Academic cv how long

Thanks so much for your helpful and candid advice! Does it make you more memorable or is it amateurish? My adviser, a giant in his field, and a very professional man, has more than twice now asked me to include a picture of myself on my CV [because he says I am a good looking woman.

I am wondering if his advice is simply old-fashioned. His letter of recommendation for me is highly supportive, and free of feminine adjectives and descriptions.

What should I do? I have just finished my MA in Drama and have been asked by a university to start throwing my hat in the ring for teaching positions as a sessional. As I begin to restructure my existing CV I have a few questions that have not come up in the above comments. Would you say that they should go under another heading? While I do teach for grades second through undergrad, I also am the curriculum developer for at least 4 of the programs I implement.

It is so helpful. The comments and questions that have come up are just as useful also. But Workshops Facilitated will get the job done—you can keep it. A line of explanation would be permissible here, but no more. It is hard but not completely impossible. What about academic professional positions for someone transitioning into a new field? I held years of significant research and management related AP positions before going back to school.

Research Experience? I have a fair amount of faith that my advisor will make this clear in a letter of rec, I have the great luck of having a fantastic advisor. Can I leave the dollar amount absent for this listing but include it for other, smaller grants? Smaller grants would include dissertation fieldwork grants that are expressly in my name.

I graduated with my PhD in May and am currently employed full time as an editor at a well-known academic journal. Thanks for any advice! Dear Karen Thank you for your site, I just discovered it yesterday, and just in time. I am applying for postdoc fellowships and your blog saved me from embarrassing mistakes in my CV. I hope you still read this post, so I will ask my question.

Its a lot of work.. My question is whether I should add it to my CV? Where and how to explain this job…? Thank you! One more. Is it appropriate to underline or bold a big fellowship that might get lost in the list? I have seen differing opinions.

Thank you for this advice. Teaching-oriented jobs in media studies usually involve teaching some sort of production classes. This post has been a tremendous help and I have been spending lots of time revamping my CV. The first commenters seem to think it is padding, while you Karen seem to suggest it is okay to include. Thank you for this very helpful post. Maybe I have the wrong impression because most of if not all the CVs I have seen including those I have obtained from colleagues and professors in my field list dates on the right or within the entries themselves.

What are your thoughts on this? I have a number fo clients who do as you say, with dates in the entries themselves. I prefer to see this for conferences, and have the pubs with the years to left, but certainly if people in yoru field do it that way, you should emulate.

What about for fellowship lists? Would it be ok to follow suit? Thank you so much for your posts. They are so helpful. I have seen both orders in academic cvs.

Thank you for your help! Developing the judgment about what makes a good one may take some time. Thanks, Karen, for a great post. As I currently have it structured, my headings are in the following order: Education, Certifications, Professional Appointments, P Teaching Experience, Publications. Also, I took a one-year educational sabbatical while teaching high school; is it necessary to list this when reporting my teaching years?

That is, do I say , say with a parenthetic note sabbatical , or list the dates as and ? During the time of my sabbatical, I was on an official leave, not dismissed and rehired. Where do I list an invitation ro be an external reviewer for tenure for a faculty member for another university?

Thank you so much for all of the useful information! This is extremely helpful. Does it depend on the fellowship? Or is it just sad? Just above service. I think this varies by subfield. Maybe not so for less competitive funding sources, and most likely not so impressive and should be dropped by the time you are applying for jobs. Needed your expert opinion! I was asked for my feedback but everyone in the dept was.

The lectures were given by members of my department. Are any of these worth mentioning? I do cite the book review in publications. Thanks very much for this blog. I have a question about how to handle listing transfers from one academic institution to another.

Part of me would prefer to leave these off since I only spent one year at each of these places. I have one quick question. Candidate on the job market for the first time. Is there any way that it would be acceptable for me to include a short description or at least a short list of authors? I have won some awards more than once i. Should I list each year as a individual line or should I lump them to avoid repetition? If one has spent a couple of years at a program and then transferred to another institution do you recommend that they include this in the main Education part?

Omit it? Or put in another section? Same for a semester spent at another school? I know this is ok for publications, but what if one knows they are going to teach as an adjunct at a new university in the coming spring semester, do you recommend they incorporate this into their cv before then?

You can put upcoming employment as long as the dates are clearly listed and you have already signed a FINAL written contract no verbal offers. I came across your site while searching for guidelines to a CV I must produce for a grant application. I was thrilled to discover this page, however I am not as far along in my academic career as the folks for whom this page is intended.

How could I tweak your guidelines for my purposes, considering that publications, professional appointments, conference activity, etc. I would love to hear your thoughts! Great post, thank you. Do you have an example somewhere to give a visual impression of what it should look like? That would serve no one. I also have over ten years experience as a teacher and assistant principal in public schools. Does this employment fall under teaching experience, or other employment?

As it stands, I have my teaching experiences listed with two subheadings: K, and University level. If applying to a school of Ed, it makes significant difference it seems that I actually have a decade of practical experience, rather than strictly theoretical understandings. Also … I have teaching credentials in two states, and an administrative credential. Do these go under Education? Out of curiosity, would assisting with academic advisement be something I could include on my CV?

Given that my Ph. One or two entries? Dear Dr. Karen, Thank you for posting this. Many sections you listed are still empty for me though! I freelance for the newspaper and have published quite a bit there. Do those have a place in an academic CV at all? Thank you, Daphne. If the time frame is completely distinct then this is no problem. I recently graduated with my Bachelors degree in biology last spring and like Daphne my CV would be a little sparse. I have had a few internship and presented my senior research project at a couple conferences but have never been published.

I am thinking of contacting potential graduate school advisers soon and was wondering if it is acceptable to send a resume, which lends itself better to elaborating on the experiences I have, or if it would be beneficial to convert my resume to a CV. You must appear to be a scholar first, writer of other thigns a distant second, third, or fourth. These are fantastic guidelines. I left it off. Any alternative suggestions? I also took off summer travel grants, as one commenter suggested above.

It seemed to give the remaining entries more weight. Thanks again! And the visiting scholar appointment is actually quite significant as well, although it might go under Research Experience, as opposed to appointments. Thanks for posting this! Helped me a lot when drafting my CV. I have a question about spacing.

Advice appreciated. Karen, Thank you for all of this advice. Why do you disapprove of putting a diss abstract on the CV? I think that grad student candidates in general are too fixated on their dissertations and the diss abs. Particularly if you have a healthy list of publications on the cv, the abs.

But, I know that in some fields it might be expected. My question is: do I put these things in the CV or just mention them in the cover letter? If you were a TA or RA for a very prominent person in your field, should you list their name in the CV entry for that class or position? Or, is this a big no-no? But if nobody is really famous, then leave them off for all.

Karen, can you advise about whether dates should be listed from earliest to latest, or latest to earliest?

I have my CV formatted according to my local rules excerpt below. I know it violates some of your rules. How should the dates be listed in each of these instances to keep the document consistent?

In normal CV vertical listing, always newest down to oldest. Yes, the general structure of my CV is newest to oldest for each section, but these recurring dates of service make it problematic. I thought it made sense to group a recurring event with all its relevant dates rather than list each separately with its individual date. Thanks very much! I earned a doctorate in education a few years ago and wanted to transition to a college position. I have been stuck on the CV construction when it comes to publications because I have no publications after I earned my degree.

My first question is, is it a waste of time to apply to any college level position with no record of paper publication, or is there a way to demonstrate research potential in another area? Secondly, should my focus be on publishing first for a few years before pursuing any type of college level position? Lastly, how does one start? These are questions I have asked former advisors but I have yet to feel like I have a clear direction. I would appreciate your expertise and your honesty.

Your competitors will have some. Your teaching exp. Thank you for the excellent website. Excellent blog! I am preparing my CV. I have extensive industrial experience , but research experience is limited to only that period of being a graduate student. Can I list my industrial experience under professional experience? Thank you Karen! I have a question and I wonder if you could clarify the issue for me?

Would you recommend just listing the working title of manuscripts? And is there an optimal number of such manuscripts i. Dear Karen, Thank you for your advice — as someone from outside US attempting to apply for a US-based fellowship, it has been very helpful.

One question: most of my publications, thesis titles, papers presented, guest lectures, etc. Would you recommend including the names in the original Portuguese and an English translation? Or just the translation? Your suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Hi Karen, Great post!

I wish I found your website 10 years ago… I did two visiting scholar posts in top universities in the country where I research. Where do you suggest I include it in my CV? Any advice for how to seamlessly include a change of name into the CV? In this case some articles are published under a different name than is given at the top of the CV. My lead-in to the interview is quoted directly. The collection has been published by a major university press.

Your thoughts, please? Those need to be divided into two. Thanks for the reply, Karen! Hi Karen, Many thanks for this website. Though it makes their CV pretty long. In my case, I have two conference publications and they have been cited in nice journal articles. Do you think its wise to mention that in my CV? I am a graduate student so I feel it would make my CV look attractive and the PhD admission committee would really think that my research works have been noteworthy so far.

Please guide me. Hi Karen, Love your website and blog. Both told me that I needed to put my publications on the first page of the CV. Also, should a distinction be made between one-off or annual short events and longer-term series i. Thanks, for both this post and the blog! I am trying to figure out how to include my business on my academic CV…I have an academic appointment, but I also run a business. They are related. Where do I include my business on my cv? I am struggling with my cv.

There is one job posting in my field where I want to live and I really want it! I appreciate your help. I have a couple of questions. Thank you, Jane. Thanks for such a wonderful resource.

A recent high-level Dean search at our school yielded finalists who all included detailed bulleted lists in their CVs indicating accomplishments in the area of fundraising, recruitment of diverse faculty, and so on.

Are CVs geared toward administrative positions one area in which the embargo on resume-style bulleted lists might be lifted? Yes i suppose so. Karen, Your blog has guided me better than any other website I have found.

My classroom duties and methodologies are conducive that for of an elementary teacher. So how do I write it so that I demonstrate my knowledge and ability to prepare young adult learners for the field of education?

Any time a person has an unusual record, we have to do various tweaks to the basic format to accomodate. I am in the midst of writing my CV to begin a career search I am in the sciences so the majority of my employers ask for CVs. I am currently in the midst of my first year as a PhD, however I will be leaving the program in June. However, I am continuing with the research until I leave and until my advisor finds another student to take my place.

I already have a MS degree but I feel that a full year of research abroad should not be overlooked. I was awarded a fellowship for the project as well. Should and if so, where and how should military service be included in the C. While I have been working as an adjunct during the past few years, I have also been running a for-profit university library full-time for the past 5 years, and prior to that, I was a part-time Library Research Assistant at a small liberal arts university for 3 years.

Where would I list this information? Would I include my duties bibliographic instruction, serving as a one woman writing center or just make mention of them in my cover letter?

Thanks for the post. Quick question regarding abstracts and papers. What is the acceptable or expected practice when listing a presented abstract that is based on a subsequently published paper that has the exact same title, for example? Are both listed? Next year, I will be on leave from my tenure-track job, with an external fellowship in another state.

Since I graduate with a PhD I have published widely in my field to improve my CV and help me with job, but as I do not have teaching experience I find it very difficult to break into teaching!!!

After 2 jobs interviews, they stated that they have chosen, someone with teaching experience…. SO I do not know who come first egg or the chicken. Is there real difference between CV and Resume? Some of my publications are not in English, should I give original titles or only English translations? There is a difference; the resume is a business document, the cv an academic one.

So you have to attend closely to context. I just came across your website for the first time while looking for academic C. May I say how grateful I am for all the advice you have shared here, and to others, too, for their honest contributions.

My question is this. World at my feet, right? My problem was that I was doing German Studies, a field which has shrunk to the point of oblivion in the UK. I did all I was supposed to, only to find that there are basically no jobs in German.

Then look for yourself on jobs. No jobs also equates to career instability, since entire departments have been closing left, right, and center in the UK. The situation is slightly better in the US, but still grim, as I knew from having had to fight to keep our own German department from being closed during my Ph.

Personal circumstances meant, in any case, though, that I had to stay in the UK. So I went through all the soul-searching, the bitterness, the disappointment, the regret, the anger, etc. I became a property developer in — right at the top of the housing bubble before it burst.

Seeking greater job security, I turned to accountancy and worked for PwC for just over a year. That was all I could stand, it was awful. Gnawing away at me the whole time was the fact that I am an academic by heart. I belong in academia. So I re-tooled. Again I have an evolving publications record and evidence of grant capture. I am now returning to the academic job market at the age of However, some people full professors included have suggested that my career path displays the hallmarks of one who does not really know where he is headed or what he is doing.

A younger candidate fresh out of a first Ph. My commitment to the profession is interpreted as an inability to progress.

My Oxbridge and Ivy League qualifications are being interpreted as an active hindrance in my job search, so much so that I in a recent job application I actually left out all academic information relating to my first MA and Ph. How should I market myself in your view? Or should I do something different entirely? It seems obvious that it would go under research experience but REUs are also a lot like a fellowship, award, or work experience since students are really well funded to be involved in them.

Also, if I include it as a fellowship or award do I list the amount it was worth? I have taught part-time at universities and community colleges over the past nine years. I have only worked in this part-time capacity while working full time jobs-some within academia and one outside.

Because the bulk of my work has been non-teaching would it be more appropriate to use a traditional resume when applying to a full-time position? Or should I be using the CV format? And, if CV, where I will be deficient in many areas i.

Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time! One question: I attended a summer language program that is entirely necessary to my research, but not directly related to my degree in any way. A Is this something that should be listed on my CV? B If so, should it be under education or perhaps under languages? Do I list these as separate degrees on my CV? When listing publications, I have always formatted them using APA style — i.

When you say to have the date left justified for everything, would you put the date in the left, and then repeat it using an APA styled reference for each article, or would you avoid using APA altogether?

Could you possibly post an example of how you prefer to see one or two lines of publications being listed on a C. Thanks and I apologize if it has already been asked — I did my best to read through all of the responses — but this has been a very popular posting! I love your website and am so glad that I found it before I go on the market this fall! In addition to presenting at large annual meetings that will be easily recognizable to people reading my CV, I have given papers at several specialized conferences.

Do you think it is permissible to choose either the title of the conference or the name of the group that organized it in order to make the entry more streamlined? Hi Karen, I was recently invited to be a keynote speaker for a large conference which I had to decline due to time constraints. I am tempted to mention that I was accepted as a keynote speaker for this conference on my C.

Any suggestions on how I should tackle this? Any advice for a high school teacher—whose opportunities for research and publication may have been light or nonexistent—who wants to make a CV for college-level positions? How do you do this in your model? Do I mention the funding? Do you and where put post-PhD academic employment such as cataloging material in special collections or as an administrator of sorts for a center on campus? What do you do with unfunded grants? And what about when your grant is declared meritorious, but goes unfunded because the university ran out of money?

Thanks for this very helpful post. I have a couple of questions: I have one competitive fellowship award. Three separate headings? One more question — where do you put citizenship? When you left justify dates do you simply put all the other relevant conference info in APA format minus date on the right? Also, this is probably a bit of outlier question but I once conducted a series of guest lectures for a professor who was on a short term sick leave.

Should and how would I include this? While I find most of the info included here very useful, it is hard to follow. Can you post an actual formatted CV sample? After the article, the formatting rules and all the replies, I feel a visual guide would be helpful.

I love your site — it is incredibly informative, though I tend to fall down the rabbit hole reading all of the comments. I am a second year PhD student in education curriculum and educational technology, to be exact , and I recently started the transition from a resume to a CV now that I have presentations, publications, etc. I have followed all of your rules, but I am having difficulty with one: no verbiage?!

Before I found you, I mimicked many of the CVs of my professors and chosen candidates from hiring committees. Almost all of them had narratives under most of the positions. So now I am torn. Thank you for this comprehensive guide to the academic CV. I did my Ph. As a recent PhD, I am in the process of updating my c.

I do disagree with a few things you say on a cursory review, believing that these documents today are not what they used to be. Also, I believe course numbers may be important and not as meaningless as you suggest since they show the level at which you were selected to teach. Finally, many of us today are theorist-practitioners so we will have business resume elements as part of an academic c. I have worked in a non-English speaking academia for the past few years since a year after my Ph. I have to say, a long title in transliteration looks weird.

Also, I have only one of each kind of publication. Do you think I should still use subheadings with just one item under each, or should I just put everything together with the type of publication in parentheses after each title?

These are translations of scholarly works from English to XYZ language. For those who use LaTeX instead of word processors, latextemplates. How do you feel about embedded hyperlinks in the CV? A couple of small questions: if a book is re-issued in paperback, how exactly do you indicate that? Similarly, if an article is reprinted, does that merit a separate entry or do you just put the rpt.

Dissertations directed goes under teaching, I assume…how much if any info do you supply about the dissertations, or the placement of students who have completed the diss? Hello, very nice suggestions. I have one question, I am preparing my CV for an academic position and I am wondering where I should mention or not my Certificate in Project Management, something I did before I started focusing on an academic career. It is not really a degree and it is not at least not directly related to the academic area of the position I am applying.

I would appreciate any suggestions! Thank you very much for the useful, caring article, and for keeping up with the comments over the past year. My question may be beyond the scope of what you want to cover, but I am a long-time senior administrator who has also kept up teaching, and I have just finished my doctorate. When you talk about including your personal address and institutional address, what would you recommend to an adjunct that works at multiple institutions?

Thanks for the useful post. I personally find it very handy, offering access to further info without cluttering the text and sort of technologically up-to-date……. I have a quick question about formatting conventions for ABD students. I plan to defend in the spring semester of Should I just list it as:. Maybe put parentheses around the year? Do you have any wisdom on how to indicate on a CV a transfer mid-PhD with your advisor?

I was invited to transfer to another university with my advisor after I attained ABD status and a good deal of teaching experience and prestigious awards at my first institution.

Hello, and thank you for the useful information! I have a question about conference presentations. Is this just a presentation for which you had to submit an abstract and be selected for presentation? Many thanks! My first teaching position and one I still hold is teaching writing labs. The class is divided into lecture and lab. The lecture instructor is the instructor of record, but I hold my own class once a week, design the lessons, grade papers, hold discussions and activities, etc.

It is not considered an assistantship or TA-ship. How should I designate this? I hold other part-time teaching positions in the area in which I am instructor of record, but I teach these labs at a more esteemed university.

Would you recommend placing examination topics in the CV under education for an A. But others might disagree. I am a recent MS graduate preparing to apply to PhD. The work is related to my academic research interests.

Do you recommend listing this fellowship? Do I put that crap on my CV since I competing with all of the other applicants who put it on theirs or will admissions committees appreciate the fact that I leave it off?

I never thought to have to negotiate this, but, recently, a surprising number of early career academics have tried to argue this point with me.

Let me therefore say very clearly: reverse chronological order is the norm; it is reasonable; it is absolutely de rigueur. CV writing is not about what's logical or preferable to you; it's about anticipating your selectors' needs and trying to make their lives as easy as possible. If that argument doesn't convince you, here's another angle. Remember that I'm going to be skimming your CV, not reading it in detail. If I cast a quick glance over your publications and see at the top of the list a paper dated , then I may well conclude that you haven't published anything since and decide not to waste more time on reading this section of your CV.

In many cases, this is simply a question of structure. If you're applying for a teaching role at a less research-intensive university, then do I really want to wade through seven or eight pages of information about your research experience before I get to a meagre section on your teaching?

Bring the teaching section forward and expand it. If you've taught modules or topics relevant to the new post, then say so. If they want somebody with experience of supervising research students, then be sure that I can read about your experience of supervising research students without the need to pause, ponder, or decrypt.

Avoid like the plague all institution-specific arcana. My own university has more than its fair share of authentic and faux medieval terminology that is utterly opaque to outsiders and to many insiders , eg Tripos, Part II, prelims, JRF, DoS. This is by no means an exclusively Cambridge phenomenon. You must be ruthless in purging your CV of language that doesn't make sense to readers outside your current institution because you run the genuine risk of offending.

You will look like a snob who can't be bothered to translate his or her experience into generally comprehensible language. Think undergraduate exams, third year, postdoctoral fellowship, and so on. And here's a related tip: know the differences in preferred language between your current and future institutions.

Paper, module, unit, or course? Tutorials, supervisions, office hours, or something else? Show that you have done your homework, because it says something about how seriously you want the job. To my mind, it's baffling to want to list all course codes and other administrative technicalities on your CV, but I see this done alarmingly often. Yes, I do want to know what you have taught, in what format, and to what learners.

I'm also happy, in most cases, to know the exact titles of those courses or lectures. This is administrative information — for internal use only. Unless you are an internal applicant, how does this kind of pedantry help the selectors decide to put you on their shortlist? Extraneous information on a CV may not be as heinous a mistake as incomprehensible information see number 5 , but it clutters up the skim-reading process, potentially confuses the reader, and does you no discernible favours.

Why it is that professional scholars who have to prepare references and bibliographies for publication can't put a list together for their CVs, using a consistent style and with proper attention to detail, is a perennial mystery to me. And, yes, it does matter. Is slapdash what you want me to think of you before I've even met you? I can recognise a CV when I see one, and I trust that others can, too.

It can be tempting to use a colorful, design-heavy template full of graphics, photographs, and complex design elements. However, when it comes to creating an academic CV, simplicity is key. Many people still prefer to print out CVs, and a simple design will make sure yours can be easily printable and readable!

Use the same font throughout, and choose one that will be readable on any computer Times New Roman, Arial, Courier, etc. Use consistent font size and formatting for your headers. Choose bold over italics whenever possible — it is easier to read while scanning. I know this is widely debated, but if you write a solid CV we should recognize it as such. List your accomplishments in reverse chronological order, so potential employers can focus on your most recent work, rather than something you did 10 years ago.

This is a major pet peeve for many people! When discussing your professional and academic roles, focus on what you achieved or experienced, rather than your day-to-day duties. For the most part, the institutions you apply to will be familiar with the daily duties of a professor, research assistant, or administrator.

Focus on the things you accomplished that stand out, or things you did above and beyond your regular duties. They want to know what special skills and attributes you can bring to the position.

What types of learning managements systems LMS did you use to build your courses? Were your courses in person, online, or a hybrid? Did you teach a specialized group of students engineer majors, students with disabilities, nontraditional students, non-native English speakers, etc. Focusing on the unique and amazing things you did while taking on research, teaching, or professional roles will help you stand out!

Another common mistake I see is using one version of your CV for everything.