Section 2: Planning and developing a competitive academic CV
Building a competitive academic CV requires strategic planning.
Read below to learn more about:
- Building a CV that speaks to your professional goals and research agenda.
- Understanding what the people who read and evaluate your CV are looking for.
Strategic career development (The Goal Cycle)
Delivering a competitive CV for specific employment and funding opportunities requires strategic advanced planning. There are 5 key steps:
- Goal setting
What is it you wish to achieve in your research career in the next 1, 5, 10 years? - Resource identification
What sorts of resources (jobs, funding, others) might you need to achieve your goal(s)? - Skills analysis
What sorts of skills, expertise, measures of esteem do you need to give evidence of to be competitive in winning these resources? Where is your CV strong and where might you need to devote some energy to up-skilling? These are your growth areas. - Advanced Planning
How can you practically develop the skills/expertise you need?
How long might this take? How much energy will it require?
How can you prioritize this work into your busy day-to-day? - Applying
Applying for jobs and funding to reach your goals.
This can often require multiple attempts to win the job or funding.
Once the resources are obtained and you are working toward your goals, you can begin the cycle again. You can also run multiple cycles concurrently, although it's critical to be realistic with your time.
Who reads your CV, and what are they looking for?
Once you have set achievable goals, and identified resources (jobs, funding), the next step is to think about how your CV will be evaluated by the employer or funder you applying to. This depends on several critical factors:
- Your discipline
- Your career stage
- The mission and vision of your prospective employer / funder / funding instrument
- The evaluation criteria; job description and/or person specification of the opportunity you are applying for