Lab meeting this week is going to be a CV workshop, which is something I haven't done before, and isn't something I ever experienced as a student... but always struck me as a good idea. Application documents can always benefit from other pairs of eyes, and who better to help guide your CV than people who work in the same field, on similar questions who might have already solved common problems? (For example do people really write out "Gordon Research Conference on Cool Phage Things", or are "GRC on Cool Phage Things", or "Gordons" just as acceptible?) Plus, we're a lab group who generally knows what all the other members do and what their qualifications are, so there shouldn't be any discomfort sharing ones laurels with the group... or will there be? I have some nagging sense this will be like asking everyone in a group to share one's salary, that we'll be revealing something we normally don't compare against one another.
I'm also don't want to steamroll over the individuality of each of my labmates in my desire to streamline and improve the styles of their CVs. I did a ridiculous amount of research on CV development when I was applying for jobs (thanks for the week(s) of no research productivity, Chronicle of Higher Education!), and I do want to get as much mileage out of that as possible... but even though I think my CV is pretty well-formatted, I definitely don't want my lab to just clone my CV without thinking. So far, even though I favor a certain sans serif font, I've been finding other fonts (most recent: Optima) for each person who has asked me to help with their application packets. However, some formatting issues seem beyond discussion, like two carriage returns between sections to create more visual separation between unlike items rather than like items, and I actually now notice when a CV doesn't have that kind of thoughtful spacing.
So my plan is to download a number of CVs that I like (mostly of colleagues, because those are the CVs I see) that don't look much like mine to show a wider range of successful (in my opinion) options. Some are great on showcasing content, some are wonderfully formatted, and some do both. I'm throwing in a CV of a friend of mine, which I like except for the font... I know there will be at least one other formatting/sans serif font snob in the group (she uses keynote and pages... and favors Helvetica Neue) so this should be fun.
Beyond looks and which sections can/should be on a CV, I have two take home messages for the group:
1. We all need a master kitchen sink CV file.
This is a [insert your favorite word processing program] document file that lists all sorts of details that one might never, ever put on a CV, and any and everything you have done that might even vaguely be considered (when squinting) relevant to science/your future jobs. For instance, the exact dates and names of guest lectures. It's absolutely no work to remember this the day you give the lecture, and would require websearching to reconstruct that information if it were ever needed, years down the line. However, when writing a detailed teaching statement for a particular position, it could be useful to mention relevant lecture titles to show you have direct teaching experience in a certain field. Or maybe it will never be relevant... but if it is, you've got it, ready to go. All tenure-track faculty members are advised to have kitchen sink CVs as tenure packets in progess, but there's no reason that it's not useful at other stages in academic science.
2. Tailor your CV to (nearly) every application.
This can be as small as inserting an award or changing your "selected presentations" to favor the conferences that your search committee will recognize, to as large as bringing in whole sections from your kitchen sink CV. For example, an extensive non-scientific writing section is very appropriate for an application for a job in science journalism, but might not be relevant for many other academic positions. That being said, there's always the risk of introducing mistakes into an application document when you modify it. To save your trusted proofreaders the grief of infinite drafts, have a strong CV that many have looked over and modify it in small ways that you check over and over before you submit the CV for important purposes.
I'll post how the first (annual?) CV workshop goes! There are three people who need polished CVs in the next month (two committee meetings, one NSF predoc application), so we'll also get some external feedback soon.
Happy 2026 - Welcome back preventable diseases
7 months ago
