Resumes and CVs

One professional goal during your college years should be to accumulate experiences that future employers or graduate programs will find attractive. You also want to use the resume and a personal statement to convey the work you did, the skills you developed, and how they are relevant to your future goals.

The staff at Career and Professional Development have several very helpful webpages devoted to developing strong resume or CV (Curriculum Vita), and writing a personal statement. They outline 7 competencies that we should all try to highlight on our resumes: communication, teamwork, leadership, creativity and problem solving, professionalism and productivity, global perspective, and digital fluency. Probably few of us will have strengths in all 7 of these areas, but if we can highlight a few, and actually SHOW that we have these competencies rather than just saying we do, our resumes have a better chance of standing out. For definitions of these competencies and more information, please click here.

One of the most helpful webpages from Career and Professional Development is the Resume Types and Formats page. It offers advice on basic layouts, formats, and page length, and it gives several samples at the bottom of the page. The first 7 samples (Silva-Walsh) are all excellent, and should be useful to you. The last sample, Benjamin, is of a CV. CVs are different from resumes in that they specifically focus on research accomplishments, and are almost always longer than one page, whereas resumes are typically limited to just one.

A couple other useful webpages include Presenting Yourself, which discusses common mistakes on resumes, and includes a clear description of CVs, a page on Writing Personal Statements, and many other Resources for Students. You are also more than welcome to make an appointment with any of their Career Advisors.