Fatal CV/Resume Flaws
When it comes to job searching, the curriculum vitae (CV) or resume is the most important document that a jobseeker must create. Despite the importance of this document, many jobseekers, especially graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, fail to give them much thought or put much time into creating them. In today’s economy, typos, poor grammar and too much information are certain to cause most hiring managers to take a pass on you as a job candidate. However, as Caroline Potter of Yahoo HotJobs describes in her article entitled “The Biggest Resume Mistakes You Can Make” there are more critical issues that must be considered and addressed when crafting a successful CV or resume.
In the article Ms Potter asserts that “The biggest flaw for a resume (CV) is when it fails to showcase a person’s accomplishments, contributions, and results and instead spouts a job description of each position he’s held.”
To learn more about the things that you ought to avoid when crafting your resume, click here.
Until next time...
Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!!
Unlike PhD-trained scientists, physicians and other healthcare professionals must be licensed to practice medicine and are annually required to participate in continuing medical education courses (CME), seminars and lectures. CME training is required by medical licensing agencies to insure that healthcare practitioners are update to date with the latest clinical practices and informed about medical development within their respective fields. .jpg)
One of the many things that I was not taught in graduate school (or as a postdoctoral fellow for that matter), was how to prepare a resume. Despite opinions to the contrary, a resume is a very important document that must be well organized and carefully crafted. This is because the first thing that every hiring manager sees when looking for new employees is a job applicant's resume. As the old adage goes, first impressions are the most important and the ones that last the longest. That said, it is typically in a job candidate's best interest to have the first impression be a good one. To that end, resume should not be prepared hastily nor should theybe crafted without a substantial amount of thought and consideration. I do not want to get into the nuts and bolts of resume writing in this post. However, every resume should contain the following information:.jpg)
Summer has finally arrived and everyone I know is kicking back, looking forward to their previously planned vacations and enjoying their four day (summer hours) work week. While many folks still have jobs, the unemployment rates are not dropping as quickly as anticipated and large numbers of layed-off and right-sized former life sciences employees are still without jobs. 
After almost a week advising students about the difference between resumes and curriculum vita (for scientists there is no difference), academic vs. an industrial curricula vitae and cover letters at .jpg)
I previously posted several articles on 
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It should come as no surprise to most BioJobBlog readers that scientists are not known for their writing or literary skills. And, for the most part, graduate students in the life sciences receive little or no instruction or training in scientific writing. This wasn’t always the case. When I entered graduate school at the University Of Wisconsin way back in 1974, Joe Wilson, Chairman of the Department of Bacteriology at the time, insisted that all incoming graduate students take a semester-long course in scientific writing. Most of my peers thought it was a colossal waste of time but by the end of the semester we all knew how, in theory, to write a scientific paper, understood the peer review process and if nothing else could write something that resembled a scientific manuscript when asked to do so. I personally learned a lot during the course and thought it was extremely useful. 
Like it or not, writing a carefully-constructed resume or curriculum vitae (as resumes are known in scientific circles) is a vital part of any successful job search. Inexperienced job seekers tend to hastily craft resumes without paying much attention to format, style or content and then wonder why they can’t land job interviews. The best way to approach resume writing is to think of a resume as a work of art–something that requires a lot of thought, creativity and attention to detail. As one well-known professional recruiter and job search expert put it”Trying to find a job without a smart, well-crafted resume is like showing up for dinner at a fancy restaurant in a T-shirt and cutoffs. They won’t let you in.” 
While the economy is showing signs of a possible recovery, the unemployment numbers continue to rise. For this reason, it is a good idea to keep your resume as up-to-date as possible. Yes, I know it is a hassle to update and stay on top of you resume especially if you already have a job. However, in these uncertain financial times, you never know when you might be back on the job market. To that end, I highly recommend a piece on .jpg)
Back in the day—when the economy was sound and jobs were plentiful—an adequately written resume with a sprinkling of keywords and strategically-placed human resources clichés were sufficient to get your foot in the door at most companies. However, in today’s troubled economy where unemployment is rampant, there are certain buzz words and phrases that no longer resonate with hiring managers. According to Liz Ryan, an experienced corporate career advisor who writes for Yahoo Hot Jobs, the following phrases must never appear in a resume if you are a job seeker in today’s market. .jpg)
There is a perception out there that cover letters are old school and that they are no longer necessary when applying for a job. I suspect that this is largely a result of the notion held by many online job applicants that software programs rather than humans evaluate the suitability of prospective job candidates. While this may be true, it never hurts to differentiate yourself from the thousands of others who applied for the same position and didn’t include a cover letter. Further, adding a cover letters allows you to pepper your job application with key words that you may not have been able to squeeze into your resume and may give you a leg up on the competition!.gif)
Last month, 240,000 American workers lost their jobs. Many of these jobs were lost as a result of corporate lay offs and restructuring—things that are likely to continue as we attempt to navigate a course through these financially troubling times. Unlike being fired, lay offs and job losses that result from restructuring have little to do with individual job performances and everything to do with budget constraints and reductions. That said how should a person who is laid off from a job deal with it on a resume when looking for a new job? I found a .jpg)
As much as I hate to admit it, I have been fired at least three times (usually for insubordination or rabble rousing) from jobs in my long and illustrious career. My guess is that anybody who has worked in the private sector has been fired at least once! Of course, nobody ever admits (unless asked) that they have been fired from a job. The point is that many people get fired and if you’re one of the unlucky people who get does fired; you will need to know how to deal with a “termination” on your resume. After all, once you are fired, you will likely need to look for a new job!.jpg)
I became a medical/science writer after a rather circuitous, unconventional and sometimes, checkered career. Along the way, I learned a few things that I thought would be important to share with other PhDs who are seeking to change careers, t broaden their horizons and or simply to bring home a paycheck! I am sure that I missed a few things but here are my top 10 reasons to consider a career in medical/science writing:.jpg)
People who become scientists spend many years learning how to design, conduct, collect and analyze data from the experiments that they conduct. The ultimate goal of this seemingly endless exercise is to craft peer-reviewed publications that either support or refute the underlying hypotheses used to initiate the experiments in the first place. As part of our training, we are repeatedly reminded that it is our obligation to fastidiously and accurately report the results of our experiments and to assume “full ownership of the manuscripts and publications" that we author. The idea of allowing a person who didn’t participate in the design or execution of the research, to craft a manuscript for peer review is something that is virtually unheard of in the scientific community and, in the minds of some scientists, tantamount to scientific misconduct or fraud.
I am sitting in Newark Airport waiting for my flight to San Diego which, not surprisingly, has been delayed for about 2 hours. As you might have guessed from the title of this post, I am on my way to the 2008 FASEB Career Development Symposium which is run every year at the annual FASEB meeting. 
Like it or not, writing a carefully-constructed resume or curriculum vitae (as resumes are known in scientific circles) is a vital part of any successful job search. Inexperienced job seekers tend to hastily craft resumes without paying much attention to format, style or content and then wonder why they can’t land job interviews. The best way to approach resume writing is to think of a resume as a work of art–something that requires a lot of thought, creativity and attention to detail. As one well-known professional recruiter and job search expert put it”Trying to find a job without a smart, well-crafted resume is like showing up for dinner at a fancy restaurant in a T-shirt and cutoffs. They won’t let you in.” .jpg)
Fellow blogger, Jacob Goldstein, over at the 
