Basics of Preparing an Academic CV and Cover Letter

good afternoon everybody welcome thanks so much for coming to this session in the academic job search series I'm John Alvaro I'm the director of postdoc affairs for the University and I'm also the administrative director of our ph.d program and the biological and biomedical sciences I've been asked to talk to you today about the academic CV and cover letter I anticipate that we'll spend most of our time on the CV but we will spend a little bit of time toward the end on crafting a successful or sound cover letter the session is slated for about 90 minutes I don't anticipate speaking that long so please interrupt me at any point when you have questions many of you already know that a typical application is going to have at least these four components the CV the cover letter teaching statement and a research statement in some cases you may not be asked to give us a write a teaching statement in other cases perhaps not a research statement but in all cases chances are you will write a cover letter and a CV before I talk about those two elements I wanted to give you a vision or maybe a plan of attack for how to go about crafting all four of these this is my vision you can ignore me but I think this is there is some logic to this here's my vision I think the CV is at the center I think if you can write a comprehensive thorough CV you will then have generated enough information to begin to populate your teaching statement your research statement and your cover letter so in my opinion this is where you begin with the CV itself I think you then move into the teaching statement and research statement there going to be more difficult than the CV but they're also pretty important for doing the final step and that is the cover letter so in my vision the cover letter is the last thing the research statement in the teaching statement if you have to write them will be instrumental for helping you write the cover letter so our goal today is to talk about the first part of the process and the last part of the process those two middle ones the research statement in the teaching statement there will be sessions them the research statement is is largely something that scientists have to worry about and so I think that that session is focused on the sciences it's probably a good point to ask how many are graduate students here postdocs okay how many are in the sciences almost everybody how about the social sciences okay and the humanities all right okay good mix great can't promise that I'm gonna be able to reach every single one of you and all of your disparate disciplines but I'll do my best so let's start with the CV before you do anything my view is that you have to know what a CD is you have to know what the letter CV represent they're an abbreviation for curriculum vitae which is Latin for course of life so a CV is the course of your life it is a logical layout of all the things that you have accomplished in your professional career unfortunately I can't show you the ideal CV there is no such thing I can't show you the perfect one the gold standard there are there are no hard and fast rules there are no perfect versions to show you I'll do my best to give you my view of a layout for how to put some of this information in I'll give you a sense of where I think each one of these items in a CV belongs in terms of the order I think they should belong but this is discipline specific you may go back and find out from your faculty mentors that in your field it's done differently so this is a typical view but it is not the ideal because the ideal does not exist with that said although there are no hard and fast rules I have two principles that I think are fundamental and I think you have to obey them if you plan to write a successful CV the first principle is has to be thorough really thorough it's the course of your professional life when I meet with postdocs and go over their job applications with them I'll get into a conversation figure I'll learn more about what they do and in the course of the conversation they'll mention all these amazing things that aren't on the CV so the first fundamental principle principle fundamental principle of a C it has to be thorough the second principle though is it has to be clear you can be extremely thorough but if you're too wordy or if you're organizationally challenged then you've defeated the purpose keep in mind that when a person receives your CV they're not going to read it word for word first pass it's just a glance also keep in mind that when you apply for your jobs you'll find that you might get 80 applicants 100 applicants 300 applicants when I review job applications not academic ones but when I'm reviewing job applications my tendency is not to look for the good ones it's look for the bad ones so I can throw something away imagine being a faculty member with a stack of 100 applications what's the first thing you want to do make the stack smaller if you write a CV that is very thorough and has all sorts of awesome stuff on it but it's disorganized or really dense or really hard to follow you're gonna be in the discard pile so two principles it's got to be clear and it's got to be thorough alright let's go so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna get rid of the blue headings at the top of the next set of slides and pretend that you're looking at a real CV so a white piece of paper and in blue text I'll give you the concept in black text of giving you an example of that concept here you go top of a CV old-school says put the words curriculum vitae on the top of your CV that's not mandatory check it out see if that's what your faculty mentor does if faculty mentor does then throw it on there otherwise it's not a big deal what is a big deal is at the very top probably in the center should be your full name if you have your degree in hand already your degree and then your contact information here is the example David Davidson PhD doesn't get any easier than that his mailing address yes right yes no great question in fact I met with one of your German colleagues earlier today to look at his CV my opinion is that in the section where you're going to list your degrees put in your German degree and parentheses equivalent to us PhD at the top I think it's probably a good idea to put the PhD and especially if you're going to be applying in the United States where someone might not know the German phrase on phraseology on your degree as long as you translate as on you but the real degree name in your education and translate it I think you're gonna be fine okay so real address phone number email address if you have a website go ahead put that there I advise you not to put your lab address your lab phone number or your office phone number especially if you share a phone with other members of your research group imagine getting a call so I'm inviting you for an interview and you don't get the call your lab mate does and forgets to tell you or imagine your lab mate applied for exactly the same job that you did that's awkward use your cell phone user personal phone and you'll be just fine put your name up there prominently make it obvious who you are all right standard it is standard for the very next thing put your education oh oh yes this is the note to myself your resume or your CV is gonna be multiple pages long in the header or footer put your name and the page numbers you're Reza you're CV may be printed and you want to make sure that each page has your name on it okay not a big deal all right from almost all of you the very next section of your CV should be your education and here are the elements of what goes into this section what degree that you have what discipline the degree was in where you got it when you got it and nothing else here are two examples so note I put the section heading in education that goes right in this on the CV don't give any money don't make anybody guess at what section they're looking at it says education doesn't have to be bold doesn't have to be all caps it just has to be obvious in this case PhD physics Yale University New Haven Connecticut 2015 look at how fast someone can review that and discern what degree you have where you got it when you got it note what's missing your GPA your graduation rank your postdoc position if you're a postdoc also missing your thesis title and your advisors you're looking at the world according to me so you may disagree you may want to do it a little differently but let me explain to you why I'm doing it this way I wanted to be fast I want to be able to see really succinctly what degrees you have I don't think your GPA should matter your undergraduate GPA in particular should not make or break your application your graduation rank as an undergraduate is in my opinion frivolous your postdoc position is not your education it's training and it will go in a separate section but it's not it you did not get a degree as part of your postdoc so it doesn't belong here with regard to your thesis title and your advisors for those of you in the sciences I'm going to show you where you're gonna put your thesis advisors name it goes in a future section for those in the sciences with regard to your thesis title basically nobody cares you're lucky if your own advisor read your thesis nobody else is going to ever read it so nobody cares what the title is for those in the humanities and some of the social sciences the story is quite different you may want to add a section called dissertation with your title the faculty advisor or advisors you may have had and one to three sentences describing what your dissertation was this is where I get embarrassed because when I came in here I didn't know that we were going to be recorded so I try to come over an example of a humanities type dissertation I'm a scientist by training so I made something up and now it's gonna be immortalized alright so mine my title was the influence of French Impressionists on the portraiture of John Singer Sargent I have no idea that's relevant to anything but I just want you to so put the title there maybe put it in italics and then beneath it write what you did or what the major conclusions of your dissertation were and then it seems from my purview of humanities and Social Sciences see these that in some cases you do list who the primary mentor or secondary mentor were who the readers were if you have an outside reader than you list what institution the outside reader came from this is not a lengthy part of your CV it too has to be concise and this is just for those of you in this in the Sun in the humanities and if you're in the social social sciences in which your thesis is a big deal then this belongs here for you as well the next section is a section that I call research experience this one has the stage of your career your mentors name the department institution and location the dates and then finally a brief description of the research this section is mandatory on CBS for those in the sciences it may not be as relevant to some of you in other disciplines let me give you an example postdoctoral fellow in the lab with dr. Jane Doe 2012 to 2014 cell biology Yale University in New Haven Connecticut so you've gotten a lot of information out of the way very very quickly and succinctly yet it it really does illuminate your training that's the stage of your career with whom you've done it and where you've done at the department school location and the dates beneath I put two bullet points to describe what you did and what you accomplished for those in the back who can't read it it's not a big deal the point is be succinct in the CV that I am this imaginary CV that I've crafted I am envisioning that the CV has a companion that will be the research statement so the research statement will stay state in greater detail what you accomplished or what techniques you may have used here you want to be more concise and say what you studied maybe what methods you used doesn't have to be just two bullet points it could be three or four or five doesn't have to be phrases it could be brief sentences as long as they're brief here in the second part which says graduate student here's where you list who your thesis mentor was and that's why you don't need to put it into the education section in the sciences you don't need to put your thesis title it's better to put the description of what you've accomplished as a graduate student if you are a lab technician somewhere in academia or in a company it also goes here if you were a summer intern summer research student and the research that you did was significant go ahead also put it in here the way I've lined this up so far with the education and the research experience is reverse chronological many people prefer to see it in reverse chronological but I know that in some fields it's exactly the opposite find out what it should be and then pick it and stay consistent if your education is listed reverse chronological then the entire and the entirety of your CV should be reverse chronological make sense yes that's a very good question so if he couldn't hear in the front he said what if your highest degree isn't your most recent degree what if you got a PhD three years ago and you just got a master's degree last year I would think carefully about this I would say it's okay to put the master's degree first because what you're gonna put at the top with your name is probably going to be the PhD you may put em s comma PhD but I think they'll get the point when they see the PhD at the top yeah all right so you've got so far your education and your dissertation and your research experience the next section for many of you will be teaching experience your job title as a teacher the Department institution year possibly the course title the course type student type and duties I think I can illustrate what I'm talking about with the example here's somebody who is a guest lecturer in physics Yale University 20015 the description very briefly says designed and presented three lectures in a graduate level astrophysics seminar this is a real economy of words but it tells exactly those points above the job title guest lecturer the department physics the institution Yale the year 2015 course title I said astrophysics I could have put it in in in italics or a caps the course type graduate level that's what I mean by course type but I'm sorry seminar course type meaning is at a seminar a lab a lecture a directed reading course the student type graduate and your duties designed and presented lectures below is a different one teaching assistant in physics and Yale previous year here I do list the course title brains and black holes a science course for non-majors the duties led discussion section 425 students and wrote and graded exams this doesn't take much space on your CV but it is very descriptive if you're applying to a school where they expect you to have teaching experience don't just put the name of the course or even worse the course number which makes sense to absolutely nobody outside of your institution give them a little bit more information to go on to help them understand what kind of experience you have I listed research experience first or research experience before this section if you're applying to schools where teaching will be your primary responsibility or your exclusive responsibility then reverse this put the teaching up higher in general the most important stuff is at the top of your CV or in the front page of your CV the least important stuff is buried in the middle and then the other really important stuff as we'll see is at the end so if teaching is important for the job you're applying for then move it up higher now comes what I call everything else this is the middle section I'll have some examples but some of them are hard to illustrate or are not not worth illustrating I think the top of the middle section should be a section called fellowships and grants in which you list the fellowship name the amount the dates or the duration that the fellowship covers and then if necessary a brief description of that fellowship here is the example no Deanna I'm putting the actual heading on the CV fellowships and grants this one is says American Cancer Society fellowship 2013 to present $50,000 per year for three years that's all you need anybody who understand it sees American Cancer Society fellowship knows that it's a fellowship that's probably covering your stipend as a postdoc or graduate student for the number of years you've listed if you're a blessed postdoc who has won a career award that's a big deal you don't want to bury that so I would move this section above the teaching I would put that maybe I'll still put it below research I think the research experience section but I would most definitely bring this up again in the cover letter so if you've got a really awesome fellowship no need to bury it in this what I call the everything else section you can move it up there is a companion section to this that I like to call awards and honors this you'll have the award name if necessary the granting body what year you got it and again if necessary a description of what it is if you've won a travel award to a conference it's a monetary award but I don't think it generally goes in your fellowship and grants section because it's usually for a couple hundred dollars and it and it will diminish the impact of a fellowship if you did in fact have a fellowship in the previous section oh by the way if you are a were or are a graduate student and you were appointed to funding that was awarded to the University and you were just appointed to it it wasn't something you applied for or won it doesn't belong on here a lot of you for example are pointed to NIH training grants that or or a fellowship awarded to the university that was given to the department again unless it was an honor then it doesn't belong here just a minor point but something worth bringing up okay here's the example of awards or honors the Hans got Ski prize 2014 now I in reviewing lots of CVS I'll see this you've won a prize do you name the prize and then you move on but nobody has a clue what this is unless you add a little information in this case I made this up best dissertation in the history department Yale University all right I don't know if this was a plaque a trophy or a $500 check but I don't care what I care about is why did this person get this award and to me it's pretty prestigious history department huge department nationally renowned and you won the best dissertation in your year that's pretty amazing put that's that's something that would go into this section and again travel awards would be something else I would put in here yes right yes sure the question was if you do have a list of honors and awards is it okay to describe some of them because they're not obvious and not to describe the others if they appear to be obvious absolutely fine yes yeah now we move on to other supplementary parts of your CV that are important but are less important than the beginning in the end the first one is something I'm calling supervisory a mentoring experience if you have significant mentoring experience you could put that into the teaching section but you don't need to what I like to see here and I wrote whom and in what capacity did you supervisor mentor somebody I mean what I mean by this is don't put their names which is common a lot of people will list the precise name of the person they met I don't mean that I may I mean more whom did you mentor as in was it an undergraduate was it a summer student was it a medical student was it a graduate student was it a postdoc was it a lab technician just say what type of person you mentored and in what capacity may be saying worked with an undergraduate on her senior thesis or was the direct supervisor of an undergraduate during her summer research experience in our lab that's all it takes this section could be important for those of you who have no teaching experience if you have to write a teaching statement you might be riffing off of this section and trying to expand the mentoring you've done into a teaching philosophy and talking about what you learned and what you plan to do with your experience as a mentor so don't leave this off if you do have a mentoring experience next is a section yes I think it's appropriate not to name them because if you if you tell me that you knew mentored Mary Jones and undergraduate at Yale I don't know who she is and I don't care it would be more a descriptive to me to say mentor 3 undergraduates in their senior thesis their names are to me not important right yes if you've mentored three students you using an economy words say mentored three students rather than saying mentored a student in this then mentored a student in that unless they were three different experiences or in three different labs yeah sure you can list them separately that way yes okay right sure your the question was what if you've given private lessons to someone music lessons or tutoring I think you can put that in the teaching section as long as you make it obvious you know maybe if it what is what field are you in music okay well if you're giving private music lessons that's pretty relevant to ask if you're a particle physicist and you're giving private music lessons probably wouldn't put it in the teaching section but no I think that's invaluable yes and many of you do tutor either at your university or privately absolutely that's that's acceptable to put on to a CV yeah great question right so if you have taught in areas outside of your discipline I think I'd still include it in the teaching section but I put in a subheading maybe one subheading would be teaching in music and then another subheading would be teaching in other fields just makes it very easy for someone to grasp the breadth and depth of your teaching experience this next section academic service I'm surprised at how important it can sometimes be here's where you list what you've done for your department your university or maybe your field if you ran the seminar series for your department if you served on the admissions committee for your department if you helped organize a colloquia fear for some national meeting in your field that's where all of this goes and believe it or not people do look at this yes fantastic what if you review articles yeah I would put reviewer 4 and then name the journal the one thing though is in many instances faculty aren't supposed to give you that paper to review that was their responsibility and you were the shadow reviewer that shouldn't go on here yeah but but many of you are invited to review papers for journals and I would say put in reviewer for such-and-such a journal but otherwise I don't think it it we should go on there yes sure no if you if you did a service for the institution or your department and you were paid for it that's ok yeah sure yep ok right there in the back in the middle yes right so if your work has been publicized in the mass media that's a good question I don't have a ready answer I think you could create a separate section I have seen several people put this in not underneath their publications but put it somewhere else as in press meaning up in the press or in the public domain so I probably wouldn't put it in here you can create a if you've got a lot of press on your your research you maybe create a little section for it yeah okay there was a question right behind you yes right do you differentiate institutional service from professional service to that you you can make subdivisions you can do one sub heading that says institutional service another one that says to the field or to a particular society yeah that's fine yeah all right so do list any professional societies to which you belong if you have patents if you know multiple languages that are relevant to your research if you know computer languages that are relevant to your research they go in here as well now we go to the end in my experience these are the things that generally belong at the end presentations publications references someone who reviews a CV is inclined to look at the front page who are you where'd you get your degree what's some of your training and then flip to the back and say how productive is this character that is my experience in the sciences your field again may be different it may be important for you to move the publications right up to the front or close to the front of your CV I do not have examples of these because I think they're largely self-explanatory for the presentations you should be listing the title of the presentation whether it's a in-person lecture or a poster presentation what's the title what is the name of the meeting or conference you attended where was it the location and what year was it my view is that you should limit this section of your CV to just the presentations that you've given at national or international conferences with a few exceptions if you gave lab meeting last week that doesn't go here if in your department everybody in the department is expected to give a progress report or research and progress seminar to the department that doesn't belong here if another department at Yale invited you to give a guest lecture that goes here or if you gave a guest lecture at another university either put that in the teaching section if it was to a class or if it was more a seminar to other sign that's where it goes here national international conferences meetings and invited talks yes do you differentiate poster presentations from oral presentations if you've got a an extensive list I would definitely do that yes I would list the oral presentations first and the poster presentations second good question yes yeah if you gave a talk as part of a job interview I would say well probably not although if you walk around campus you see a lot of seminars seminar announcements that when you go to them you find out that it's a job talk it's the job candidate giving a talk my view probably not probably not know I could be overruled you could talk to a mentor who said oh no it's okay but in my view probably not yes awesome question is there a maximum length to a CV generally speaking no a CV is the course of your life a comprehensive thorough course of your life if you need 12 pages then go ahead 12 pages yes great I'm gonna get to that yes so uh if you didn't hear don't worry I'll get to that question in in a few minutes all right so you do have to list your publications you have to be careful here my advice is maybe to list the peer review publications first the reviews that you do or get which are generally not peer reviewed second the part that you have to be really careful on are the ones that are in preparation I met with a postdoc who had five papers that he wrote were in preparation and it was on a CV ADA I thought and I you complimented I said wow you're really productive how do you keep it straight writing five papers all at the same time turns out not a single one had been written not a single one was even in the early stages of being written these were the five papers he hoped to write someday that is one way to sabotage your job search from the outside you don't don't pad your CV yes okay that's a perfect question that's exactly where I'm headed if you have submitted a paper then go ahead list the journal and instead of putting the year or the publication number put in parentheses submitted make it obvious that it was submitted if it was submitted and now and you know that was sent out for review then put in parentheses under review if it was reviewed and returned and you were asked to make revisions put under revision this helps and then finally if it was accepted for publication put in press so submitted under review under revision impress those you can put in there if you if you have a really long CV with a lot of publications you may want to pull out those and put a subheading that says in preparation and then list the submitted reviewed revised and impress papers very good question very good question again if you didn't even start writing it that's probably not worth putting down yes okay right sure that's it wow I have never heard that question so her question was what happens if you were commissioned to write something and were also remunerated for writing that I would probably I would probably put that separately from your other publications and write in a sub heading that says commissioned works and you don't have to put the monetary amount you don't even have to say that you were paid commissioned has a connotation that maybe you did receive something in return for it yeah finally the last section of most CDs should be the references where you put the name of the individual and their contact information address phone number email address I like to see that you label your references by label I mean put in parentheses right after to the name who they are in reference to you postdoc mentor thesis advisor committee member research collaborator make it obvious to the person reviewing your CV why you selected those individuals and be judicious in whom you select pick people who really can say something laudatory and useful to a reviewer also don't put a name down there unless you've already told them that you expect them to be one of your referees and give them a copy of your CV and your research statement and your teaching statement so that they know what you're dealing with yes it's okay still put it on the CV it's it's pretty easy for you to submit everything in one envelope or upload everything all the same time and then someone to print out your application and separate them so make it obvious to them who your referees are yes I suggest exactly the number that they request in the job ad if they don't request a set number and just save references I recommend three four at the most yeah right right right should you be adding in extra names or replacing your postdoc advisor or your collaborator with Nobel laureates that you met at a conference I would say most definitely not unless they also have taken on a role as a mentor there are individuals who with whom you may not work who are very interested in your career progression and do meet with you regularly and or at least talk to you on a regular basis to give you guidance so I would not list them as your top three I would listen further below because you really want somebody who can attest to your potential as a future scholar or scientist and those are the best people who are the people who see you day to day in the research environment yes right right your so the one who's asking the question in the front is a musician correct and so you could get somebody who is a professional reference right someone who who has seen you in the field performing and if that person knows your work well I don't think that's a bad idea to include them yeah yeah yes if you worked with somebody and it led to a publication is that your question oh if it hasn't led to a publication I think that's okay if you've collaborated with them to such an extent that they could really give a thorough reference for you if all you did and collaborating with them was borrow some reagents then definitely not but if you went to their lab where they came to your lab and you guys rub rub two elbows and talked about your research extensively yeah I think that's that's fine okay yes okay yeah that's a good question the question was what happens if you've been working really closely with a postdoc in your lab or a research scientist in your lab can that person be a reference I would say that's okay as long as your other two references are faculty and are hopefully fairly prominent the risk of doing getting a reference from a postdoc is that no one really knows who that person is and whether or not they are worth listening to because they don't have a reputation yet right this is pretty succinctly what should go into a CV what I want to show you next are oh yes if you have non-academic work experience that is relevant go ahead the CV is the course of your professional life if you worked in a company and did research at the company absolutely if you had a summer job working in a grocery store or used to be a sales rep for you know it wasn't relevant to your but it's okay to leave it off yep my bias is that your personal outlets and your volunteer work probably don't need to go on to a CV that's particularly true if your volunteer work is of a political nature if somebody could construe or misconstrue it as being political and you don't know who's reviewing it you don't want to alienate somebody I I think the CV should be your professional work this goes also for listing your personal interests if you like kayaking and and whatever be surprised on a resume some companies want to see that sort of stuff I don't think it's necessary to put on to a CV if you volunteer for science fair yeah I would put that under academic service where it's it's relevant it was with students not necessarily college students or graduate students but still it's it's academic yes you can put awards on there that if they are prominent or prestigious that's that's okay yeah yeah okay what if there is a gap between your PhD work and your postdoc work or your first postdoc in your second postdoc you do not need to put that on you need not need to acknowledge it on your CV you may want to be diplomatic in your cover letter and say between my graduate between my PhD and my postdoc I took a year to or I raised a family I I don't think you need to explain yourself the gaps unless there's something there that you really want people to know or something that makes it look really worrisome that your work but a lot of people have gaps and I don't think that's a huge deal yes I'm gonna start limiting the number of questions you get down no it's okay you're asking a good question I'm gonna answer in in about two slides yes great okay what I want to show you now are two tips for those of you who are organizationally challenged or who have really dense seeing these just two really simple easy tips the first is to use hidden tables some of you have a really hard time aligning things and you just make a mess put it in a table now of course nobody wants to see tables on a CV put it in a table and then just start erasing lines look at that that looks really clean doesn't it it's a table nobody knows that when they see it but that's how you got to be really organized the next thing for those of you who are lucky enough to have a rule a lot of stuff on your CV this is an example some he has an a really long list of teaching experience it's comprehensive but in my opinion it's not that clear those are our two principles thorough and clear would I recommend when you have something there's a long list don't worry you don't need to even know what it says but imagine you're glancing at somebody CV and you see that list that's not really useful what about this I subdivided so somebody with a lot of teaching experience I subdivided by theme one was guest lectures if this guy did a bunch of guest lectures put in one section if she did lectures but separately was a full instructor in other courses put them separately if the person was a teaching assistant so I listed by theme based on the type of instructor they were I could have done differently and said subdivided into what type of course these were lecture courses these were seminar courses these were lab courses I could have done it these are undergraduate courses these are graduate courses whatever you think the person reading it wants to see put it in in that sort of thing this is just teaching if you have a lot of awards if you have a lot of publications if you have a lot of research experience and you're struggling think of how to reorganize it by theme it's still listed reverse chronological by theme it's just a nice trick to use to make your CV or is easier to read ok we're almost done with CDs what I want to do is show you a fake CV and what I did was pulled together all of the blunders all of the mistakes that I come that are common and that are easy to avoid here we go here's the CV doesn't matter if you can't read it first thing you see is that they use fancy fonts you are no more impressive with a fancy font then you are with a typical Arial Times or Times New Roman so stick to the simple fonts not even the Yale font yes please just do really really if you think you need to jazz up your CV this way to make it better then you've got a really big problem on your hands same thing with artwork and fancy colors I just don't need it it may be on a resume it's it's okay on a resume to go off and do some strange things but not on a CV speaking of resume please avoid the resume fluff this one said a lot of resumes have something called under objective which even on a resume is a waste of time but this one says my objective is to seek a tenure-track position in a major research university a surprise that I see this on CBS it's totally useless just leave it off next up really personal information some of you come into my office with CVS that list your social security number how many kids you have how old you are you don't need that I recommend leave enough you don't need to state your nationality or your citizenship one question should you put your photo in the u.s. that's not typical I would discourage you from doing that but I've discovered that in some other countries it's fairly straight for a fairly standard that you include a little postage size color photo of yourself in the upper right hand margin if that's the case if you're applying for jobs overseas and that's the expectation go for it in the US leave the photo and the personal information out next look at the layout here let me see if I have a pointer so here I've got somebody who's using tabs so they got left-hand margin and then a tab then they've got here they got three columns that the columns don't line up with whatever and then here they've got two columns all of that is really really confusing and messes up the layout you think it's a minor thing but if you want to scan something quickly and you've got a gist of things this is why you may want to use those hidden tables if you really struggle to lay things out go with the hidden tables next up what is this says fellowships and they forgot the letter W spelling mistakes are a big deal it's almost impossible to catch all of your own spelling mistakes so it's tradition or expected that you hand your application to somebody else preferably somebody outside your field who doesn't understand your work and so they won't be focusing on what you wrote they're going to be focusing on grammar spelling punctuation and then look this is this is again these are pulled from real CVS so this section is called fellowships and grants and a person wrote none a CV is the course of your life if you have no fellowships or grants don't make that obvious to everybody else just leave that section off what I showed you all those subsections of grant if you don't have academic service experience don't put there if you don't speak multiple languages or have come but don't put it there and put the word none this is the course of your life don't expect make your own weaknesses or your own potential deficiencies obvious to everybody else this gets to your question awards and honors this person wrote high school valedictorian that is useless stuff you did in high school even some of the stuff you did in college if it's not a major honor such as being elected to an Honor Society you don't really need to put it in big College things graduate Awards postdoctoral Ward's go ahead put them in otherwise it just looks like you're trying to fill empty space someone asks the question about abstracts you have to ask yourself whether or not abstracts are important in your field in some it's just a waste it's you just submitted something you were a co-author on an abstract that went into some publication for some meeting and it disappeared down down a black hole never to be seen again leave it off in some fields abstracts are hard currency and are are almost equivalent or are the equivalent of a publication if that's the field you're in keep them on there finally references if they ask you to submit three references don't put the words references available upon request that used to be a standard thing to write on resumes it's never a standard thing to write on a CV if they ask for the references put them on there they don't ask for any references I'd be surprised but if they don't don't put the references section on there that's it for a discussion basic discussion of a CV my advice get going put one together show it to an expert in your field if not your own faculty mentor than other faculty in the departments because they will provide invaluable feedback I'm just humble enough to be okay with the fact that they may tell you that something I said is just plain wrong it may be in your field something that I said today really is irrelevant or not standard operating procedure that's okay what I want to turn your attention to now is the end the cover letter so you've written the CV now you've gone in you've laid out everything now I've got some material to put into the into the research statement and into the teaching statement and it's time to write that cover letter I have good news and bad news the good news is for the scientists the cover letter is pretty straightforward pretty easy to do the bad news is for everybody else and we'll get into it I'll show you why it is a difficult thing to write but let's look for the scientists first it doesn't matter when I put this next slide on that nobody can read the text of the letter I'm just printing a letter on screen and then I'm gonna pull out what goes into each paragraph so you can't read that that's that's quite all right what I want to show you are the elements of a letter for the sciences put your contact information at the top your name address email phone number then put a real address who are you writing to where is this letter supposed to be going and the salutation you can't read it but what it says is dear members of the search committee it would be great if he knew who the chair the search committee was and you can write dear professor so-and-so and members of the search committee if you know the chair of the department you could write dear professor so-and-so and members of the search committee but do address it to something or someone first paragraph has in my opinion two very key elements the first one is what are you applying for and what I underlined was it says that you're applying for the position of assistant professor in internal medicine as advertised and September 1 2015 issue of science I don't I don't know if there was a September 1 issue of science I just made that up but what what you're trying to tell people is what exactly are you applying for and as a courtesy telling them how you learned about the job some departments have multiple searches going on at the same time one for the assistant professor level and one at the associate professor level you don't want your application going in the wrong pile because then you won't stand a chance some universities all applications go to a central human resources department they've then got to farm those applications out to the right Department that's why you're putting the department name in there as well many job ads list a job code or a job requisition number if it does then please include that number in this sentence make it as obvious as possible to everybody who gets this what you're applying for the second part of this first paragraph in my opinion it would be useful for you to say to the reader what else is accompanying this letter is your CV also being uploaded at the same time research statement teaching statement if and then tell him you're going to get letters of reference from these three people that's it that's the first paragraph second paragraph what are your research interests what what are you going to be studying if they hire you third paragraph past work that is relevant to your future work if you know that you're going to be doing teaching you may want to summarize briefly some of your teaching experience finally say thank you most cover letters for those in the sciences can be just one page maybe maybe one and a half here's some other things that you can slip in here what if you have no fellowships or grants but you've just submitted a Career Award application you can't really put on your CV because you didn't get it yet you don't know the results you could put it in here you could slip into your your main research interests you say with these exciting findings I have just recently submitted a such-and-such grant proposal it doesn't matter that you didn't get it there's nowhere else to tell anybody about this so put it into here if you did win a career award and it is on your CV put it in here anyway make it obvious highlight that you have this award and that will make you very marketable if you have a collaborator at the institution that you're applying to I put that in the final paragraph say I'm I'm I collaborate closely with professor so-and-so and I'm I'm really excited to have the opportunity to collaborate more closely if someone at that university told you to apply for this job put that in the first paragraph applying for the assistant professor position or say professor so-and-so your institution recommended that I apply for the assistant professor position in your department they haven't they may not be specified I wouldn't what can sometimes happen to somebody under the university who knows you contacts you say hey we're hiring I think you should apply for this job that's what ago I would put in the first paragraph yeah yes yeah yeah yep mm-hmm I don't have much else to say about the cover letter for the sciences and so for you in the sciences you're this is what it implies cover letter you've put the application together and now you're putting a cover on it trying to wrap it up and give everybody a brief synopsis of who you are yes Yeah right how do you personalize a letter like this should you go out of your way to find faculty there that you may want to collaborate with or have research that complements I think it's okay most of you are going to be applying for a lot of jobs however and it's gonna get pretty hard to personalize this this letter and after a while it might start to sound fraudulent that you're you're gaming you're you're trying to do something that isn't real that you don't know if they're gonna want to collaborate with you and you you could maybe you should read the job ad and if they say that they're looking for someone with these particular skills I would perhaps highlight that more so than something specific about the department or the institution I would I don't have a you know really clear-cut answer to that if you can see something obvious some obvious appeal about that institution that resonates with you that's okay but I don't it's really hard to try to write a cover letter that is so specific to that University when all they're looking for is a biochemist and you're writing to another University where they're looking for bio campus it it may be hard maybe look at is this school one where they do a lot of undergraduate teaching perhaps your cover letter should highlight undergraduate teaching the other letter it's a major research university where you're gonna be working at a medical school you don't do any teaching that that's in my opinion how you would personalize it target it more to one or the other based on what they're looking for okay for those yes should I add sections regarding page numbers usually these are expected to be separate documents here you're not really putting together a dossier of a cover letter filed immediately by in fact in many cases you're going to be uploading discrete files so I don't think you need to worry about paging page numbering all of them as one big unit I think it's quite all right for them to be uploaded separately and treated as freestanding documents just as long as every document on the bottom of each page has your name and a page number yes in the back oh sure your question is what if you reached out to somebody in that department and as a result of the conversation they said oh yeah you should apply my first question to you would be why did you reach out to that particular person did you already know that person so then I that's what I would focus on it I worked closely with so-and-so in the past and we've discussed this job and and he's enthusiastic about my application so you're being honest the person didn't reach out to you to tell you apply you're saying we communicate and this person kind of vouches for me by saying he's enthusiastic that I want to put that I should apply okay yes is it customary to use the letterhead of your current institution yeah yeah I think that's a good idea if you can it's not the end of the world some people have very strong opinions if you go online there are some people who write you know if you don't put on letterhead then you're stupid and you're you're I hate your guts I mean some really really strong language or if your faculty mentor doesn't allow you to use the department's letterhead then you're an idiot you know just put Yale University department of on there doesn't have to be official letterhead with somebody's logo you can download the Yale font from the Yale website and make your own letterhead I think that would be a great thing to do and go for it some some institutions you don't really get a choice you have to copy and paste text into a box on a website and then it gets uploaded but in other cases where you if you get to upload a document go ahead put the letter I don't all right Sciences that's the good news for you but before you sigh in relief and and feel sorry for all the humanists one reason why the cover letter for those new manatees is more difficult is because in some instances they don't write a research statement and the cover letter is the substitute so for those of you in the sciences you have to write a research statement and I would say easily that is the most difficult thing that you're going to write as part of your job application it's really hard so there for those of you in the humanities unfortunately some claim that it is the most important or one of the most important parts of your application in this letter you have to prove that you can write effectively you have to communicate your work to non experts you have to demonstrate that your work is important and you have to highlight the fact that you have the necessary skills and qualifications for the job for those in the sciences don't chew me out because I could have said exactly the same thing about the research statement you have to write effectively understand that the person's reading it will not be experts in your field you have to demonstrate that what you do matters and through your writing demonstrate that you're the right person for the job for those in humanities it's similar parts of letters similar in that you are going to have at the top maybe letterhead certainly your name and contact information an address and a salutation to the search committee but you get more space you get one and a half to two pages your letter is usually divided into five sections five or six sections and you do should attempt to tailor it to the position you're applying for what are those five or six sections of sections here they are quickly an intro paragraph on your dissertation maybe two paragraphs then a paragraph on your future research plans paragraph on your teaching if you're applying to a teaching intensive university then more than one paragraph here's a surprise for me to see but it's expected that you have a paragraph on your service again to your department to your institution to your field and then finally a concluding paragraph let me show you what goes into these paragraphs in the intro the name of your position I'm sorry the name of the position you're applying for the reference number or the source of the job ads same is with the science first paragraph here many of you in the humanities may be applying for jobs before you have your PhD so you should tell them what is your current status if you're a postdoc put that in there if you haven't defended yet mention when you plan to hand in your dissertation or when you plan to receive your degree and then in a sentence and no more than a sentence say what your main interests are this centered about your paragraphs tell it tells them a lot of information what you're applying for where you are in your career and what you like to study then comes the heart of the matter the dissertation research paragraph or paragraphs this is pretty important you have to introduce the topic and tell everybody why it's important you should probably devote at least at least a sentence to each of your main chapters pull out the main conclusions or findings of your work and then write it in a way that makes it obvious that what you do is relevant to the job ad itself if you have developed special skills I'm continually impressed by those who work in the digital humanities if you if you're one of those people I think that goes here for all of you don't be bashful this is not the time to be too modest really get get it out there what did you work on next future research this is really hard most of you are so immense in your current research you have no idea what you want to do next unfortunately you have to fake it you don't know what you want to do next extrapolate where your research should be going over the next five years or so and certainly make that future research plan relevant to the job ad then go into the teaching you've already written your teaching statement so this should be fairly straightforward figure out what are they really looking for people who can teach grad students undergraduates both and then summarize your philosophy and your experience the service as I mentioned it should be to your department yield you're trying to demonstrate your collegiality to your future colleagues and we are discussed some of the examples in the CDE whether you ran a seminar series or we're on admissions committee you know I really thought this was just dumb or a waste but in preparation for today's talk I went on to the Chronicle of Higher Education just looking up humanities academic positions the very first one I found was at Harvard just clicked on it and right there in the in the description of the job said or in the description of the ad it said you must events that you have the potential to provide service to the organization or whatever words essentially what's in this paragraph they were looking for right there in the job ad pretty amazing finally your conclusion this is where I think you should say here's what else is coming in my application your research statement if they require one teaching statement who is going to be submitting letters of reference and then as in the postdoc letter or in the letter for the sciences say thank you when you're done with this letter you have to make sure that you've answered these questions did you write well did you write for the non expert because chances are almost everybody who reads the letter will be outside your field and then did you adequately demonstrate that you have the qualifications for the position they're trying to fill this brings us back to where we started when you get through this all four of these pieces if your application has to have all four I expect that you're probably going to be tweaking and revising each one of these so it's not one and done write it and you're done additionally you may have to tweak it based on the type of institution you're applying for many of you are going to apply for teaching institutions teaching and research or research intensive I think you should have slightly different models for each one in the subsequent talks in this series if you haven't already picked it up the job search process for academics is grueling and it's highly competitive and you're going to start worrying how many jobs are they going to be in my field this year how many people are gonna be applying for these jobs how do I know whose of it it is nerve-racking but those kinds of questions are completely outside of your control if you want to worry if you want to obsess this is where you should be obsessing and worrying because this is under your control a lot of those other aspects of trying to find an academic job really you just can't there's nothing you can do so as you're preparing I hope you do devote as much energy as you can to putting together a really sound application and then I really do hope that you attend some of the future seminars here because you're going to learn a lot of great things about the rest of the process including how to draft those two bottom documents how to conduct a really good interview how to negotiate and then what do you do once you get the job offer along the way in the job search I just hope that you guys you know work hard and most importantly have an unflagging sense of hope because you will eventually get a job thank you so much for your attention you

Channel: Yale Career Strategy

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Length: 70min 22sec (4222 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 10 2020