Breadcrumbs
- Home
- Research staff
- Research staff blog
- CVs and Resumes: Bigger is Better?
CVs and Resumes: Bigger is Better?
10 March 2010
By Sarah Davies
Before my current trip to the States, a family member thoughtfully bought me Call of the Weird, Louis Theroux’s account of a series of interviews he carried out in the American West with what he delicately refers to as members of ‘subcultures’. Amongst the alien hunters, pornstars and members of various far right fringe groups he speaks to is a disillusioned disciple of a business guru. ‘Art’ spent thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours trying to become a millionaire - and ended up with nothing but a 132 page resume and an appearance in a high profile court case against said guru.
This particular story caught my attention not only for its air of pathos - imagine failing to become a business success and then having that failure pointed out to the whole world through your participation in a court case that, in essence, uses your story to show how the accused dupes losers - but for the idea of a 132 page CV. (132 pages! Apparently it had its own cover page, executive summary and mission statement.) The irony is, of course, that Art might have been okay - well, better - if he’d been an academic. I’ve certainly come across one or two CVs from senior professors that, with their lists of publications, prizes and presentations, are well on their way to a three figure page count.
Most of us have slightly humbler accounts of our academic lives. I’ve always tried to keep mine within a four page limit on the grounds that most people get bored quickly, even of my doubtless brilliant achievements. I am also a little lazy about taking up advice about tailoring your CV to each application: like many of us who hang around this blog, I’m applying for new positions on what feels like an almost daily basis, and there are times when I don’t have the time or energy to tweak my ‘research statement’ to fit exactly with the job description (and surely that looks a little suspicious, right?). The sections that I use have also become pretty fixed: after the research statement and line on my current employment comes Qualifications; Publications; Selected conferences and presentations; Grants and memberships; Teaching; Employment; Personal details; and References (even that seems pretty long).
So I suppose that - unlike Art - I believe in brevity and clarity in a CV. I’m also a little cynical about the way that they’re used. I’m not convinced that selection committees read their way through everyone’s CVs (though I’d love to be convinced otherwise). Isn’t it more likely that decisions are made on the basis of a quick glance at the first page? In which case, surely the most important question is: what font should I use?
Hannah Dee11 March 2010 at 09:16 AM
permalinkreport this comment
> Isn’t it more likely that decisions are made on the basis of a quick glance at the first page? I sat in the back of a talk once next to someone with a pile of CVs, and the first thing he did was to turn straight to the publications, and then draw a line between each year. For this shortlister, publications per year was clearly the metric that was most important! > In which case, surely the most important question is: what font should I use? Comic Sans, naturally.
Chris Thomson11 March 2010 at 03:18 PM
permalinkreport this comment
Well depending on how bothered you are about getting on the short list (and that is the main purpose of the CV) there are a few things you can do. The most important is finding out what the official policy at the institution is, most do have one to keep law suits at bay, so they don't accidentally discriminate. A common method seems to be matching your skills to the person specification in a literal way. As a result I've just started cutting and pasting the person specification and replacing each point with my experience, leaving the main headings in. I then tack on my qualifications and personal interests on the bottom. Oh and the customary pages of publications, presentations and so on. This is a lot easier than what I was doing before, where I had a long CV and cut out all the bits they didn't ask for until I hit 2 pages for the main part. For research interests and so on, I put these in the attached letter or personal statement depending on the application style required. I don't know if this works yet, I'll report my hit rate in due course, but I hope it will! >For this shortlister, publications per year was clearly the metric that was most important! He'd be foxed by my list then, I split it by journals, conferences and internal publications, and then by year...
Matthew Salois18 March 2010 at 06:01 PM
permalinkreport this comment
Like you Sarah I grew quite weary trying to tailor my CV for every job. Though my life was a bit easier since in economics, CVs do not normally contain a research statement. However, I did spend an awful amount of time on my cover letters. Also, some places wanted a seperate teaching and/or research statement that was at least a page, which also took time. In regards to short listing, having served on a search committee the first stage was PhD degree (i.e., where did it come from), and the second was publications -- where did he/she publish and how often. The best font: calibri.