Open Thread Wednesday: Best CV Formats
ProfHacker 2013-09-04
Fall is already, abruptly, upon us. This is a time when many of us start to think about the job market, tenure review, and all sorts of other adventures on the horizon. If you are like me, your summer to-do list probably included more work than could possibly fit into a few months. One of the fall-preparation tasks I kept postponing is updating my CV. Every time I go to work on it, I feel like something bigger needs to be done: it’s time to format my CV so that it works well online while still fitting academic expectations.
Over the years, resumes have gotten cooler, in large part thanks to technology. There are lots of cool examples of resumes that make good use of the web. Plenty of services cater to the aspiring job seeker: Beyond.com packages resumes as infographics on a LinkedIn-esque community, ResumUP turns a resume into a visual timeline, and Visualize.Me offers themes for formatting existing LinkedIn data as a chart-based resume. One job-seeker, Marcus Fitzek, packaged his resume as a playable adventure game, which is officially the coolest thing ever.
But CVs? The vita seems relatively frozen in time: when I searched my network for cool formats, I came up with next to nothing. There’s plenty of great practical advice. Karen Kelsky offers some rules for CV formatting in print, and Natalie Houston has a great overview of how to create and maintain a CV. Technology definitely does some great things for maintaining a vita. Keeping a CV formatted for print updated online can be as easy as using Brian Croxall’s Dropbox or Jason Mittell’s Google Docs (now Google Drive) solution to maintain one file everywhere. However, design beyond readability rarely factors into the equation.
Shouldn’t we be able to do more? What do you find striking in a great online CV? Share your examples of great CVs, fantastic digital vitae, or your own website profile in the comments.