CVs for Researchers

Curriculum Vitaes (CVs) are an important tool for individuals to showcase their education, work experience, skills, and accomplishments to potential employers, academic institutions, or other relevant parties. CVs are typically used in job applications, graduate school applications, or applications for research funding, among other purposes. A well-written and well-structured CV can make a positive first impression, demonstrate the individual’s qualifications and experience, and distinguish them from other candidates. It can also serve as a reference document during an interview or review process.

Traditional CV formats are widely used for their concise presentation of a candidate's qualifications, work history, and skills, allowing quick review by employers. The familiar structure is preferred by those seeking a formal job application approach, and it is often required by organisations using applicant tracking systems (ATS) to efficiently scan for keywords and identify relevant candidates.Types of traditional CVs include:

Academic CV
Chronological CV
Competency CV

Alternative CV formats are growing in popularity amongst the research community with relation to funding applications, promotional pathways and stakeholders. Impact CVs emphasise the outcomes, achievements, and significance of a researcher’s work, rather than traditional academic and professional accomplishments. Narrative CVs tell the story of a researcher’s career to showcase unique contributions, expertise, and career achievements to potential employers or funding agencies. Types of alternative CVs include:

Impact CV
Narrative CV

The type of CV you choose to use will depend on your specific career goals, experience, and skills. More details on each CV type below.

Academic CV

An academic CV is a type of CV that is commonly used by academics, researchers, and scholars to showcase their educational background, research experience, and academic achievements.

Emphasizes:

academic publications,
research grants,
presentations,
teaching experience, and
service to the academic community.

Included here are examples using fictional names: Alan MacDonald. Alison Parry. Mike Robinson. Nabi Anwar. Rebecca King. Susan Weaver

Chronological CV

A chronological CV is often used by people with a strong work history in a specific field, such as those with many years of experience in the same industry.
It is a CV that lists your work experience in chronological order, starting with the most recent job or position.

Emphasizes:

your work history,
and shows potential employers the progression of your career.

Included here are examples using fictional names: Alan MacDonald. Alison Parry. Mike Robinson. Nabil Anwar. Rebecca King. Susan Weaver

Competency CV

A competency CV is commonly used by people who are changing careers or entering the workforce for the first time.

Emphasizes:

your skills (highlights your transferable skills),
and competencies (demonstrates how they can be applied to different roles or industries).

Included here are examples using fictional names: Alan MacDonald. Alison Parry. Mike Robinson. Nabil Anwar. Rebecca King. Susan Weaver

Competency CVs may also be called Functional or Hybrid CVs.

Impact CV

An Impact CV is a type of curriculum vitae that emphasises the outcomes, achievements, and significance of a researcher’s work, rather than just listing traditional academic and professional accomplishments. It highlights the researcher’s engagement activities and contributions to their field, and demonstrates the value of their work for employment opportunities, funding applications, promotional pathways, award committees, donors, and research stakeholders.

A pdf outlining possible Impact CV content can be found here, while additional information can be found at the aamri website (including an Impact CV template).

The format of an impact CV can be adjusted depending on the researcher, field of research, institution, or funding body, and likely includes some of the following sections:

Attitudinal impact

Measures of attitudes and outreach that include knowledge exchange and collaboration with other researchers, consumers, community, government, industry, and not-for-profit organisations. It also covers sharing data and materials, and communicating with different audiences through various channels.

Capacity development

Developing researchers and research infrastructure that leads to new or enhanced capacity (physical, financial, natural, human resources, or social capital and connectivity) that is likely to lead to future benefits or make individuals, groups, or organisations more prepared and better able to cope with changes that might otherwise impact negatively on them.

Decision making

When research directly or indirectly informs a wide range of individuals, groups, and organisational behaviours and decisions leading to impacts.

Economic impact

Commercialisation, reducing costs, and socio-economic benefits.

Environmental impact

Benefits from research on genetic diversity, species or habitat conservation, and ecosystems, including the benefits that humans derive from a healthy environment.

Health impact

Improvements in health status, determinants of health, individual risk factors and the health system, saving lives and improving people’s quality of life. It also includes wider benefits, such as emotional, psychological, and economic well-being, and measures of life satisfaction.

Policy impact

Contributions that research makes to new or amended laws, regulations, or other policy mechanisms that enable them to meet a defined need or objective that delivers public benefit to all including government, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), charities, and public sector organisations.

Research translation

Activities and practices that help research create impact. These can be present at multiple levels ie. individual, team, organisation.

Social impact

Improvements in the health of society, including the welfare and well-being of the end users of research and the community.

Narrative CV

A Narrative CV tells the story of a researcher’s career by providing a detailed overview of their experience, education, skills, and achievements. It showcases the researcher’s unique contributions, expertise, and career achievements engagingly to potential employers or funding agencies.

To achieve this, Narrative CVs often use the Résumé for Researchers structured format (Royal Society, 2019) with four modules:

personal details,
contributions to the generation of new ideas, tools, methodologies, or knowledge,
development of others and maintenance of effective working relationships, and
contributions to the wider research and innovation community.

They also provide a space for a personal statement and additional, and have a suggested word limit of 1000 over two pages.

A pdf outlining possible Narrative CV content can be found here, while additional information can be found at the UKRI website (including an Narrative CV template).

The sections below summarise each of the main possible sections within a Narrative CV:

Personal details

This section should start with 2-3 sentences that highlight the researcher’s key messages and achievements before introducing their education, key qualifications, relevant positions, funding obtained, and awards received to provide a chronological overview of their career.

Contributions to the generation of new ideas, tools, methodologies, or knowledge

This section explains how the researcher has contributed to generating new ideas and hypotheses and highlights the key skills used to develop ideas and test hypotheses. The section also showcases the researcher’s communication skills by highlighting the funding received, any awards, and a selection of relevant outputs that demonstrate their impact on knowledge generation.

Development of others and maintenance of effective working relationships

This section highlights the researcher’s expertise that was critical to the success of the team or team members. This includes project management, collaborative contributions, and team support, as well as their involvement in teaching activities, workshops or summer schools, student or staff supervision, and mentoring. Additionally, it should describe the researcher’s local, national, and international collaborations and how their strategic leadership shaped the direction of a team, organisation, company, or institution.

Contributions to the wider research and innovation community

This section highlights contributions to the research community, such as editing, reviewing, committee work, and organizing events. Mention your efforts to improve research integrity and culture. Additionally, it should mention engagement with society, including knowledge exchange, collaboration with industry, and public engagement. Share positive stakeholder feedback, patient involvement, and other research impacts. It also mentions any advice you provided to policy-makers and information disseminated through the press and social media.

Personal statement

This should provide a reflection on the researcher’s overarching goals and motivation for the activities in which they have been involved. Finally, the researcher should mention career breaks, secondments, volunteering, part-time work, and other relevant experiences (including time spent in different sectors) that may have affected their progression as a researcher