When applying for positions, you will be required to submit a curriculum vitae. A curriculum vitae, or CV, includes details of your education and academic achievements, research, publications, awards, affiliations, and more.
Curriculum Vitae Writing Tips
- Your CV should be clear, concise, complete, and up-to-date with current employment and educational information.
- Have Several Versions of Your CV Don't just write one CV and use it for every position you apply for.
- Have targeted and focused versions of your curriculum vitae and use them accordingly.
- Keep It Short If possible, try to keep your CV short and concise.
- Include summaries of your employment and education, rather than lots of details.
- Use formal (no slang or abbreviations) and well-written language, writing simply and clearly.
- Tell the Truth It can be tempting to over-polish a CV and make our educational qualifications or work history sound a little better than they are.
- If you're tempted to stretch the truth about your work history - don't. It will come back to haunt you.
- Most employers conduct reference and background checks, and if your curriculum vitae doesn't match your actual work history or education, you will most likely get caught at some point, and you will either not get the job or will get fired if you have already been hired.
- Check the Format Look at the format of your curriculum vitae, and again, ask someone else to take a look.
- Is there plenty of white space? Is it cluttered? Is your formatting consistent (bold, italic, spacing, etc.) and is the overall picture that your CV provides a professional and polished one?
- Proof Your Curriculum Vitae Double-check your curriculum vitae for typos and grammatical errors.
- Then ask someone else to review it for you - it's often hard to catch our mistakes.
