Q & A section

First of all, to fill inn one of these online forms might give you a place to store all your data, your Master CV, once and for all. Have you done that once, you can do tweak and turn this to fit the job at hand later on, and with much less effort.

You can benefit from creating one that is interoperable with other databases like LinkedIn, Eures and Indeed.

And yes, if the employer use these online forms, you must comply to the requirements.

However, you can focus on the qualifications that you find most relevant for the job.
Remember the formula: Latest first, most interesting experience first. 

Templates might be used by professions or disciplines due to technicalities in the competencies. It is a good idea to check with your union or professional association if there is a common CV template in use for your profession.

However, UiB Ferd cannot recommend one template for all our seven faculties, there is no one size fits all. We also want you to stand out, and by that we mean that your competencies should stand out, and you as a person should shine through and override any template.

When that is said, you can use templates found online and customize them to fit your needs.   

There are no fixed rules here, but in reality employers will look for experience and professional maturity before looking into formal qualifications. If the experience the candidate display is of interest, they continue to read and see if you also tick the box of formal qualifications. If you have already a PhD (in Norway that is a paid full-time job) they will know you had a master. However, it depends on the job, if you mastered a specific methodology in your master or you studied at a relevant institution, it can we nice to highlight and put education first. Think carefully what you want to spend the employers 7 seconds attention span on.  I never really thought about a career path outside of Academica, so I have only academic training. I am afraid I don’t have enough experience to get a job in the industry.  

You are not alone thinking like this, and luckily it is only in Academia pivoting out to industry is regarded as weird. People change careers all the time and most of us many times throughout our lifespan. It is only natural. The industry is craving for high end competence and expert knowledge, however, you need to tell them what skills you have, The PhD alone do not give it away, the recruiter was perhaps educated long time ago and is not up to date with current education status. So use the opportunity to tell them your achievements and what experience you have gained during your PhD employment and, take notes: how you can use your skills to solve the challenges in the job description. It’s a three step process, write down task and performances in your PhD, group these tasks into larger boxes, and then communicate these tasks into skills the employer can recognize.  

Here is one example: 

PhD activities
Writing lab reports, managing inventories at lab, managing lab assistants, organizing lab meetings for progress, preparing funding applications, writing funding applications, especially the part on lab equipment 

Larger concepts
Research management Teamwork and supervising others. Analysis and reports. Funding expert.

Employer language
Project management. Leadership and coaching. Generic scientific skills 

This is a common concern among PhD candidates that consider changing sectors. It is fully understandable that this is what we call an “urban myth”. Not to be mistaken, some employers do really have cost/benefit as their core criteria, however most employers are looking for the comparative edge. If they have employees with more in depth knowledge, more sophisticated training and academic core skills and with cutting-edge problem-solving skill, they are willing to negotiate salaries. But bear in mind that salary negotiations happen after you have received a job offer, never before. It is not a part of the applications process, not the interview, not the talk after the interview, only after receiving a job offer. Salaries conclude a deal, you do not have any hand before that offer is at the table.  

Academia is a delight in the way that you get the freedom to devote time and energy into a specific topic just for the case of expanding the knowledge for itself. Yet, if you look beyond the topic, you will also find competencies and skills to transfer to other areas.

Try this exercise; Your new neighbor is not an academic and really wants to learn what you do at work.  

Write a note to your neighbour about your job without mentioning your topic or even discipline.  What do you do most of the time? Who do you see? What is your duty work? Who are you collaborating with? How do you present your outcomes? What is your method? What is method anyway? What meetings do you attend and why? What goes on at conferences and seminars?  

The point is, all you do has value, because it trains you in the academic profession.