Emigration etc.

Ok. You have your suitcase packed. You've just had an appointment with a dentist (this will keep you going for half a year until you come back). You're sporting a new pair of shiny glasses and a new haircut. Passport and ticket in your pocket.

"Now what?", they ask you before you get on the plane. "What will you do for a living over there?"

It all kicks off with a CV.

Your name.

Skip the letters that don't belong to the local alphabet. Abbreviate your last name. Modify the first one. Become another Paddy, John or Amy. Who cares about the name anyway?

Work experience.

It must be relevant to the position you are applying for. Don't expect anything posh. Miracles don't happen in a day. Otherwise half of the more than average journalists you know from home would be applying for jobs in BBC. PR people would be knocking on the doors of those who partake in making something like this and finance analysts would be doing anything to get in HSBC or the likes.

Perhaps the best ones might even turn out to be lucky. Yet few even try - many choose rather to become local celebrities than international mediocrities. Thus we have 30-year-old journalists who act like gods, love to pose for local celebrity photographers and drive new BMWs. The result - our TV stations tend to focus barely on cheap reality TV shows (they sell) and our reporters can't afford to research for a story for a month (actually, it is the editors and the bookkeepers who can't afford it). Journalists get wasted with MPs, editors go to Majorca with those who advertise on the front page and reality TV shows produce journalists. On the other hand who cares about good quality media? Prime time is given to crime investigations anyway.

Back to the CV.

Since you're not applying for a job in RTE or "Irish Independent" and only want to get those alluring 8.65/hour voila you state your relevant experience. Your summer in the USA and the tables you've waited over there, places you used to go to for a pint back home (nobody examines the facts in your CV anyway) and a few months of experience of making latte in some Dublin cafe.

If you are a bloke you go into construction - they make more than the minimum wage (so ***ing sexist) or into IT if you have any idea about PCs (***ing computer geeks).

You might include the fact you've been working as a news editor for the largeset news portal in the country (a sort of Lithuanian BBC). But it was not in Ireland so who should care?

There's little point to mention a couple of months spent in the national radio as a reporter either. It was not RTE anyway. Besides you're not applying for a reporter's position (although you might consider it later).

Education

Don't bother with subjects taken, just mention having received the degree. In any case nobody knows your university.

Hobbies and other details worth or not mentioning

Make sure your contact phone number is on the very top of the page, bright and clear.

God forbid don't put your photo on the CV (an especially common trend among Eastern Europeans).

For Christ's sake skip "traveling" or "taking pictures" - it sounds so dull. Worth mentioning yoga.

If by the time you hand in the CV you can have a basic conversation with the manager of x cafe in English, it is magic! Don't give up if nobody has called you, print lots of copies and knock on many doors. It is nearly impossible to fail in this economic boom.

After a couple of years you might even chance to apply for a more demanding job - in order for the local celebrities you have left back home not to call you a failure. Perhaps you could even turn out to become an international mediocrity after all...