We have shared information on various aspects of the Job Application process: as we enter into another round of job adverts and applications, here are a few more tips on your CV…
- Regularly update your CV. Otherwise, you forget all the very cool stuff you did. So, at the end of a term, go ahead and insert those couple of seminar papers that you gave, or updated that article reference which initially read ‘under review’ and should now read ‘accepted for publication’.
- Don’t be afraid to re-vamp your CV. This is not about content, but appearance. Indeed, although one might think that appearances don’t matter in academia, that is really not the case. This is especially true of CVs. Don’t hesitate to tweak bits and bobs of your CV to suit your needs: as your list of publications expands, and your list of conference papers narrows down to the most important/recent ones, you should seize the opportunity to rethink its basic appearance: OMG did i use THAT font ?! Why is every second world in bold ?? And should this section be divided by theme rather than chronological order ? If you’re asking yourself these questions, it’s probably because there’s a problem. So play around with font, size, bold, indentation and order. Over time, and as you start to see other CVs and notice what works and what doesn’t, your CV should change in appearance. At the end of the day, clarity is key (see below). Because the important thing is that the information which is most important just leaps of the page.
- Have 2 versions of your CV. This is just sound advice. The first version you want is the 1-2 page CV. Sometimes, job applications specify they want a short CV, so this just speeds up the process. Also, when you send conference proposals, articles,etc, they sometimes ask for a CV. They probbaly don’t need your whloe life story, so a short CV with the basics (ex: education, employment, publications, grants/fellowships, teaching interests) might be the best. The second version is the full, long version of your CV. (If your ‘long’ CV is only 1-2 pages at this stage, don’t worry, that’ll change sooner than you think.) This one contains much more detail, which we’re about to discuss below.
