Mastering Your Job Application: Writing an Effective Curriculum Vitae and Cover Letter

1. Workshop on Writing EffectiveCURRICULUMVITAE Hassan Bashiri Hamedan University of Technology April 2009

2. Outline • Definition of Resume and CV • Resume vs. CV • Cover Letter • Parts of Cover Letter • Types of CV • The Anatomy of CV • Tips and Pitfalls to Avoid • Reviewing Samples • Questions

3. What is a Résumé? • The French word resume means “a summing up.” • It is a concise, written summary of your work experience, education, accomplishments, and personal background • Self marketing tool to highlight your uniqueness • Personal Ad • Job skills showcase • “Value Added” to future employer • Usually 1 or 2 pages length

4. What is a Résumé? • Positive profile of your personal, educational and experiential qualifications for employment or admission. • It cannot get you a job • A good resume can help you get an interview. • A good interview gets you the job offer • The rest is up to you. • It is a written representation of you!

5. What is a Curriculum Vita? • Comprehensive biographical statement • Not limited to 2 pages like resume • Emphasizes teaching and research activities • Should address faculty roles such as teaching, research, service, professional associations and presentations • Publication is prominent section

6. How is a Curriculum Vita used? • Often used in the field of higher education and concentrates on academic pursuits • Used when applying for grants, fellowships, scholarships and/or other academic awards • Competitive academic admission

7. Resume vs. CV Resume: • From French «to summarize» • Focus on job skills • 1-2 pages long • Used to apply for a job in a business world. • You can scan it by 10 – 30 second CV (Curriculum Vitae): • From Latin «the course of [one’s] life»; • Not held to any particular length; • Used for academic activities, certain professions (Ph.D) • Includes papers published, memberships, etc.

8. What is a Cover Letter? • To cover your resume. • To introduce yourself along with your attached resume to a prospective employer. • To obtain an interview appointment or application. • Creates a desire for employer to read your resume and urges employer to talk with you. • Informs employer of your communication skills.

9. 2 Types of Cover Letters • Letter of application • Targets identified positions • Letter of inquiry or interest • Not directed at any specific job vacancy. • Directed at a school district or school. • Writing and effective CL has some guidelines like resume, we are not going to discuss in detail

10. Types of CV • Chronological • Reverse Chronological • Functional • SUMMARY OF QUALIFICATIONS • An accomplishment that directly relates to the objective. • A quality or characteristic of yours that supports this goal. • Number of years of experience. • Another accomplishment or characteristic. • Combination • Electronic e.g www.irantalent.com

11. How do I get started? • Be familiar with the comprehensive anatomy of CV • Think about categories of the resume or CV • Customize your resume for the job you are applying • Brainstorm what you might want to include • Professional, Vocational, Research Objective • Research Experience and Research Skills • Qualifications, Laboratory Experience • Publications and Presentations • Computer and Technical Skills, …

12. The Anatomy of CV Heading or Personal Information Objective Education Publications • Experience • Teaching • Research • Professional Honors & Awards

13. The Anatomy of CV (Cont.) Professional Memberships Special Skills & Training Presentations & Invited Talks Research Interests References Activities & Hobbies Student Advisement

14. Heading and Personal Information • Name (Usually Bold in Title) • Address – If you have a permanent and local, put both. • Phone number – it’s okay to use your cell phone number. • Email Address – be careful of trendy email address names such as hotstuff@hotmail.com. Using of academic email address is suggested. • Website address • Not add military service status, weight, height, …

15. Mohammad Mahdian 90 WoodAvenue, Apartment #23 TeacherHill, MA 01832 978-212-64447 e-mail: mahdian@cc.mit.edu First Name:HASSAN Last Name:BASHIRI Date of Birth: Home Address: Work Address: Lecturer of Computer Engineering Department, Bu-Ali Sina University, Shahid Fahmideh Avenue, Hamedan, Iran Home Phone: Cell Phone: Home Page: http://home.basu.ac.ir/~bashiri E-mail:bashiri@basu.ac.ir Personal Information: Example

16. Objective • Tells the employer: • what kind of work you are interested in, • what you are hoping to do • Be specific about the job you want. • To obtain an entry-level position within a financial institution requiring strong analytical and organizational skills. • To engage in advanced research and teaching programs of a top ranking university • To work in a Student Assistant position in Info Technology Services. • To become Marketing Assistant in a public relations firm • A research position, preferably in the area of Politicsand International Relationships • To obtain, To acquire, To utilize, To design, To Become, A position

17. Research Interest • Categorize and specify your research interest • Area of research should have enough coverage • Don’t expand it so much • Example: • Information Retrieval • IR Models and Ranking • Matrix Processing (SVD, SDD, LSI, PCA) • Search Engines • Question Answering Systems

18. Education • Describe your academic accomplishments: • Degree you expect to earn, university, and expected date of grad, Institution name and department • Overall or Major GPA • Related course work (if it is reflective of a specialization or is particularly relevant to the position you are pursuing) • List institutions attended in reverse chronological order. • DO NOT INCLUDE HIGH SCHOOL. • List GPA if 3.0 or better, can be in major or overall • Thesis Information (if relevant to the job)

19. Education: Example • M.Sc. (2001-2004): Software Engineering Student, Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran. • CGPA:17.22 out of 20 • Dissertation • Title: Implementation and Evaluation of Latent Semantic Indexing Model for Persian Text Retrieval • Grade: 20 out of 20 • B.Sc. (1997-2001): Computer Engineering Student, Isfahan University, Isfahan, Iran. • CGPA:16.68 out of 20 • Dissertation • Title: Analysis and Design of an Instance System with UML in RUP Software Process • Grade: 19 out of 20

20. Education: Example

21. Awards and Honors • Combinational is a good method (Chronological and Functional) • 2005 • Champion of the 3rd American Open RoboCup Competitions (USOpen05), Jul 2005, Atlanta, USA. • 5th Place of RoboCup WorldCup 2005 Competitions, May 2005, OSAKA, Japan • 2004 • 2nd Place of the 3rd Iranian Open Robotics Competitions, May 2005, Tehran, Iran. • Award of doing effective efforts in ICT Incubator Center of Bu-Ali Sina University as Assistant Director of Center, given by: Vice President of Research and Technology of Bu-Ali Sina University

22. Experience • List work history in reverse chronological order. • Begin descriptive statements with an action verb. • conducted, managed, supervised, determined, implemented, developed, Improved, documented • DO NOT INCLUDE reasons for leaving, past salaries, complete address or phone number for employer, or past supervisor’s name. • Internships and non-paid employment can be listed in this section. It is not necessary to note if they were unpaid. • In CV it is better to classify in: • Research Experience • Teaching Experience • Professional Experience

23. Experience: Example • Research Experience • Head of Persian Information Retrieval Research Group at the Department of Computer Engineering, Bu-Ali Sina University (2003-Present), List of achievements: • Design and Implementation of an Automatic Indexer for Persian Text • Design and Implementation of New Crawling Method named Regional Crawler • Teaching Experience • Lecturer of Modern Information Retrieval, Department of Computer Engineering, Bu-Ali Sina University, Hamedan, Iran, Spring 2006, Spring 2005, Spring 2004 • Professional Experience • Project Manager and Analyst of Xagross e-Commerce Project, Xagross Company, Hamedan, 2003-2004, www.xagross-IT.com

24. Publications • Categorize them • Book, Conference Paper, Journal Paper, Technical Paper, … • Subjective • Reverse Chronological

25. Publications: Example • Information Retrieval • H. Bashiri, F. Oroumchian, Assessment of Query Expansion based on Rocchio Approach in Persian Information Retrieval, 3rd Iranian Journal of Information and Science, September, 2006 (in English) • H. Bashiri, F. Karbalaie, S. Mousavi, Design and Evaluation of Automatic Farsi Indexer for Persian Text, In Proceedings of 11th International CSI Computer Conference Tehran, Iran, January 2006, (in Persian) • RoboCup (Intelligent System) • H. Bashiri, M. Rafaei, RoboSina2006 Team Description, In Proceedings of the 10th International RoboCup Symposium (RoboCup’06), Beremn, Germany, July 2006 (in English) • H. Zarrabi-Zadeh, H. Bashiri, RoboSina2005 Team Description, In Proceedings of the 9th International RoboCup Symposium (RoboCup’05), OSAKA, Japan, July 2005 (in English)

26. Skills • List your related skills • Computer and Language skills are usually required • Computer: • Microsoft office (Good) • Internet and Search (Expert) • SPSS (Expert) • English Language: • Reading, Listening (Good) • Speaking (Fluent) • Writing (Expert)

27. Membership • Member of American Mathematical Society, 2004-present. • Member of Computer Society of Iran (CSI), 2001-present.Member of Meshkat Cultural Association, 1997-present. • Member of Student Council, Department of Computer Engineering, Sharif University of Technology, 1998-1999.

28. Student Advisement • List thesis or research you have advised • Example: • A. H. Jadidinejad, Design and Evaluation of Fuzzy Clustering Method in Persian Information Retrieval, Department of Computer Engineering, Bu-Ali Sina University, In Process, (in Persian) • A. Rezvanian, SABA Crawler: Focused on Persian Web Characterization, Department of Computer Engineering, Bu-Ali Sina University, September 2006, (In Persian) • M. Shokouhi, Regional Crawler, A New Method to Crawling the Web, Department of Computer Engineering, Bu-Ali Sina University, March 2004, (in English)

29. References • Available upon request. • Dr. Farhad Oroumchian Associate Professor Wollongong University Dubai Branch oroumchian@acm.org • Dr. Tom Hayden Dept. of Communication University of Hawaii at Manoa Honolulu, HI 96822 (808) 956-2222 hayden@hotmail.com

30. Tips and Pitfalls to Avoid • Avoid tables, paragraph borders, columns, and fancy fonts. • Avoid trying to indent or center text using the spacebar. Keep all lines left justified against the page, and use line breaks to separate headings and sections. • Make sure all dates are correct. Be prepared to explain any gaps. • List your education and experience in reverse chronological order – from the most current back. • Use key words and action words. • Key words are words used in “professional jargon”. • Use quantifiable numbers. • Wrong: “Helped increase sales substantially while in position”. • Right: “Increased sales by 35% in nine months”.

31. Tips and Pitfalls to Avoid (Cont.) • Check & double check for content flow, grammar, punctuation, redundancy, and spelling • Have a top, bottom, left and right margin • Print on quality white or off-white paper • Have your CV and resume reviewed by expert people • Seek others’ opinions • Proofread– then have someone else proofread • Keep length right (resume: 1 or 2 pages, CV has more)

32. Always: • Be relevant. Stay focused on specifics that relate to the job for which you are applying. • Be positive. Emphasize your strengths, accomplishments (not just responsibilities), and experience. • Be accurate. DO NOT exaggerate or mislead. • Be factual • Be neat. Go for eye appeal. Not too fancy, no colored paper. • Be brief: Don’t be general • Scanned in 10 seconds – make sure important information stands out • Be organized: Create section by section so it’s not overwhelming • Write long on first draft – edit later • Focus on accomplishments, not routine duties • Don’t use without proofreading • Don’t let someone else write it for you

33. Common Resume and CV Mistakes • Including a heading such as "Résumé" or "Curriculum Vitae": not necessary • Including irrelevant information: personal details (age), high school etc. • Format/Style: lack of white space, too narrow margins, loud gimmicky paper or font use. • Ordering of information: not in reverse chronological order. • Excluding information such as phone or email: include on  résumé • Attention to detail: spelling mistakes, grammar and use of consistent tense. 

34. Take a look to some samples …..