How to Write A Professional Academic CV

No matter what stage you are in your academic career, you need a professional academic CV. An academic curriculum vitae allows you to showcase yourself and your academic and professional achievements in a concise way.

Whether you are applying for an academic job, grants, fellowship and even conference, you will be required to submit an academic CV. You need to have a convincing CV that is well-organized and easy to read, yet accurately represents your highest accomplishments.

The academic CV is very different from any other type of CV and has a unique writing format. This is because you need to present your research, various publications and awarded funding in addition to other items contained in a non-academic CV.

Tips For Writing A Professional Academic CV

This guide provides advice and tips on how best to write a CV for the academic field. The advice and tips are organized into categories as could be used to structure a CV as well.

Length: Since academic CVs must present so much information with regard to research and publications, it can be any length. However, if the job specifies the page limit for your CV, you have to adhere to it.

Structure: You need to choose a structure for your CV with the headings and sub-headings accordingly. When writing an academic CV, place the most important information at the top. Often, this will include your education, employment history, and publications. Within each section, list your experiences in reverse chronological order.

Other important categories to address include funding, awards and prizes, teaching roles, administrative experience, technical and professional skills and qualifications, any professional affiliations or memberships, conference and seminar attendances and a list of references.

Audience: Tailor your CV to your audience. For instance, some university or department value publication over teaching. In that case, you need to research and know what your audience wants. So, in that case, you should describe your publications before listing your teaching experience.

However, if you are applying to a university that prides itself on the quality of its instruction, then your teaching accomplishments should have pride of place. In this case, the teaching section (in reverse chronological order) should come before your publications section.

Formatting: Make your CV clear and easy to read. Use an easy-to-read font, such as Times New Roman, in a font size of about 12-pt. Use bullet points to highlight important items and to concisely present your credentials. Keep a consistent style for headings and sub-headings and main text – do not use more than 2 font types in your CV.

Consistency: You need to be consistent with whatever format you are using. For example, if you bold one section title, bold all section titles. Consistency will make your CV easy to read.

Proofread: Ensure your academic CV is free of spelling and grammar error. Re-read a few times after writing the CV to ensure there are no errors. Ask a friend or family member to look it over as well.

How to Write A Professional Academic CV

Below is a format which you can use to write your academic CV. When writing your CV, tailor every section to your field, and the job description. Some of these sections might not be applicable to your field, so remove any that don’t make sense for you.

Name
Curriculum Vitae
Contact information, including address, phone number and email address