this step since I do not send that many CVs. I actually send very very few and thus I am interested about each one. I kept track of each CV by setting up one of these scripts for it. I was reluctant to add parameters to the css request because it could not look innocent.
The results have been interesting. I have received calls a few minutes after someone read the CV, I have watched the CV being sent from one physical office to another even in different countries, CVs being forwarded in minutes to other people, and even some CVs have not been checked at all! (unless there was some kind of firewall in place that intercepted the css request).
Summing it up I think this is a good way to track how a CV is used. Even if the trick is noticed and it pops up in the interview I think it is a good subject to discuss.
EDIT: A comment on reddit reminded me about this. The python script serving the css returns headers to avoid the browser to cache the css file. It is a good idea to also add meta tags to the html of the CV. I really do not remember whether I did that or not.
EDIT #2: I am surprised how many hits this has had so far. Thank you all. I have enabled a wordpress cache plugin just in case…
EDIT #3: As JohnnyJimJams has pointed out, this is probably not a good idea when the CV is submitted to a big company, government or to a company related to security or defense, since it might show an alert on their browsers.
EDIT #4: Some people claim this is not ethical or even not legal. I think laws restrict how corporations use personal data gathered from customers. This is not the situation here. I also believe it is ethical (or I would not have done it). I want to keep track of my personal data (my cv) and the data I am collecting from other people is not really personal, and I am not using it for any nefarious purpose.
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Yeah…been done: http://www.trackmycv.com/
The idea is that you want to do this in all secrecy. By keeping your CV on such a site, you’re literally yelling “I WANT TO TRACK MY CV!!!!” to the employer, giving a bad first impression.
Putting your CV on your personal site is akin to screaming “I WANT TO TRACK MY CV!!!!” ?
I disagree. I think most employers would consider it a positive thing that someone is proud enough to make their CV public. It is certainly a sign in most cases that they care greatly about their career and professional development.
Or that they change jobs too often.
No, I think he’s talking about the comment he replied to.
If you put functionality from http://www.trackmycv.com into your CV I can understand why people might see this as a reasonably clear sign that you want to track your CV.
? As far as I understood the side provides you an image which can be imbedded in your CV, just like that css in this blog. Maybe they changed it since the first post.
If I would do this tracking I would do it in a way, that if it is discovered the possible employer knows what I tried to do – for example by naming the file “trackCV.jpg”.
The only consideration vs. do-it-yourself instead using this service is: It might look better if you did it yourself, when applying for a it position. And of cause the tracking data stays with you …
Go read the site again and you’ll understand that they provide a 1x1px, clear image for you to embed in your CV, exactly as the author of this article is describing for CSS. You don’t host your CV with them. They don’t host your CV for you. You put your CV where ever you want.
I guess you may use google analytics similar way.
Problem with using google analytics is that often you may send the .html file itself via email, when doing this you must embed a request to some file somewhere else. Although no need to use .css, an image of zero size image, 0 x 0 px in size simply has nothing to display and doesn’t kick up a warning. I used this method in html emails.
To the author: What you may wish to do is instead of using a blank .css, embed a 0x0px image in the cv, also embed one within the html formatted email, but change the name (0001.gif 0002.gif) and so on, You could also use fully transparent 1×1 gifs for the same effect. This way you can analyze how many read the email and didn’t check the cv, or otherwise and less useful, see how often the cv is sent off outside of a fwd of your message.
The best way is a simulated signature.
Hand draw your name a few dozen times, scan the best one, and use that as your embedded image.
The customer (reader) has a reason to see it, and it doesn’t scream “tracking my CV”.
The best answers are simple ones.
Except that sending a CV with a sample of your (real?) signature is like providing a starter kit for identity theft.
But they would never know if you didn’t use your /real/ signature
Alternatively – do you really want your employer to have a signature for your that isn’t actually your signature?
I mean, they’d never know if you didn’t use your real signature in your CV until you write your first letter.
How do you deal with fake beacons? ie, someone hits your CSS url without looking at your CV.
I just submit the cv to the few places I find interesting when I am looking for a job. Employers just move the cv around the company (as expected):
If the CV is in html, why not use Google Analytics?
Correct me if I am wrong but I think that needs javascript code and it might slow down the page load time. The solution I’ve used is simple enough and it does not rely on third parties.
Also I am not a web developer so I am not that familiar with much of the web stuff.
If you are sending the CV via e-mail, especially embedded in the e-mail, javascript will not render, most readers strip it out or just don’t execute it.
Good on you for not over-complicating it.
also, if you’re using HTML for your CV, consider using the hResume microformat:
http://microformats.org/wiki/hresume
This is a great hack and a nice post!
Tyler Douche, is that you?
I am not sure whether this comment is meant to be offensive. Should I delete it?
It’s your blog. It’s fine to risk collateral damage if it sends trolls a message.
I am not able to tell if it is an offensive remark or not. If it is I would delete it.
Leave it; you’re clearly not offended by it.
I think it might refer to the first comment, not to me.
[Guitar Solo]
Hahaha. Hilarious
Why wouldn’t you just parse the server logs, since you’re serving the resume from your own server?
It is a good option I guess. I am not a web developer nor a sys admin and anyway my first instinct is usually to write my own code. With the python script I was able to send me a mail with the data, and I am not sure about how to do it on the unix shell. I liked to have the email because I use to check them on a smart-phone.
In fact I was very tempted to write some code for this blog (no comments, just code to render html posts from wiki-like templates and upload that to the server). Fortunately I decided to be pragmatic and just set-up a normal blog.
My first thought was also “why is he using a python script to capture something that’s logged by the webserver by default?”
just because you can poop out a few lines of python to facilitate this is no excuse to not learn enough about parsing system logs to do the exact same thing MUCH EASIER.
your solution might work, but it’s ridiculously inelegant to write a program to serve a single file for the purpose of extracting extremely common request statistics.
learn some shit.
No need to get offensive.
One benefit his method has over parsing the logs over and over, is that it sends him a mail the second the page is viewed.
In your setup, a script has to parse the logs continuously and notify him, and what do you need to notify? A script. So you’re back at stage 1.
He could just have a script on the server following the logs as they’re generated, and then doing the same things when the CV CSS URL turns up.
You don’t need to follow the logs for anything else though, literally all you need is to get paged when this particular css file is served.
Following the logs scales much, much better for watching multiple files but I assume he’s only got one resume.
You can move your python code to run through cron and parse your logs once a day and send you a summary email, or do it your way, whichever suits you. It’s low traffic anyway.
While he may have access to the server logs in this case, his trick is useful people that host their CV on shared hosting. It is extremely portable.
Granted, more hosts have .php than .py, but I’m sure this could be rewritten in .php if you were forced to.
A somewhat similar trick, should you for whatever reason desire information on a forum poster on some forum that you do not have admin rights on, you can send a pm to a person on a forum that allows [img] bbcode tags in pm’s, and link to an image you host. If it’s tiny and perhaps transparent odds are the individual may not even notice it. You may possibly only end up with an anonymous proxy ip though.
Are you emailing the prospective employers a .html file?
We have a proxy here at work (big government dept). If I was reading your CV I would be harrassed by a big dialog box asking for my credentials to access the internet. Not pleasant. I’d be asking why.
Anyway, just something to consider.
Good point. It has worked for me in the past but I’d probably be careful with big companies. I usually prefer to work in smaller places…
So why didn’t you just use Google Analytic? It does everything you ended up doing with the data and way more. I understand the geek cred component, but man, thats a long ways to go to avoid just putting in a couple lines of JavaScript.
It might slow down the page load or even not work at all. There is an earlier comment about that from Steve.
Using analytics would have no usefulness in regards to emailed html files and would only be useful in regard to hosted cv.. see my other comment for other forms of this.
Probably because GA has a massive time and bandwidth footprint?
Wow, that is amazing. What a great idea!
RT
http://www.privacy-news.us.tc
Now visualize! Would be interesting to have a look at.
Also, you can have a print CSS as well as a screen CSS. You can remove headers and change spacing.
Example of hResume, 2 CSSes, and Google Analytics : http://paulisageek.com/resume
Yo Paul. I’d use hResume too, but I don’t have a resume
I don’t understand your reasoning for not wanting to put an image in an html file. Are you afraid that people will call names because you know how to use Photoshop? oops, Gimp.
Programming is a very creative discipline, and to have a CV that is (i’m assuming) in black and white with the default Times New Roman font is actually doing you a disservice.
I’m not saying that you should put drop-shadows and animated gifs all over the place. Although that would be funny, especially if you had one of those little stickmen with a hard hat and “under construction” signs. But why not scan your signature to virtually “sign” the CV as you would if it was on paper? Well, you would sign the cover letter, not the CV itself. But my point remains…
Don’t be one of those programmers who hold a false badge of courage because they don’t own a mouse, are allergic to colour, and go into a rage at the sight of php code. (OK, I’ll give you that last one). Employers, such as myself, see the old school lone-wolf h4rdc0r3 h4xx0rz as unemployable. They work fine alone, in their parent’s basement, but not in a professional situation.
Boy, did I go off track there! Hope you understand what I was trying to say.
Cheers,
Goob
I think I understand your point, don’t worry.
I do not like images in CVs. I think it is easy to over-do them for people (like many programmers) with ‘personal’ aesthetic sense, and anyway I think plain css styling is good enough for a cv. This way the cv is a single file (not counting the css trick).
About scanning the signature some people has pointed out it could lead to identity theft. I am not that paranoid but I do not really like the idea to keep the CV single-file. It is an option I guess.
And about the hacky side, I do not think I am like that. Maybe ten or fifteen years ago, but not anymore.
There’s a huge difference between not having images in your CV and having a sheet of single spaced Times New Roman. CVs can be attractive documents without putting a smiley face on it somewhere.
He says the HTML document uses CSS – this is a technology that is used to style the page and generally, though not always, goes beyond black and white Times New Roman.
There’s really no need to include an image in a CV – you don’t sign CVs, you sign the cover letter so why would you put the signature there? You don’t need clip art (unless you really want to do yourself a disservice) so don’t put that there and you don’t need drop shadows and Word Art. Just put down where you worked and so on.
ok.. i’m hearing a lot about CV’s…
What’s a CV?
Curriculum Vitae
Also known as a Resume.
With an accent on the second ‘e’. I’m just not leet enough to type it properly.
@Bob: to type an ‘e’ with the forward accent mark on a standard English keyboard do this.
while holding the “alt” key type “0233″ on the number pad (important!), and release. Then you will have a lovely ‘é’
** 0233 is the ASCII code in decimal form.
Ye the problem with this is most decent companies and recruitment agents will specifically request .doc files. Not sure if this is the case everywhere, but in the UK it definitely is
While working with recruitment agents I was asked to use pdf and plain text files, true. I think an html CV is ok with small or medium-sized companies. These are the kind of places I tend to prefer…
PDF looks a lot nicer, better text rendering, kerning, ligatures etc due to it being produced by InDesign. Obviously I’m not going to give them an InDesign file as they’d probably flip a nut.
Hmmm. If your server has the ability to use Python to generate the content for a URL, and you’re gonna write a Python script anyway, wouldn’t it be easier to just have the Python script output the HTML for the CV itself rather than a fake, empty CSS URL? That would alleviate both the problem if firewalls now allowing the browser to hit the fake CSS URL and the problem of someone (or a bot) hitting your fake CSS URL directly.
The cv file was meant to be sent by email. I added a ‘permalink’ to the file on my server on the botton of the cv but just in case. In my experience the people reviewing the cv used to forward the email.
Ah, I gotchya now. Good idea.
So much fail in the comments here, but good post, good trick! I probably would prefer to use a 1x1px ‘tracking pixel’ to an empty css file, but the result is exactly the same.
I’ve done this, but I had no concerns with appending a parameter to the css, e.g. file.css?9638791 is pretty innocent looking, plus I don’t care if they realize what I’m up to. If they reject me for it, then the feelings are mutual.
I’m sorry my comment might sound dumb cause i am not sure i understood …but if you want to get good statistics and track your resume or whatever page you have on your server…you can just host your website on any correct hosting company (like for exemple bluehost). They all provide excellent stats analysis program.
Until the file gets emailed around. The css file is kept on the server but the CV isn’t.
Great first post Alex.
Keep it up.
Call me an idiot but what the hell is a CV?
A curriculum vitae. Here is the wikipedia article about it.
(Sorry, the spam filter blocked your comment and I did not realise it until now)
Yeah seriously man….
It’s common sense: if you are going to use an abbreviation throughout a text, and especially if it is the crux of the text, you MUST USE THE FULL TERM AT THE BEGINNING OF THE TEXT TO INTRODUCE THE ABBREVIATION.
This is like basic writing 101. Even for a relatively common abbreviation that “should” be obvious, you must do it for the sake of clarity. Especially for such a short abbreviation which could mean many things (regardless of context).
Good start for a blog otherwise though.
I was assuming CV was a well known abbreviation. My bad.
I suppose the concern here eludes me. I really see no difference between wanting to track your CV (i.e. “Curriculum Vitae” for those like me who didn’t know) and requested a “read receipt” for a sent email. All it’s doing is informing when your CV has been viewed. What on earth could be wrong with that? Even were I an employer, I have a hard time seeing the trouble.