Guidelines for a Curriculum Vita (CV)

  • If your CV includes a narrative profile describing your skills, it should be short. A profile is a brief summary. It's a few lines; it's not a two-page detailed list of your skills.
  • Do not make your CV longer than necessary. It is longer than a traditional resume, but you still need to think carefully about the value of the information you include. If you have attended 100 technology workshops, don't list each one. Create a section called "Selected Workshops" -- note the key word "Selected" -- and list only the most relevant ones.
  • If you want a job in online education, don't put your experience in online education on page 10 of your CV. That information should be somewhere up near the top.
  • Write your own CV rather than having it “professionally” developed. You are the only person who can write your CV. Consult with Career Services or available book, but don't let someone who doesn't understand your work or the academic world create the one document that you most need to gain entry to that world.
  • The description of your current book-length project or your dissertation abstract should be separate documents. Essays involve too much text to be part of a CV.
  • Radical mixing of information doesn't work on a CV. For example, if you have an "Administrative Experience" section on your CV, that's the obvious place to list that you were director of admissions, but don't put your work as coordinator of cheerleading in that section.

Do's and Don'ts:

Some otherwise well-designed CV's falter due to mistakes that could be prevented with a little extra proofreading. Here are a few such dos and don'ts:

  • Don't include your birth date.
  • When you are formatting your CV, avoid using full justification because you can end up with some weird spacing.
  • One CV started out with "My principle research ... ." If you are a poor speller and aren’t sure of  the difference between "principle" and "principal," find someone who does who is willing to proofread for you.
  • Don't use boldface type in a random way. It will confuse the reader. Be consistent with this and other special type.
  • When you list some of the courses you have taught or helped teach, don't include the course numbers.
  • Use an acronym only after you have first spelled out what it stands for.
  • Put your last name and a page number on the second page of your CV and on all subsequent pages.

A final word of advice

Print out your CV and look carefully at it before you send it anywhere. Better yet, contact Career Services at 706-864-1951 to schedule an appointment to have it reviewed.