Speaker 1: The first thing you need to remember about an academic CV is that it is a persuasive document. Too many people just see it as like a list of accomplishments but this is your shop front. This is where people first get an idea about you. So there are a number of things that you need to do to make it persuasive to actually kind of highlight the key things that make you the best person for a particular job and we'll go through the most important things in this video. And the first thing I want to talk about is putting the most obvious and the most persuasive information up front. Not a lot of people do this. When they first sort of like get on their CV, they put just their qualifications but here is an example of where they've kind of just got it all wrong. So I've been scouring the internet for different types of academic CVs but when you first look at this CV, what do you really see? You see their experience, their academic qualifications and not really much else. Their authors are sort of buried down here so there's no important information which is obvious on this CV. So what you need to do is make sure that you've got kind of like a hierarchy to the information that's presented. You need to make sure that you are changing up the CV for each job that you're applying for and making sure that the most beneficial skills that you have got for that job are obvious and at the front and that can take sort of like a number of formats. It can be like a research priorities area. It can be your key achievements. It can be your career highlights. Whatever you want to do up the front of your CV, you want to make sure that all the important information is right there for people to smack them in the face as soon as they look at your CV. So this CV did not do a good job at actually just presenting that bit of information up front but I've got many more examples to show you so stay tuned. A lot of people don't tailor their CV for each individual academic position that they're applying for and so you need a place in your CV where you can put all of the keywords and the key attributes you have in just like a couple of paragraphs. In this CV, you can see that they've got their qualifications just tucked away at the top and then they've just got a summary and here this is where they list all of their important things that can be directly related back to the job. So here what I like to do is put a job application into something like ChatGPT and say, get all of the important keywords and skills that a person would need to get this job and then I make sure all of those things are in this top summary area. It doesn't need to be very long, just a couple of paragraphs is really all it needs but you need to tailor that information to make sure that when people read it, they're excited by you as an academic, that they can see a bit of momentum that they want to get swept up in and they can see that you are on the right track and you will contribute kind of to the department, to the university because you are growing as an academic and you want them to be excited about being part of that and that's where you can put all of that information in this summary section. Not enough people quantify the information that's actually in their CV. One thing I like to do is get someone who has no idea what you're applying for and ask them to be like, why is this important? At every spot where they're like, why is that in there? That way when someone's looking over your CV, they will know exactly why that bit of information is valuable. We tend to leave off facts and figures a little bit too much in CVs and this is an example where they've done really well. So I've blanked out all of the important information, there was a photo here but in the key achievement bits, you can see they've got their awards and they've also highlighted how much money that brought in. These guys are an early career researcher and so really just having the money there means that they're familiar with getting money into the university. What do universities love? Peer-reviewed papers in high-impact journals and money. If you can quantify that in just like a little snapshot that you've got this many papers in this many sort of like high-impact factor journals and I've brought in this much money in however you've brought it in, they can see then a progression and they'll want to be part of that momentum you've built up. So quantifying the information is really so important when you're putting stuff into your CV. Showing momentum is so very important in your CV. You want to show that you've gone from like an early career researcher and you're starting to build up a career in your own right. When someone is building up their career, they are pulling in papers and pulling in money and you want that to be obvious in your CV. This example again, you can see that it's in chronological order going backwards. So here, early career researcher award and that is always good because it shows that you're part of a successful cohort that's coming through. You want people to get excited about your career and what it can do for their university. So here you can see that they've got awards after awards and it's 2012, 2013, 2014, 14, 14. So we're starting to see that momentum build. That's exactly what you want to do. In another CV over here, you can see that they've just put in highlighted achievements at the very top before qualifications, which I actually quite like. And here you can see they've just sort of like quantified 11 peer-reviewed journals with more currently underway, presentations at 10 scientific conferences, ad hoc reviewer, editorial board member, extensive experience, we can probably leave that one out, and involved in agricultural industry as a young leader. So you can see that this key achievement area can be very valuable to show that you are building up momentum in your own career. No matter how you choose to do it, you've got to make sure that people see that exponential increase of your career with papers, with money, with awards, all of those special things that make your career exciting for you need to be up front and center. Every single CV should have at least three academic references that you are able to rely on to give you a really good reference. How do you do that? Well, sometimes people just aren't very good on the phone. When they pick it up, they're just like, yes, hello, whatever. You need to make sure that your references are actually going to give you a good reference. And the only way to do that is a sneaky way, but I really like it, and I've done it in the past, is get someone to call up your references on behalf of a pretend job that you've applied for. And then they can get a feeling for whether or not this person is not only good at being a reference, but they can sell you. That's part of the next stage, is someone that is actually enthusiastic about what you've done in the past. Not everyone is good at doing that. So you need to make sure that they are representing you in a good light, and also just giving them a heads up that they will be getting a call. Just means they're a little bit more ready. Just a simple email to say, hey, I've got through to the final round. Please expect a phone call from these people. I'm doing this job. These are the skills that they want, and they can at least then start thinking about how they would answer those questions for a potential new employer. Another thing that I think is really valuable these days is working on visual hierarchy. Having a look at different styles of CVs and make sure that the most obvious information is the most attractive on the page. These are all just black and white text CVs. We have come a long way, and just a little bit of design element means that you'll be able to guide the reader and your potential employer through your CV by highlighting the most important things. I even used to ask Mid Journey, which is the AI generator, to come up with example CV templates so you could start to have a look at the visual hierarchies that it comes up with. It was actually really quite good. So go do that for yourself and look at examples where they've used design elements to make it just easier and nicer to read. That will be super important, I think, going forward once more and more people are using these elements in their CVs. So there we have it. There are all of the mistakes people make when they're writing their academic CV. Let me know in the comments what you would add, and also there are more ways you can engage with me. The first way is to sign up to my newsletter. It's completely free. Go sign up at andrewstapleton.com.au forward slash newsletter. The link is in the description, and when you sign up, you'll get five emails over about two weeks. Everything from the tools I've used, the podcasts I've been on, how to write the perfect abstract, my TEDx talk, and more. It's exclusive content available for free, so go sign up now, and also go check out academiainsider.com. That's my project where I've got my two eBooks, the Ultimate Academic Writing Toolkit, as well as the PhD Survival Guide. I've got the blog growing out as well. I've got a resource pack for someone that's applying for a PhD, and it's all there to make sure that academia works for you. All right, then. I'll see you in the next video.