Setting up a CV starts with choosing the right sections, ordering them strategically, and formatting the document so it’s clean and easy to read. Whether you’re building your first CV or restructuring an old one, the process is straightforward once you understand what goes where and why.
A CV (curriculum vitae) is a comprehensive document covering your education, experience, research, publications, and professional accomplishments. It’s the standard format for academic, scientific, and research positions, and it’s also widely used by international employers outside North America. Unlike a resume, which is typically one or two pages, a CV can run from two pages to several pages depending on your career stage.
Choose Your Core Sections
Every CV needs a consistent set of building blocks. The specific sections you include will depend on your field and experience level, but most CVs draw from this list:
- Contact information: Full name, phone number, email address, and optionally a professional website or LinkedIn profile.
- Education: Degrees listed in reverse chronological order (most recent first), including institution, degree type, field of study, and graduation date. If you recently finished a graduate program, include your dissertation or thesis title.
- Research experience: Projects, lab positions, fieldwork, or other research roles with brief descriptions of your contributions.
- Publications: Journal articles, book chapters, reports, or other published work, formatted in the citation style standard for your discipline.
- Conference presentations: Talks, posters, or panels you’ve presented at professional meetings.
- Teaching experience: Courses taught, teaching assistantships, guest lectures, or curriculum development work.
- Awards and honors: Fellowships, grants, scholarships, or academic prizes.
- Professional service: Committee work, peer reviewing, editorial roles, or community engagement related to your field.
- Skills: Languages, software, lab techniques, or other competencies relevant to your target position.
- References: Either listed directly or noted as available upon request.
You don’t need every section on this list. A recent graduate might not have publications yet, and that’s fine. Include only the sections where you have meaningful content.
Order Sections by Relevance
The information that appears earliest on your CV gets the most attention, so the order should reflect what matters most for the position you’re targeting. If you’re fresh out of graduate school, lead with education. If you have years of teaching under your belt and you’re applying to a teaching-focused institution, move teaching experience up near the top.
For a research-heavy university position, publications and research projects should appear prominently. For a liberal arts college or community college role, teaching experience and course development carry more weight. Read the job posting carefully and let it guide your ordering. The goal is to put your strongest, most relevant qualifications where a reader will see them first.
Format for Clarity and Compatibility
Use a standard, easy-to-read font like Times New Roman, Garamond, Helvetica, Arial, or Calibri. Set your body text between 10 and 12 points, and make your name slightly larger at 12 to 14 points so it stands out at the top of the page. Keep margins no smaller than half an inch on all sides.
Many employers now use applicant tracking systems (ATS), which are software programs that scan and rank your CV before a human ever reads it. These systems can struggle with creative formatting, so simplicity matters. Avoid graphics, icons, images, tables, and text boxes. Don’t use decorative templates from design tools like Canva or online resume builders, as their formatting can confuse an ATS and cause your content to be misread or skipped entirely.
Stick with clearly labeled section headings. Use consistent formatting for dates and institutions throughout the document. A good test: save your CV as a plain text (.txt) file and open it. If the content looks scrambled, rearranged, or missing, your formatting is likely too complex for an ATS to parse correctly.
Write Strong Content Within Each Section
Under each position or experience, describe what you actually did and what resulted from it. Instead of writing “assisted with research,” specify the project, your role, and any outcomes. For teaching, name the courses, the level of students, and whether you designed the curriculum or served as an assistant.
When applying for a specific role, incorporate keywords from the job description naturally into your CV. If the posting mentions “quantitative analysis” and you’ve done that work, use that exact phrase rather than a vague synonym. Spell out abbreviations the first time you use them, since an ATS may not recognize shortened versions. At the same time, don’t stuff your CV with keywords you can’t back up. The goal is to frame your genuine experience in language that aligns with what the employer is looking for.
Replace vague terms like “various,” “multiple,” or “several” with specific details whenever possible. Saying you “taught three undergraduate sections of introductory biology” is more informative and more ATS-friendly than “taught various courses.”
Adjust for International Applications
CV conventions vary significantly by country. In North America, you should not include a photo, date of birth, gender, marital status, or other personal details. These are considered protected information in the hiring process, and including them can actually work against you.
In parts of Europe, particularly in countries like France and Germany, employers expect a professional photo on the CV. In many Asian countries, it’s common to include personal details such as age, nationality, and sometimes marital status. If you’re applying internationally, research the norms for the specific country. What’s considered professional in one place can seem inappropriate or out of touch in another.
File Format and Final Checks
Save your CV as the file type the employer requests. PDF is the most common choice because it preserves your formatting across devices, but some applicant tracking systems specifically ask for a Word document. If the posting specifies a format, use it, even if the system technically lets you upload something else.
Before submitting, proofread every line. Check that dates are consistent, institution names are spelled correctly, and your contact information is current. Have someone else read it if possible, since it’s easy to miss errors in a document you’ve been staring at for hours.
Name the file something professional and identifiable: your name followed by “CV” works well. Avoid generic file names like “document1” or “final_version_3,” which look careless and make it harder for hiring committees to find your file later.
Keep Your CV as a Living Document
Unlike a resume that you might rewrite for each application, a CV is a running record of your professional life. Add new publications, presentations, grants, and teaching assignments as they happen. This way, when a job opening appears, you already have a comprehensive document ready to tailor rather than starting from scratch. Periodically review older entries and remove anything that no longer represents your current professional identity, such as undergraduate activities once you’re well into your career.