Build the sections a search committee expects
A curriculum vitae is a complete record of your academic work, so it is longer and more detailed than a resume and it is judged on completeness rather than brevity. The University of Pennsylvania's career services guide lists the sections a faculty CV draws from—name and contact information, education, honors and awards, research and teaching experience, publications and presentations, service, and references—and notes that most doctoral candidates put education first. The University of Illinois Graduate College is firmer: the name and contact block always comes first, and education comes next, regardless of how recently you graduated.
Order everything after those two sections by what matters for the job. UPenn advises paying attention to the position's requirements and the type of school—research institution, liberal arts college, or community college—because the emphasis changes. MIT's career center recommends keeping two versions: an authoritative CV with everything and a tailored CV written for each opening, since material you place higher on the page will stand out more. One caveat Illinois raises: community colleges often prefer a teaching-focused resume, so that format is usually the better choice there.
Make publications, teaching, and research easy to count
Most search committees look for a few specific answers, so make them findable. UPenn lists the questions a committee asks—what is your dissertation topic, have you published, do you have teaching experience, and have you presented at major conferences—which means your dissertation title, adviser, publications, and talks should be easy to locate, with the most important items in the first few pages. Illinois adds that you should include the dissertation title and the name of your adviser or committee, so put that detail in the education section rather than burying it elsewhere.
Separate refereed articles, book chapters, and works in progress as the list grows, use your field's citation style, and describe teaching with the courses you taught and your level of involvement. MIT advises including the goal, your contribution, and the result for each research experience, and notes that many CVs run two to four pages early in a career. For a research-focused position, research experience comes first; for a teaching-focused one, teaching experience comes first. The common mistake is a publication list that is accurate but impossible to scan.
Tailor it to the institution and keep it honest
A CV is a fit document, not a data dump. Illinois suggests learning about the institution's size and demographics and arranging sections by relevance to it, and it says never to include age, sex, race, marital status, or citizenship. UPenn advises including your name and a page number on every page, using simple formatting, and avoiding dates in the left margin so the reader focuses on the experience rather than when it happened.
Only list accomplishments you can discuss in an interview. Illinois notes that anything in the research interests section should be prepared for discussion, and UPenn warns that you should be ready to elaborate on what you claim. Do not inflate a grant, a role, or a forthcoming paper. Ask your adviser and committee members to review the draft for accuracy, then proofread again, because a CV is also a sample of your scholarly care. The common mistake is submitting an industry resume to a faculty search or padding a short record instead of making the relevant work clear.
Sources consulted
This guide is an original synthesis of the following career guidance. Read the source material for its full context.