Speaker 1: Welcome to Develop Your Academic CV. I'm Denise Pranke, a Senior Career Services Advisor for Walden University. The mission of the Career Services team is to support students and alumni in developing workplace skills to thrive as professionals and social change agents in organizations and communities. To accomplish this mission, we deliver cutting-edge global career resources and services and promote applied learning as an essential component of proactive career management. During this session, I will differentiate a CV from a resume, explore the CV resources available on the Career Services website, discuss the main CV sections and formatting tips, and share ways to strengthen and customize your document. Next, let's go over the difference between a CV and a resume. A CV is a description of your education, experience, and accomplishments. It places more emphasis on your academic experience, professional development activities, and contributions than a resume. Also, a resume is typically 1-2 pages, whereas a CV can be longer in length, sometimes up to 5-8 pages, depending on your level of experience and professional accomplishments, such as presentations and publications. So why do you need a CV? A CV is the preferred document to use when applying for higher education teaching and leadership positions, research positions, conference proposals, and consulting. So next, let's take a quick look at the CV resources on the Career Services website. The Career Services website can be accessed from your myWalden portal or by going directly to careercenter.waldenu.edu. Our doctoral resources and CV tools can be found on the horizontal navigation bar under the Career Exploration and Resumes and More tabs. The sample CVs can be found in the Optimal Resume System. We'll look more closely at these offerings in the next few slides. Under the Career Exploration tab, you'll find the doctoral resources page with links to webinar recordings on doctoral-level career paths, higher ed teaching, and related topics. You'll also find a comprehensive curriculum data guide that provides detailed information on what is covered in today's session. Take a closer look at the curriculum data guide for step-by-step instructions on how to build or strengthen your CV. We highly recommend referring to this guide after today's session to continue building or enhancing your document. Other relevant information on this page includes academic signature guidelines, networking sites, and sample CVs in the Optimal Resume System, which we're going to cover next. The Optimal Resume System, which can be accessed from the Career Services homepage, has over 400 sample resumes, including CVs, in the Resume Builder module. The Optimal Resume System also includes modules to help you build cover letters, career portfolios, a website, and practice your interviewing skills. There are short video tutorials within the system to help you get started. We currently have over 22,000 students and alumni using this system. If you'd like to use one of the sample resumes or CVs as a template to create your own professional-looking document, you will need to set up a free account. When setting up your free account, be sure to use your Walden email address and password. If you're an alum and no longer remember your Walden login credentials, send an email to support at mail.waldenu.edu with a request to reactivate your Walden email address. I also want to highlight our archive webinars, which can be accessed from the Career Services website. A few topics to highlight are the Doctoral Career Pathways Conference Recordings, Alternative Careers for your Doctoral Degree, Strategies for Getting a Job in Higher Education, Strategies for Getting Published, and Transitioning into the Academic World through Professional Associations and Conferences. In the program-specific webinar area, we have topics such as Career Opportunities in Psychology, Career Opportunities in Public Health, and many others. So next, let's go over the components of a CV. Note that the Education section is near the top of the document, not at the end as is typical on a resume. Before we break down each of these sections, let's review some general formatting tips. Use a consistent font size, 14 to 18 point font for your name, 11 to 12 point font for content. Use bolding and bullet points, but use these features judiciously and consistently. Do not overuse them. Also avoid using underlining in your formatting. Use appropriate margins of about 0.7 to 1 inch and refrain from using the personal pronouns I, me, and my. Double and even triple check your spelling and grammar. Use spell check and thoroughly review your document line by line before sending. So now on to the sections of the CV. The first section is your header, which includes your contact information. This section should include your name, highest degree earned, mailing address, phone number, and a professional email address. You can also include a link to your LinkedIn profile and or a career portfolio in this section if you like as well. Notice that the name is larger and is bolded. If you are a doctoral student, you may have specific questions about how to list your credentials after your name in the header. Here are two important guidelines. Only list the academic credential that you have earned after your name. Also, you should not use amended forms of a degree such as PhD-C or PhD with a C in parentheses to indicate partial completion of your program. Nor should you use ABD, which stands for All But Dissertation. These designations are not accepted credentials, and using them may confuse others, including prospective employers. Also, these amended forms are not recognized by Walden University. For additional rules on listing credentials after your name, visit the Career Services CV Guide and Academic Signature Guidelines. So next is the Summary of Qualifications section. This section can be bulleted statements as we see here in this example, or you could have a short paragraph of about three to five sentences. You want to use the Summary section to stand out from others by highlighting your professional brand, summarizing your top skills and strengths as related to your job target. Focus on specific accomplishments and achievements as well. If you're planning on applying for a higher teaching position, you could include that you are familiar with the Blackboard learning platform. It is also important to incorporate keywords used in your field. Some organizations use applicant tracking systems to filter applications. These systems are programmed to look for keywords on resumes and CVs related to the position. It can be helpful to review job descriptions for your targeted position to see what keywords are being used to describe the desired qualifications for the position and include these keywords on your CV where there's a match with your experience. So now on to the Education section. You want to list your degrees in reverse chronological order. Bold your degree titles for emphasis and place your graduation years on the right-hand side to improve formatting. Include an expected completion date if you're currently pursuing your degree and include the institution's name, city, and state or location. If you want to list your dissertation topic in this section, list it only after it has been formally approved by your committee or the chief academic officer. You may want to create a separate Research Interest section to highlight your research interest areas. You can also include information about your research plans in your cover letter when applying for teaching and research positions. The Experience section is typically next. Your Experience section should list positions in reverse chronological order and go back approximately 10 to 15 years. You can choose a title for this section which relates to your relevant past experience. In this case, Teaching Experience captures our applicant Stella's higher education and high school teaching experience. You'll notice that Stella includes a separate section for her additional experience to list experience that is not as relevant to her career path. For each position, bold your title and include your employer, employer's location, and dates of employment. Next, you want to develop strong accomplishment statements. Start with an action verb. Use past tense when describing past experience. For example, Stella uses teach for current experience and taught for past experience. Also, provide specific details, focus on achievements and accomplishments, and include results, and quantify when possible. For example, Stella states under her teaching position at West Hill High School that she taught 9th, 10th, and 12th grade English literature courses for classes of 20 to 30 students. And an accomplishment is she restructured 9th grade English curriculum and coached teachers on classroom delivery methods. And since your CV is unique to you, you'll want to take an inventory of your experiences and skills to determine what additional sections to include. For example, if you have experience presenting at professional conferences, include a section for professional presentations. Or if you have publications that have been published in peer-reviewed journals, list them under a publication section. To list non-peer-reviewed articles, create a section titled Popular Media Productions or Publications or Additional Publications. When adding sections, such as community involvement, be sure to list your role, organization, and dates, if applicable. Additional sections you may consider are licenses and certifications, courses taught, honors and awards, affiliations, committee participation, research, technology skills, languages, and others. Finally, only if it is requested by the potential employer and with a reference section of 3-5, professional and or academic references. If you're considering including someone as a reference, be sure to ask for their permission beforehand. Consider reaching out to former or current supervisors and professors who are familiar with your work. As we start wrapping up, I want to review some tips. Tailor your document toward your job target. Include a summary section to further highlight your unique brand. Strengthen your accomplishment statements and include results where appropriate. Rearrange sections in order of importance, but keep your education section near the top of the document. If you would like to review your CV with a career services advisor, we invite you to schedule an individual career advising appointment. If you're an alum and no longer have access to your portal, please send an email to careerservices at mail.waldenu.edu requesting scheduling assistance. Or you can go directly to the career services website and follow the directions that are there as well. Our most popular advising topics are review of your CV or resume, job search strategies, building your professional network, preparing for an interview, strengthening your professional reputation or brand. You can schedule your 45-minute appointment, again, either via your student portal or by following the directions on the career services website. The career services advisor will call you at the time of your appointment. Keep in mind that the schedule is in USA Eastern Time, so make an adjustment on your personal schedule if you're not in that time zone. You can upload a document for review during your appointment. We recommend that you have internet access for your advising session, as we often refer to web-based resources. Please stay in contact. We invite you to connect with us by joining the career services LinkedIn group, follow us on Twitter, subscribe to our YouTube channel, join us on Facebook, and read Walden student success stories on our blog. And use the features on the optimal resume system. Also remember, you can access all of our resources on our website at careercenter.waldenu.edu. Thank you for joining the session.