There are universities that ask for a CV along with other mandatory documents for application. You won’t be asking someone, “Hey, write an essay for me!”, so you should learn how to make a university CV on your own.
This essay will provide you with a guide on how to write the perfect graduate CV for your future endeavors!
How To Write The Perfect University CV
- Collect And Arrange The Necessary Information:
If you want your employer to understand you and your expertise/major, you must present it all on these pages. We will be providing you with a list, but keep in mind that this list is for everyone reading to base their university CV on, so it’s not exactly tailored to your needs.
Image 1. There’s no one-size-fits-all for resumes; you have to understand the job listing.
You might want to filter some categories out, change the orders of how you’re listing them, or change the format completely, depending on what field your CV is going to.
- Contact Information: This category includes your name, address (street, ward, district, city, country, etc.) so the people reading your CV know how to reach you. There have been cases where applicants passed their CV check, but employers had to let them go solely because there was no way to get hold of the person.
There will be jobs that require you to add in your social media accounts as well, such as media-related professions or content creating. Nevertheless, if you don’t want to miss out on that category, you can always insert your LinkedIn.
- Summary Statement: Known as the “About Me” section, this paragraph is where employers will find how you view yourself professionally. This section should include your current job title, your relevant personality traits, skills and achievements, and the goals you want to reach within your field. If you don’t want anyone to tell you to “write my essay for me”, you’d better make your job title clear.
- Education/Employment History: The order of the headlines must be reverse-chronological. Information that comes with each headline are details about the position given and dates. You may attempt to break this section down into different sections such as “Postdoctoral Training”, “Fellowships/Grants”, and “Extracurricular Activities” to further highlight your skillset.
- Skills & Interests: This part serves many functions. You can tell a lot about a person’s skills and ability to focus via their hobbies. Plus, having additional features for yourself may allow the employers to view you as a person with diversity and work-life balance. For example, if you show interest in writing, your future boss might give you a “Write my essay for me” type of gig for a bonus!
- References: This is completely dependent on your field of expertise and its requirements, but you might feel inclined to include a reference letter at the end of your university CV.
- Find An Attractive Format:
A good format will require you to do quite a bit of digging around. You should consider your target audience (the type of people the employers in your field are) before choosing because your format is how information will be given to them.
If your profession is one that relies on creating aesthetically pleasing products, such as modeling, visual content creating/illustrating, or photography, it’s quite adamant for the format you choose for your CV to be polished and even stylish. Vice versa, such choices will not be too necessary, but it is still preferred.
Image 2. Aesthetic choices are encouraged but not always required.
We do recommend a clear, readable, and serif font, such as Times New Romans, Spectral, and Lora, for your physical CV. This is to give a professional feel to your CV and to ease the employers into you as a potential candidate for the position offer. For PDFs, however, we suggest using a sans serif font instead.
Whatever your format of choice is, the CV needs to be legible, clean, and understandable.
- Fit Everything Together:
After you’ve had your necessary elements, it’s time to insert the information into your format. While doing this, there are some tips to remember:
- Length: Unlike other types of CVs, a university CV can be of any length. This is to create an opportunity for students to present every attribute to themselves, such as conferences, publications, fellowships, grants, etc., since they don’t have much work experience yet.
This fact isn’t true for all occasions, however. You should not rely on these particular characteristics but rather keep them in mind while reading through the job listing. But you should keep it short enough to grasp attention from readers, rather than going on a tangent on that time you were asked to “Write my essay for me”,
- Field advice: Blindly approaching a task, no matter what it is, is never a good idea. You should consult with someone about the content, structure, and presentation of your CV to be completely sure of its appropriateness. This “someone” can either be your professor, your student mentor, or a current worker in your field.
Image 3. Ask the people in your field to find what your CV is missing.
- Consistency: Besides your overall format, you should also pay attention to how you format your sentences and list items. It’s those little details that make or break a candidate’s chance of being viewed in a positive light.
For example, if you’re using gerunds to list the extra-curricular activities, don’t stray from that and randomly insert an infinitive verb instead. Employers can see this as your carelessness in your work or even as far as disregarding the potential of your commitment to their establishment. You cannot start with “Write my essay for me” and end with “Designing postcards.
This is just one example; there are other ways you can mess up the consistency of your content. Be sure to look out for those tidbits, and you’re already one step ahead of the typical applicant.
- Edit Carefully:
After all is said and done, proofreading is the last task you have to do. Spend some time reading your university CV from different angles or different perspectives. There will definitely be changes you are not willing to make (such as crossing out an irrelevant but emotional experience from your list of achievements).
Being able to make those decisions shows that you are good at prioritizing information, which is a huge plus in your employers’ eyes.
How To Write A University CV When You Have No Experience
Don’t put in fake experience. Even though it sounds very tempting to put glamorous looking years of work into your university CV, you can be exposed so easily.
Many HR workers are so good as to identify false achievements from real ones just by spending 5 minutes on their browsers, so the risk you take isn’t worth it.
Instead, you may try demonstrating your skills via social or personal projects. Being a member of a non-profit organization – while it doesn’t sound as flashy and important as working in a company – can showcase your leadership or crisis handling abilities. The same goes for any extra-curricular activities you put in: real information holds value!
Conclusion
Don’t forget the three C’s when you write your CV: comprehensible, considerate and concise. It’s not that hard to form a CV – there are so many templates out there. But it’s up to you to put the meat in the skeleton to make yourself well-presented on the important document!
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