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What is a Curriculum Vitae?

A resume is a resume is a resume…Despite the fancy name, a curriculum vitae is simply a specific sort of resume, the style of which is preferred by candidates for medical, academic, teaching, and research positions.

What are some differences between a general resume and a Curriculum Vitae?

• Since most candidates who use a CV have an educational background directly related to the positions they seek, education is always featured first. Even after twenty years of research, your degrees and the schools where you earned them will overshadow your experience.
• CV’s almost never list an objective, and seldom have a long narrative profile. They are sometimes diagrammatic, giving exceptionally brief listings for each experience. Your credentials and preparation will have to speak for themselves. If you want to make a more elaborate argument for your candidacy, you must do it in your cover letter.
• CV’s are properly more understated than business resumes, and any hint of braggadocio or other self-congratulation is likely to backfire on the author. Similarly, CV’s should look rather plain. Save the bells and whistles for another time. When they are nondiagrammatic, CV’s can contain blocky job descriptions of some great length—but the emphasis is always on content, not form.
• Name dropping is more common in CV’s than in resumes. For example, if you performed research under a certain professor, you would probably include her name and title. Science and academia are small worlds, and it is likely that a prospective employer will have heard of a given specialist in her own field. Similarly, if you went on clinical rotations at a given hospital, name it; your future employer might have hospital privileges there.
• Unlike resumes, CV’s can run on for pages and pages. They should, however, be very neatly organized, with clear headings and distinct conceptual divisions, so they can be skimmed as easily as a two-page resume.
• In addition to the usual catalog of degrees and job histories, CV’s often contain many more categories of information. Experience may be divided between headings for TEACHING and RESEARCH; education may be divided between DEGREES and CONTINUING EDUCATION or ADVANCED TRAINING; publications may be divided into sub-categories of BOOKS, ARTICLES, CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS ABSTRACTS, BOOK REVIEWS, and UNPUBLISHED PAPERS. How you organize this material determines its impact on your reader.

What information should I include?

The organization and presentation of your CV is extremely important. Your presentation will be judged largely on the number and nature of listings. Material that you may think of as irrelevant may end up cinching your presentation. For example, if you gave fourteen lectures in the last year, list them! If you are fresh out of school, it is better to let the search committee know exactly what you have done and, by inference, what you can do.

As with any other resume, review your total universe of material before deciding what to include, what to feature, and what to omit. Review all potential data in the following categories:

Degrees, Study abroad, Volunteer experience, Appointments, Dissertations, Teaching, Service, Consulting, Theses, Workshops, Languages, Practica, All other college studies, Clinics, Laboratory skills, Awards, Continuing education, Seminars, Technical skills Additional, Training, Conferences, Computer skills, Activities, Specialization, Symposia, Licenses, Sports, Expertise, Publications, Credentials, Travel, Profession, Translations, Honors, Bibliography, Interests, Presentations, Scholarships, Addenda, Employment, Papers, Fellowships, Affiliations, Class projects, Lectures, Assistantships, Pro bono, Research, Exhibitions, Grants, Committees

After compiling this raw data, organize the information on your CV in accordance with your desired impact on the reader. This should govern which information you present and the order in which you present it.

Bibliographies longer than two pages, or any other category with more than two pages of information, should be separated out from the main body of the CV. Of course, different disciplines have different protocols for bibliographic data and you will need to learn and follow those for your profession. Bibliographies should run in reverse chronological order like everything else (as a general rule).

Note: CV information provided by From College to Career, by Donald Asher, Ten Speed Press, 1992.

The Electronic Curriculum Vitae

As you prepare your curriculum vitae and its accompanying correspondence, it is essential that you prepare two copies of your material; one for people to read and one to be scanned by a computer. Scannable CV’s focus on clearly defined format and content rules which are determined by Optical Character Recognition (OCR). OCR creates a text file in ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange). Next, artificial intelligence reads the text and extracts the information it needs. For a CV to be scannable it has to be clean and crisp with dark type—preferably standard fonts—so that OCR can recognize every letter.

How do I write a scannable Curriculum Vitae?

• Use the language and acronyms appropriate for the field in which you are seeking entry.
• Use commonly accepted headings for the sections.
• Use active verbs when noting responsibilities and skills.
• Include keywords when describing your skills, education, and experience; be specific.
• Be honest and succinct.
• A CV may exceed one page, as the computer’s ability to scan it is not affected by length.

How do I produce a scannable Curriculum Vitae?
Note: Electronic CV information and various CVsamples provided by How to Prepare Your Curriculum Vitae, Acy L. Jackson, VGM Career Horizons, NTC/Contemporary Publishing Company, 1997

• The original should be letter quality.
• Use a standard typeface in a font size of 10 to 14 points.
• Use standard spacing; letters should not touch.
• Avoid using italics, underlining, lines, graphics, two-column format, or boxes. Emphasize using bold or full capitalization.
• Your name should be at the top of the first page, followed by your address beneath it. Each phone number should be on a separate line. Successive pages should have your name as the first text.
• Do not fold or staple.

Do you have a sample of a Curriculum Vitae?

Here are two sample CV's: Example 1, Example 2.

Where can I get additional help?

Career Services career counselors will be happy to answer any questions you may have about writing your curriculum vitae. For more information or to schedule an appointment, call 471-6700 or come by PAI 5.03.

Suggested Readings

If you would like further information on preparing your curriculum vitae, consider the following books. This is not a complete list of resources, but they are good books and some are available in the Career Services Office.

• How to Prepare Your Curriculum Vitae by Acy L. Jackson
• From College to Career; Entry-Level Resumes for Any Major by Donald Asher
• The Academic Job Search Handbook by Mary Morris Heiberger, Julia Miller Vick
• On The Market: Surviving the Academic Job Search (Serial) by Christina Boufis, Victoria C. Olsen