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Post date: Oct 22, 2010 9:47:48 PM
“Sixty-three percent of all jobs are found through networking. A good resume with
networking is a winning combination.”
Robin Ryan
The first thing you require when you enter into final stages of your biotechnology education is a good resume or Curriculum Vitae (CV) or biodata. This document is most important in your search trials either it is a summer training/project work/PhD position or a job as it is a mirror which provides an overview of a person's life and qualifications. Due to globalisation and wide spread of internet, it has become important that you have a well constructed CV or resume in your arsenal. It is typically the first item that a potential employer/supervisor/ lab manager encounters regarding the job seeker and is typically used to screen applicants, often followed by an interview, when seeking employment or position. In general, it is your mouth in paper form which speaks for you and earns a personnel interview. Technically speaking biodata is similar to resume (especially in south east asia), but in western sphere, biodata is technical document with objective, work history, salary information, educational background, ethnicity, family background physical attributes, such has height, weight, hair/skin/eye color, photo.
Resume: Resume is a document highlighting experiences and credentials that are most relevant to the desired position. It typically directs a reader's attention to the aspects of a person's background that are directly relevant to a particular position. Resume formats, order, complexity and simplicity of various form occupation to occupation, experience and level of person.
A Curriculum Vitae, commonly referred to as CV, is a longer (two or more pages), more detailed synopsis resume. The fundamental difference between the resume and CV is the content, length, and purpose. CV includes a summary of your educational and academic backgrounds as well as teaching and research experience, publications, presentations, awards, honors, affiliations and other details. The primary aim of CV is not only just to give your information for the employer to decide for a job. In short, it is your autobiography with much emphasis on your educational, technical skills. It is a mirror image of you, as it represents the best you have to offer to your employer. Your hopes and dreams for the future largely depend upon your resume. If you do not want to miss out any job then your CV should be near to perfection. Not only that your CV should be little bit different and should create interest and enthusiasm in the mind of the employer to read from first to last line in the CV.
Remember a bad CV could be very harm to your chances of employment and can suggest bad things about you (lazy, muddled, Mr. Average); whilst a good CV creates a positive image and could show that you are organised, flexible and conscientious. Thus it can help significantly in earning you an interview. Fortunately, the impact of your CV continues to even after it has obtained an interview for you. It can help you at an interview by carefully focusing the interviewer's mind on your good points and on your achievements.
Once you have left the interview it will continue to work in your favour as the interviewer will probably reread it before making a decision, either on who should be invited to the second interview stage or whom the job should be offered to. Not only that even when it comes to salary negotiations, a well-written CV can help. If your CV conveys your full worth you are likely to get a higher salary offer than you might have done with a poorer CV.
One important mistake that is usually done by most of the applicants is submitting a CV spanning more that 4 page. You are asked to submit CV not your autobiography. It is usually best to try and keep your CV to three pages of A4, unless someone specifically asks you for a longer CV. If you cannot keep your CV to this length then you probably have not understood an employer's requirements. Employers do not want to know your whole life history - just enough to decide whether they should hire you or not. There exists a delicate line between the information to be written in the CV and not. In pursuit to keep the C.V less than 3 pages a lot of people do not include enough details about their previous jobs and experience and an employer therefore does not have enough information - they will therefore have to reject your application.
Given this situation, now the question is what should be included and what should not include in your CV. For sure, the best accepted format is not to include the following items in your CV , age, Photos, Salary information , weight, height, health, or any other personal information that is irrelevant to your application,
Most people just ask commercial companies to write a CV for them by paying some money. I personally dislike it, as it is you who know better about you. If you can’t tell others about yourself in an appeasing manner, then how can you tell about research and write scientific articles in future. Hence spending time on writing your CV is worth full. If using a computer is one of your worst nightmares, then you will have to pay someone to do this for you. If you get someone else to prepare your CV make sure they are using advanced word-processing package, such as Microsoft Word, WordPerfect or adobe page maker and printed on a high quality laser printer. Dot matrix or inkjet printers are not really good enough and the ink from an inkjet tends to smudge fairly easily.
Preparing the CV:
Before you write your CV try to look at CV of the other persons. Try to analyze why some CV are rejected even though the candidate is well worth in education and knowledge required for the position. A major misconception among the Indian students think that content of the CV is important and not the appearance. Of course the contents are important, even the appearance make an impact on your future employer. First impression really matters; if your CV does not attract the reader's attention in the first 20- 30 seconds then your chances of obtaining an interview are greatly reduced. If a CV is not well organized then the reader will get distracted, thus it hard to follow and will not be able to build up a picture of you quickly. Remember the reader will not spend very long time looking at your CV - so if they cannot find what they want they will not bother to read any further. Employers expect to find the required information with a very minimum effort on their side. Hence the visual layout and wording you use in CV is very important. I really don’t what to say that you should design a colourful CV, with fancy patterns/borders - which looks like a movie poster or an advertisement on the roadside. I want to say that use appropriate format, order with headings and section breaks with lot of (around 20%) 'white' space in your CV.
Writing a CV is not a simple job it requires a lot of dedication, presentation skills, tactics of convening the rightful message to a large group of people with minimum words. Hence before you write, take time to do a self-assessment on paper. Outline your skills and abilities as well as your work experience and extracurricular activities. You will probably not use all this information in your CV but it will provide you with useful reference material and frame work, when it comes to preparing for interviews. Once you have collected the information about various aspects, start to write the rough draft. The first information you provide is “what is the document they are going to read” in the form of title, as there are lot of papers that are lying around them”. They should instantly know so that they can have a preformed idea about what to look for in the document. The words Curriculum Vitae are usually abbreviated to CV or C.V. and you will sometimes see it incorrectly written in lower case as c.v. or cv. The plural form of Curriculum Vitae / CV should be written as Curriculum Vitae's or C.V.'s or CVs, but not as c.v.'s or cv's. Of course it looks strange for some readers, but I have seen a lot of CV with this basic error, especially just passed out post graduates. Remember, your first impression should be memorable and stand out from the competition as a winner. Your CV should be first in the file for your meticulously well written CV rather than last for your sloppiness.
The first personnel information you provide is your full name, address, home and mobile phone number etc., it looks strange for you to read this sentence. But it is true that you should be careful to these items as they are going to be included in the database of employers and all the communication stating from the interview call to the offer letter comes. Hence a small mistake can lead to catastrophic effect to your life. Add your e-mail address as many employers will find it useful. Try to choose an e-mail address that sounds professional, not like some fancy thing e.g myfunlife@xx.com, lifeonroad@xx.com etc. If you have created web pages for yourself try to place the link if the web page reflects your professional ambitions. It shows to the employer that you are using the modern technological innovations and moving along with the time instead of being out modeled.
If you are applying for a position in aboard, then you should include the nationality and marital status to be on safe side. However, no matter how much you are tempted you should abstain from telling lies. Keep in mind that it takes years to earn the respect faith, but in seconds you will loose it. Hence it is better to be sure and truth in your information, rather than sorry. This rule is not applicable to any sort of failure - exams, marriages, businesses, etc , negative points –lets keep them for the interview , where you have a choice to explain them as positive point. But be prepared to answer any such question without getting apprehended .
The next information you provide should answer your employer question “why should I invite this person for an interview”. For this reason a short summary of your capabilities and/or a list of your major achievements can often be a good idea. E.g “An enthusiastic, recent graduate with excellent communication and interpersonal skills gained from a degree in biotechnology and chemistry looking for a position in research group. Willing to undertake any training and development need to meet the requirements of the post”. This should make an employer want to invite you for an interview - but please be careful that you do not oversell yourself.
After your personal information then present your educational qualification, try to organize your qualification into 2 groups, first the degree you earn in chronological order e.g. M.Sc, B.Sc, 10 + 2, and second group are degree you earn on the side track or by part time study along with your routine education e.g diploma degrees. If you have foreign language skills, which may be relevant for any jobs, please list them and indicate whether your skills are spoken, written, business or technical. Please also indicate your level of fluency: fluent, good working knowledge, etc. You should only list these skills if they are relevant to the jobs you are applying. The order and emphasis depends upon the position for which you apply. If you are applying for position, based upon your qualification obtained by your part time study then add it in the first, so that the reviewers don’t put your C.V in side by assuming you as a candidate not fitting in basic eligibility criteria. Then list out your qualifications, membership of professional associations and professional ID numbers. List any work related training courses, which you attended, including company courses and any you attended on your own initiative
The next important section is work experience, as an employer will only invite you for an interview only after going through it and if he/she see a benefit in doing so. For this reason it is vital that you think carefully about your work experience and achievements. Your achievements may sell you to an employer and make them choose you for an interview rather than someone else. Always try to include your work experience in the reverse chornological order i.e, last job first then the job before that. Usually it is wise to include the two most recent jobs (unless you were only there for a short time), because employers are usually most interested in these. If you have been working for a number of years you probably do not need to include any part-time jobs, vacation jobs, voluntary work or unpaid work experience. But other wise it is wise to include them if you are fresher as it shows your dedication to your job and the society. In writing your job experience, you should first list your job title (e.g. Research assistant, Ph.d student) then the address where you have worked. It is wise to include a short description of main responsibilities,
achievements, duties, and skills that achieved and that you could transfer to another employer.
The basic point in CV writing is that it should not lose enthusiasm of the reader to read. When you write your achievements, be specific and positive about your skills; write only 1-3 of your most important work achievements, not a long list. Try and keep your sentences short and punchy and use bullet points to break up the text under section headings. You need to shout about your achievements. If it does not tell an employer why they should employ you have failed. Your CV should be carefully checked for such spelling and grammatical errors before you send it out to employers. Tiny errors in your CV can distract and show a quality that you are lazy or careless, which you are not in real sense. Don’t try to depend upon the spelling check software to do your job. Because some words can be misspelled, but the software doesn’t recognize it e.g filed and field. As you will probably be 'blind' to these errors you should get someone else to check your CV for grammar and spelling errors.
The next most important section is the reference. Here you should include the names of your teachers who are well versatile with your educational and scientific skills. The most important is to include the names of the persons who can promptly reply in your favour when asked for by your future employer. It is not wise to ask a person who is very busy and keep you recommendation letter on his table for days and months. Hence be wise in choosing you referrer.
Editing the CV:
Always ask for a proof copy of your CV so that you can check that it meets your needs. When you are happy with it you should get at least one other person to check it over and give you some feedback. You should then re-draft it and show it to them again. You may need to do this several times before you are completely satisfied with the final version.
In some instances, few companies prefer not to receive a CV at all in application, but rather ask to upload the information in application form which is either online or given of document. The reason behind this step is to standardize the information they receive, as there will be many variables within a CV which are unnecessary for the company or confusing due to use of different terms or often critical information needed is missing. If a company prescribes a set format, stick to it, irrespective you like or not. If you feel that they is no columns to give the information which you feel might be important for the job, you can add that in the section “extra information or attachments”
Sending your CV
Online mode:
With the wide spread of internet, everyone is having access to emails and other mode of data transfer. I presonnelly like to use this mode in first hand than regular mail as is fast, cheap and does not require you excessive effort in the sense of time and money. By sitting on Internet for an hour you can apply to as many jobs as possible. Not worthy advantage is that your employer thinks that you are inclined to learn new techniques and you are not old fashioned and out of date.
However to the high technology involved and variation in the operating system or version used by the sender and receiver, one should not be careful during preparing the CV, but also while sending your application online. When you send your CV through email, always try to send you application as attachments with cover letter in the message area of mail, unless they ask you send my regular post, as it is easy for the employers to keep your records in their database. One more most important things is when you make your CV try to use font such as Arial or times new roman, as they are widely inbuilt with operating system and most likely to work. If you use a font which you like might not be in the computer of other person. In such as case, your mail is shown as corrupted or virus infection. Ideally your files should open in any type of computer working with any operating system such as windows, MAC or linux. Usually the look of the CV change when opened in different system, it is difficult to keep the arrangement when you send your files in word document format. Hence i would recommend to send your CV as PDF format, as this format remains same universally. There are some free software’s available to convert your doc into PDF document.
By regular postal mail
In some cases especially in the government sector, they usually ask you to send the application by regular mail along with some fee. When you are sending your covering letter and CV printed on good quality brilliant white paper and send it in an A4 envelope rather than folding it. In such a case you should show an extra care about what you are sending, do not use poor quality photocopies/Xerox of your CV - they make it look as though you are sending off your CV to lots of companies and that you may not be too bothered whom you work for. Usually student due to their strict economical restrictions try to make copies of the covering letter with an empty space in the “to” address. They fill in by hand the area of “to” address for each company they send. Of course this can save you some money, but it directly sends information that you are trying for a lot of companies. To be frank, it is an open secret that you will apply for hundreds of jobs before you land in job with satisfaction. But let this be in your mind but don’t show it to your future employers by your sloppiness. Now a day the cost of laser printing has come down drastically, so you can print a new covering letter for each company you apply. Of course you will change only the “to” address and few corrections such as the title of the position, but the rest of the matter will be same. Just don’t concentrate your interest in this area, give a critical look at the whole matter. As if there are some left over words in the letter, which can send a wrong message.
Conclusions
Resume or C.V. is a document, which describes your technical and personal qualities for your future employer. Your success on the job highly depends upon your presentation skills and approaches you use to guide your reader to show you’re worth full.
By
Mukesh Pasupuleti, University of British Columbia, Canada
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