How to Write a Curriculum Vitae (CV) (With Template And Examples)

A curriculum vitae (CV) is a document that outlines your educational and professional achievements in depth. In the United States, a resume is generally preferred for job applications, but certain specific careers prefer a CV because it gives them more information about your education and research achievements.

CVs are much more often used overseas. So if you’re applying for a foreign job that requests a CV; an academic position that requires one; or just think that a CV would be a better representation of your job history; this article will outline how to write your own as well as when it’s better to use a CV than a resume.

Key Takeaways:

• A curriculum vitae, or CV, contains an extensive record of your professional and academic life.

• A CV includes contact information, work history, education skills, certifications, awards, publications, membership to professional organizations, and more.

• International CVs contain personal information, however, in the United States, this should be excluded to comply with discrimination laws.

• CVs are usually found in international job applications and academia positions in the United States.

What is a CV?

CV is short for curriculum vitae, which translates from Latin to: “course of life.” CVs are meant to focus more on your education, experience, and accomplishments. CVs will include sections for achievements, publications, and interests related to your field. They also focus extensively on your education, as opposed to resumes, where you usually just list your highest degree.

Due to this additional information and the fact that it’s in-depth, CVs are usually longer than resumes. They end up giving employers a more detailed view of your academic and professional accomplishments.

When to use a CV

In the United States, CVs are asked for in academic, medical, or research positions. These are often much more focused on education, publications, and commendations than most careers in the U.S., making it logical that they’d want a more detailed document; CVs can extend to several pages long.

CVs are also used overseas in place of resumes. Europe in particular favors CVs over resumes, so if you apply for a job in Europe, chances are they’ll request a CV rather than a resume.

What to include in a CV

CVs are highly personalized documents, meaning that no two should look alike. However, there is usually a standard format that they follow, as well as standard information you’d find in most CVs. Remember that — just like with a resume — you want your skills and achievements to stand out.

1. Contact information. Start with your name and job title, then list your professional address, your home address, the phone numbers you can be reached at, email addresses, and you might want to include your website or professional portfolios, maybe even your LinkedIn profile.

2. Professional objective or work summary. This is where you’d list what your work goal is, or if you’re a seasoned professional, where you list a summary of what you’ve been doing. If you choose the summary you can recap your entire career or just focus on one aspect.

3. Professional experience. Typically, professional experiences are listed in reverse chronological order and there is a trend of dropping off anything that’s more than 10 years old. This may or may not be a good idea in a CV, it depends on your situation but if it’s repetitive and makes your CV more than five pages long, then older jobs should be omitted.

4. Education. You will want to list all of your higher education degrees. You also want to share your area of study, your thesis, if you graduated with honors, and any noteworthy awards or achievements.

5. Skills. If you have any skills that are relevant to the position but not included in your educational training you might want to list them. This is where you could possibly add any language skills, CPR or other emergency training, extra licenses you may hold, etc

6. Professional certifications. Does your professional tract include extra certifications that boost your knowledge base? For example, sports trainers may have, in addition to a degree, an NCSF-CPT certification, which is a National Council on Strength and Fitness Certified Personal Trainer test that proves they’re competent in certain aspects of being a trainer.

   This could be very relevant to the position for which they’re applying.

7. Awards or recognition. List professionally earned awards you’ve received or if you’ve been recognized for your work. Don’t forget to include team awards and recognition if you were on a research team or part of a group that received acknowledgment for their contributions.

8. Publications. List your published books, articles, reviews, research, and anything else that’s relevant to the position you’re pursuing. Most people like to arrange these in reverse chronological order too, but it might be better to arrange them by the publication, depending on your experience.

9. Membership in professional organizations. You want recruiters to know that you’re active in your field and as a professional, and that often means belonging to an organization or two.

10. Extracurricular activities. Are you involved in any groups that are fun for you and not work-related, yet they apply to your field? Do you mentor children who are interested in rocket building and you want to be a teacher? Anything you do that’s connected to your field and portrays you as the best candidate can be included.

11. Letters of recommendation. This is entirely optional. It can make an extensive and lengthy career-driven CV look a little sophomoric unless the letters are written by very relevant people. It can also make your CV too long. This is going to be a judgment call on your part.

Sample curriculum vitae

At this point in her CV, Jane Doe might want to include some letters of recommendation. These will be written by other people and they typically do not follow any set format or letter template. One thing to note, because Jane is applying for a job in the United States, she has left some things out of her resume, like her age and other personal information that shouldn’t be on a resume due to discrimination laws.

CV template

Types of CVs

If you live in the United States, then there will primarily be three reasons you’ll be using a CV: if you’re applying internationally, to academia, or to a medical or research position. There are differences in your CV depending on what you’re applying to, so here are some tips to make the best CV you can for the job.

International CVs

This bit of information is going to sound a little strange to people in the United States, but there are things that people in other countries routinely put on their curriculum vitae, it’s actually expected that it be there, that we would never include.

In fact, there are times when that information is not legal to ask for or provide because of age discrimination laws and other Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Laws. These tidbits of information you might be expected to include on your CV for an international job are:

• Your date of birth

• Nationality

• Gender

• Marital status

• If you have children, how many, and their ages

• Language skills

• Religion

• Health status

• Passport Number

• A picture of you

Author

Kristin Kizer

Kristin Kizer is an award-winning writer, television and documentary producer, and content specialist who has worked on a wide variety of written, broadcast, and electronic publications. A former writer/producer for The Discovery Channel, she is now a freelance writer and delighted to be sharing her talents and time with the wonderful Zippia audience.