Sometimes called “Related Information,” this optional section may encompass miscellaneous information that does not fit elsewhere. You may include knowledge of foreign languages (if they are not very important to your research; if they are, give them their own section), extensive travel, and interests that you feel are important. If you worked prior to attending graduate school at jobs you now consider irrelevant, you may summarize them with a statement such as “Employment 2009–2011 included office and restaurant work.” If you are applying for jobs in the United States you should not include date of birth, a statement about your health, or marital status. However, in some countries the convention is to include such personal information.
If anything in your CV may make a search committee question whether you have U.S. work permission (for example, an undergraduate degree from another country), list U.S. citizenship or permanent residency if you have it. If you do not, either make the most positive statement you can about work eligibility, for example, “Visa status allows 18 months United States work permission,” or omit any mention of citizenship.
References
List the names of the people who write letters of recommendation for you; provide their titles and institutions, telephone numbers, and e-mail addresses. An individual entry could look like this:
Dr. John Doe, Associate Professor, Department of ABC, University of X, 999-888-7654, [email protected]
or like this:
Anne L. Smith, PhD
Named Professor of XYZ
University of X
333-222-4567
Organizing and Tailoring Your CV to Its Audience
Your CV should always include basic information, and the information you present should always be true. However, if you are applying for two distinct types of positions, or positions in different types of institutions or departments, you may wish to develop more than one version of your CV. Variations could include choosing headings to emphasize information of particular relevance to a situation (for example, including “Administrative Experience” for positions that involve both teaching and administrative components); giving details about additional areas of concentration more relevant to one field than another; and using different subsets of individuals to recommend you for different types of positions. Differences between versions of your CV are usually subtle, but can be effective nonetheless. Consider different versions if you are in an interdisciplinary field and will apply to more than one type of department.
If you plan to apply for non-faculty positions that are not research based, you will need an entirely different version of your CV, which will be called a “resume.” In Chapter 23, “Exploring the Expanded Job Market,” we have included some examples of resumes prepared by Ph.D.s pursuing non-faculty positions. For more discussion and examples, see the excellent, “So What Are You Going to Do with That?”: Finding Careers Outside Academia, by Susan Basalla and Maggie Debelius. For scientists, Put Your Science to Work: The Take-Charge Guide for Scientists, by Peter S. Fiske, is a good additional source. The Chronicle of Higher Education, www.chronicle.com, Inside Higher Ed, www.insidehighered.com, and Science Careers, www.sciencecareers.org, all have excellent content about nonacademic careers. Helpful online content continues to grow. Versatile PhD, www.versatilephd.com, has panel discussions about a wide variety of non-faculty careers and sample application materials.
Experienced Candidates
If you are several years past your first academic position, your CV will be longer than that of a new Ph.D. Its general appearance and construction, however, will be similar. Normally you will omit details about earlier experience, while retaining mention of the experience itself. For example, your first CV may have given detail about what you did as a teaching assistant. Now you may merely list the position, without discussion of responsibilities. Your education will probably remain on the first page, although the amount of detail you provide about it may diminish and Current Appointment(s) may be the first section.
As entries in some of the categories in your CV are growing numerous, this is the time to introduce subdivisions. For example, publications may be divided among books, papers, and reviews. Your listings of professional associations may begin to include discussions of conference sessions that you moderated or organized.
Layout and Format
How long a CV will be varies from field to field. There is no single formula. In any case, be as concise as possible. Some graduate students will be able to manage with not more than two pages, including publications. Naturally, the CVs of more experienced candidates will be longer.
Remember that you are designing your CV to capture your readers’ attention at a first glance. Therefore pay attention to where you put information and how you format it. Organize the first page so that it contains the information about your most significant accomplishments. That way the reader will be motivated to scroll down the page. Longer entries will call more attention to themselves than will shorter ones. Material near the top of the page will stand out more than that in the middle. The left-hand column usually gets the greatest visual emphasis. Because of this, many candidates put dates on the right-hand margin, and use the left-hand margin for content items, such as names of institutions. Bullets can be useful for organizing descriptive information within entries. However, because this is a formatting technique often used in resumes you should be judicious in your use of bullets.
Take advantage of bold type for emphasis and establish a consistent graphic hierarchy so that typeface for equivalent categories of information is the same. An example of one typical hierarchy appears below.
HEADING (for example, EXPERIENCE)
Important Item (for example, University of Excellence)
Less Important Item (for example, Teaching Assistant)
Use one, or at the most two, conservative fonts. Fonts smaller than 10 point are very difficult to read. Given the availability of bold and italic type for emphasis, there is no need to clutter the page with underlining, which is harder on the eye. Avoid the graphic dizziness caused by introducing too many kinds of font, type size or indentations.
Proofread your CV again and again. Typographical or spelling errors can cause you to be dropped from consideration. To be doubly sure, ask a friend who is a good proofreader to read the draft also. Make sure your name and a page number appear on each page.
With all job descriptions, it is important to submit your materials in the manner requested. Though you are submitting your materials electronically, you should still assume that in some cases they will be printed.
To maintain your formatting, avoid predesigned templates, and use headers and/or footers for name and page numbers. Saving your document as a PDF is the best way to ensure that the format and length stay as you intended. If you’re asked to cut and paste parts of your CV into an online application form, remove all formatting, since you won’t know how the formatting will convert when uploaded to the online application system.
Help
Because a CV is often the first thing a potential employer sees of you, it is too important a document not to be thoroughly critiqued and revised. Show it to your advisor and others in your department. See whether your university career office has counselors who work with graduate students or postdocs and who are able to provide critiques and help you get your first draft together. To give your CV a good final