Welcome to Wednesday’s WORKING WORLD brought to you by the Edanz Learning Lab team!
On Wednesdays, to soften the middle of the week, we provide a little bit of gentle career advice and words of encouragement.
Are you thinking of applying for a job, a PhD or postdoc position? Perhaps just dusting off your academic CV (= resume) and re-tooling for the next grant cycle or series of openings?
We all need an effective and eye-catching CV that ensures we stand out at the top of the pile. The question is: How to grab people’s attention and ensure you have the best possible chance of winning an interview for your next position?
Make no mistake: The role of an academic CV is to give you the best possible chance of securing an interview. Once at that stage (congratulations!) the emphasis shifts onto you – the researcher.
Get our free CV-building template
At the bottom of this page, we’ve attached a template you can use as a basis to construct a basic academic CV.
Above all, it’s a good idea to use this process to keep track of all your accomplishments. People do tend to keep track of their papers and grants (of course), but what about other things you’ve done like talks, students and colleagues you’ve worked with, as well as data about your publications such as downloads and reads. How good would it be to be able to talk about this kind of thing in a job interview? “Well, I published this paper recently in this journal and so far it’s been read and downloaded by 200 colleagues around the world”.
The trick here is ensuring that you standout from the competition. So, do something different. Put something eye-catching at the top of your CV: your main accomplishment, the key takeaway. The one thing you want interviewers to know immediately about you.
Search committees might be sorting through hundreds of CVs for their next open academic position.
How are you going to stand out from the crowd?
Why not join the Edanz Learning Lab community to learn more? We provide daily tips that address the issues researchers face. We’ve been there and done that!‘Sign in’ or ‘Sign up’ to get your FREE CV-BUILDER template now!
