Thursday, October 30, 2008

A Curriculum Vitae is not a Resume

I am applying for an academic library job tomorrow. Although I currently work for a university my job is much more corporate in nature. I got the job using a standard resume format that is what they show you in the employment offices of your major universities. I sent a similar resume to a few colleagues at the University for proofreading before I turned it in and soon found that I had woefully underestimated the amount of detail expected in a Curriculum Vitae (CV).

I now feel like my CV will be in much better shape (if I can finish it by tomorrow), but I can't help but feel for those who must read the damn things when hiring for an academic position. I'm going to end up writing every little thing that I have done for the past four or five years and I have some difficulty believing that anyone is going to care about most of it. It feels like I'm going to end up pretty much padding the resume because I don't have a wide variety of actual teaching and publishing experience to draw on. I'm going to write about training manuals that I created, short informal presentations that I made to employees, blogs I created, documents I delivered, etc. Will that be useful or sufficient for the hiring committee? We shall see.

Oh well. Once more unto the breach!

No comments: