Guidelines for writing an academic CV

How do you write an academic CV that makes you stand out, in the right way? In this article Professor Nicola Whitton discusses how to write an academic CV that gives you the best possible chance of securing an interview.

Your academic CV is a summary of your skills and experience. It is your chance to highlight the key achievements that differentiate you. CVs are used as part of the recruitment process to decide which candidates to invite to interview. They are usually reviewed alongside a covering letter. Selection panels will use a person specification (list of essential and desirable characteristics) to decide who to interview. So it is important to ensure that your CV and covering letter evidence how you meet each characteristic.

Your CV should look professional, readable, with white space and a legible font size. Avoid anything gimmicky such as quirky fonts, colours, or photos. There may be guidance on CV length – make sure that you stick to a page limit if one is given. Don’t be tempted to reduce font size or increase margins to fit everything in. Just focus on the most important or recent elements under each heading. If no limit is given then your academic CV should be as long as it needs to be. It can potentially run to several pages.

What content should I include on an academic CV?

Here is a checklist of the key elements that should be included on an academic CV:

• Educational qualifications – starting with your most recent qualification and going back to the start of your university education. You will not usually need to add school qualifications.
• Employment and experience – overview of professional roles, detailing for each the employer and dates. Include two or three sentences or bullet points detailing key responsibilities.
• Teaching experience and/or research supervision – overview of key teaching responsibilities, modules or programmes led. Experience of postgraduate research supervision and doctoral examinations you have carried out.
• Research projects – including project title and brief description, name of the funder, amount funded, and your role in the project. It is not usual to include project proposals that were unfunded in most disciplines. However, if you do include unfunded projects make sure that you make it clear that they were unsuccessful.
• Publications or other outputs – this can include journal articles, books, chapters, conference contributions and other professional or practice outputs appropriate for your discipline.
• Indicators of esteem – this is where you list other academic achievements. This includes awards, fellowships, professional memberships, work on journals or conferences, external examining, external roles, and invited keynotes.

I would also recommend adding a brief set of bullet points to the start of your CV that summarise your key achievements and what you can bring to the role. This could be areas of expertise, leadership experience, funding achieved, or awards won.

It is not usual to include references on your CV unless they are specifically requested. It is good practice to ask your referees in advance if they are happy to provide a reference for you.

Be concise but clear

Make sure that you write succinctly but also precisely, providing specific detail but not waffling. The selectors will potentially have hundreds of CVs to look at so it is important to make it easy for them to find what they are looking for. Clear headings, organisation, and use of bullets make this easier. Your CV should look neat and professional. Make sure you have thoroughly proofread it and that there are no spelling or grammatical errors. It is helpful if you can get someone else to check it over for you as they will often see things that you have missed.

Be specific about the roles you played in projects or previous experience, whether you were a team member, collaborator or leader. Use action words (e.g. created, designed, developed, evaluated, liaised, managed, organised, planned, researched) to make it clear exactly what you did.

Academic CV Checklist

• Have you included all the core elements required for the role in the person specification?
• Does the CV clearly evidence your skills, experience, knowledge and achievements?
• Have you taken account of any constraints, for example on length or formatting?
• Is the formatting consistent and the text readable?
• Have you checked the spelling and grammar?

I hope these guidelines prove useful. Please note however that these are general guidelines for UK academic CVs and may differ in certain disciplines or geographic areas. Make sure that you always follow the guidance given by the recruiting institution.

Discover more Academic CV-related articles with jobs.ac.uk:

• How NOT to Write an Academic CV
• How to Layout an Academic CV
• Academic CV Template

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