Photo by João Ferrão on Unsplash
Whether you’re applying for PhD positions, post-docs or even academic teaching/research posts, you will need a clear and concise CV that highlights your skills, experience and suitability for the role. Whilst academic CVs are generally longer than other types of CVs its still important to make sure that the length doesn’t put a potential employer off.
I’ve put together a summary below of the key elements of an academic CV which will hopefully give you some inspiration! Remember that everything that you include must be completely tailored to the role that you're applying for, and ALWAYS check and double check your spelling! It is a good idea to ask your advisor or a mentor in your field for a copy of his/her CV, as each discipline has its own standards for content, style, and format.
Titles/headings
The first thing should be your name and contact details, including a professional-looking email address.
Intro
You can begin your academic CV with a concise introduction which provides a summary statement of your skills, experience and achievements. You may also want to add your career ambitions here.
Qualifications
PhD: title, date, institution, supervisors’ names, examiners’ names (if not yet submitted, expected submission dates)
Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees: title, date, institution, grade achieved. If you’re applying for a PhD position you can add more detail in this section to describe relevant courses/modules studied during your degree and provide information on any research projects you undertook (title of research project, key skills obtained, supervisor)
Any other relevant awards, e.g. teaching qualifications
Employment / Teaching / Work Experience
List job titles, employers, dates and the key experiences that might be relevant to the position you’re applying for. If you have teaching experience you can also mention courses you teach and what your responsibilities are for each, e.g. module organizer, tutor, lecturer, whether its undergraduate or postgraduate level teaching, essay and exam marker etc. Emphasise specialist/technical expertise, IT/bioinformatics skills, plus any skills relevant for the job. Don’t forget to include project/people management. In addition to describing responsibilities you can also describe accomplishments.
Administrative experience
Highlight any positions of responsibility, or other roles that you fulfil as part of your academic job, such as a member of journal editorial boards, external examiner, administrative roles etc. You can include event and course organisation, committee/society membership, etc, especially if applicable to the job description.
Publications
reference fully Articles / Reviews in reverse chronological order. If you have a long list of publications you can provide them as an appendix and instead highlight relevant/key publications for the post in the main body of the CV. For papers relevant to the position being advertised you can also describe your contribution to the publications if not first or senior author, particularly high impact publications.
Conference Papers
Include sessions given/chaired and provide dates, conference details, venues, abstract titles and whether it was a poster or oral presentation.
Grants awarded
include details of any funding awards received from internal and external sources for projects/to attend meetings/conferences, awards and prizes. Include dates, funding body/source, role e.g. principal/co-investigator if relevant and where useful you can include the amount awarded.
Referees
List the names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses of two referees who know you well and can comment on your academic work/qualifications/teaching.
Finally, if you want more then you can find some useful information (including some examples of CVs), in this summary from the National Institutes of Health Training and Education site.