The CV Doctor: CV for an Administrator Seeking Promotion

For department heads looking to move into central administration, this CV presents a good model. The candidate is the chairman of a mathematics department at a community college who himself wishes to move up. Some of our suggestions are intended to call attention to this vita's strengths. But one change that the candidate might consider relates to the very wide margins he uses. He places the titles of each section on the right and the content on the left. While attractive, this format pushes information onto additional pages. If the candidate likes headings to run along the side, they can be left there, but he should start the information under the heading, with only a small indentation.

-- Mary Morris Heiberger and Julia Miller Vick

Examples:

• CV for an A.B.D. in the humanities
• CV for an M.F.A.
• CV for a Ph.D. with a prior professional career
• CV for a Ph.D. in the health professions

1.) All employment information should be presented in the same format. We suggest first listing the position, then the employer, city, state, and dates of employment. Very long entries may require modifying this slightly, but it should be maintained as consistently as possible. We would not always suggest emphasizing the position only, but in this case, the current position title is relevant to the candidate's career goals.

2.) We commend this candidate for explaining what he actually does, and what he has accomplished, in his current administrative role. Many of the administrative CVs we received listed position titles only or described the work so blandly that it was impossible to get a sense of accomplishment from the description. Of course people with long administrative careers can't list every achievement, but they can still detail and highlight the most impressive ones.

3.) Given the candidate's goals, the "Curriculum Development" experience is probably more important than the "Teaching and Training" experience, so we would suggest reversing the order of those two sections.

4.) At this point in the candidate's career, all that is necessary to say about the teaching assistantships is the honors associated with them.

5.) Considering that the candidate's research and development experience took place more than a decade ago, and that research is not one of his current career goals, it would be sufficient to list only the positions, employers, locations, and dates, and drop the descriptions of the work done.

6.) The entries under the "Professional Development" section are a judgment call. You certainly shouldn't include every professional-development activity, and we surmise this candidate has not done so, as what he lists is relatively recent. If the heading is preceded by a word like "Recent" or "Selected" or "Relevant," that gives a good logic to include only items that seem highly relevant to a particular job application.

7.) The candidate's presentations and publications are more important than the entries under "Professional Development," so the presentations section should come first.

8.) It's assumed that people attend conferences in their field, so the candidate should not include conferences that he merely attended, unless they were special, invitation-only events, in which case that should be noted. If he gave a presentation at a conference, that would be noted under the presentations section. The degree of professional activity associated with attending a conference is normally indicated by listing membership in the organization on your CV.

9.) In many cases, you might not include the kind of business activity listed here. However, given the priority that community colleges place on maintaining working relationships in the business community, including these items seemed to us a good choice.