References provided when hell freezes over

I had a large corporate client ask for my resume today. Which I suppose wouldn't be too silly, except for the fact that it was client I had been working for for the last three years, and the particular project in question was already 90% complete. Evidently a project manager needs to cover his posterior, to make sure no one can blame him if something goes wrong and they later decide I was unqualified for the job.

I have a bristly relationship with my resume. It's been at least ten years since anyone asked me for a resume and had a good reason to do so. A resume should get you your first job in a field, but if you need a resume to get any job after that, you either don't know enough people or you haven't accumulated enough of a portfolio to demonstrate what you're capable of. So it always feels mildly insulting when someone asks for it. Does anyone ask Dr. Phil for his CV?

I have been working in the software business for the last nine years, and interestingly, almost nobody asks me about my credentials. I can usually convince people in about ten minutes that I know what I'm doing, just by the questions I ask them. But what's more interesting is the credentials that they assume I have. Everyone assumes that I must have a degree in computer science, and that I must have several certifications of some kind. It's very rare that someone guesses the truth: I'm a ex-scientist and completely self-taught hack. I never took a computer class in my entire life, unless you count a Pascal class in high school, and that was long before I got in touch with my inner geek.

Hence, the intense superiority-inferiority complex about my resume. Even though I'm very good at what I do, I have to worry that some bureaucrat who doesn't know his ASP from a hole in the ground is going to look at my CV and think that I'm somehow deficient because I don't have "the proper education." Why don't I have my MCSE, you ask? I never needed it.