Curriculum Vitae

Curriculum Vitae

 

A CV (Curriculum Vitæ, which means “course of life” in Latin) is an in-depth document that can be laid out over two or more pages and it contains a high level of detail about your achievements and is more than just a career biography. The CV covers your education as well as any other accomplishments like publications, service work, teaching, honors, employment, licensure information, etc. The document tends to be organized chronologically and should make it easy to get an overview of an individual’s full working career. A CV can be adopted for positions they are applied for offering needed detail to the reader.  More is often better!

 

Resume:

A resume, or résumé, is a concise document typically not longer than one. The goal of a resume is to make an individual stand out from the competition.  Resume’s are frequently used in the business world and less applicable to physician employment or recruitment.   

Some considerations when putting a CV together

  1. Use large enough font (usually no less than 11 point)

  2. Do not use an overly fancy font.  Stick to standard fonts like Times New Roman. 

  3. Do not crowd words on a page and make it unreadable. Take a look from a distance to see if the document reads/appears well.

  4. Use white space, indentations, bold and italics to help make the CV readable.

  5. Put education and licensure/certifications at the beginning. 

  6. Often things that require little skill (e.g. professional memberships) are put toward the end along with unrelated prior work history

  7. Usually only make headings for things that you have at least two activities. If you have only one honor maybe find another section to include it in. 

  8. If you have no activities for a specific header, do not include that section.

  9. When activities cross headings (e.g. research and employment) it is often best to put them in the section that appears most beneficial for the job

  10. Use emails and phone numbers you intend to keep after residency/fellowship.

  11. Keep multiple copies of CV (e.g. email, hard drive) so if your computer crashes you have a back-up.

  12. Save multiple iterations of your CV by date rather than just overwriting the last CV.  It can be helpful to go back in time on occasion.

  13.  Cover letters can be used to explain or compliment a CV.

  14.  Have others read to look for formatting or typos

  15. You do not always need to write Curriculum Vitae at the top. While you can it can often be implied that is what it is by the formatting.

  16.  Date ranges are often needed. In some cases date ranges may not want to be highlight in which case you can attempt to only put the completion year.  Usually employers are looking for gaps in employment or extended periods of training.

  17. Dates can either go on the left or right and are most important for employment or education time periods.  Usually people read left to right so it may be helpful to start with the activity on the left but not all the time.

  18.  Make sure your CV is accurate and not fabricated. This could be grounds for termination. 

  19.  Include information as far back as college and high school only when it is either significant and/or relevant (e.g. AP HS All American Football player, Full merit scholarship in undergraduate). 

Sample CV (DOC)

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