A big day for the labour market as Alex Ferguson has formally joined Linkedin. His joining of the social media site went hand in hand with the introduction of the Alex Ferguson Leadership award. His CV is now visible to anyone with a Linkedin account.
Doubtless, as any career guidance counsellor would tell him, his CV has one or two problems with it.
For a start, Ferguson unaccountably fails to describe himself as punctual and hard-working in his personal summary. One could say there is a giant 'punctual and hard-working' shaped hole at the heart of this CV. In its absence, employers can only but speculate about his time-keeping and capacity for hard work.
Assurances about his ability to work in a team are also thin in the ground, overshadowed, as they are, with all this vague talk of 'leading' and 'managing' and being 'the most successful manager in the history of British football'.
Also, Ferguson's insistence on writing about himself in the third person will surely alienate potential employers.
He should get rid of that stuff about being born in Govan as well. No one cares.
His CV is also devoid of references, a potentially devastating faux-pas, one he was presumably hoping to cover over with his voluminous catalogue of honours and awards, which includes a large number of Premier League manager of the year awards, four World coach of the year awards, the freedom of the city of Aberdeen and a knighthood.
The shortcomings of his CV notwithstanding, Ferguson's post-career continues to demonstrate the advantages of being a retired great in the era post football's gentrification.
Whereas, Bill Shankly was barred from the Liverpool training ground by his successors for being a distraction and was reduced to pottering around his garden for the remainder of his life, Alex Ferguson bestrides the globe like the head of a global corporation or a retired American President, giving Harvard lectures to CEO types on leadership and the like.
