A main purpose of the CV is to quickly attract interest from the reader and to secure an interview. Your CV needs to make the reader want to talk to you and meet you. Imagine yourself auditioning for American Idol. You will have just 1 or 2 minutes to impress the judges. Submitting and presenting your CV to employers and recruiters is often a similar scenario. Many employers have read hundreds of CVs and have many more to read. Your CV may just have 1 or 2 minutes to impress the employers. You should, therefore, have a sharp and flawless CV to present to employers. There should be no typo or poor grammar. In your CV, you should describe your skill sets and your background in a manner that clearly shows your fit for the position. A good CV may not make you; but a bad one will break you.

Below, we list some general guidelines to write a good CV. Please use your discretion and evaluate your own situation to come up with your own winning CV.

Navigation
  CV Format
  CV Content
  Target your audience
  Don't get too technical
  Include Key Words in CV
  Gaps in CV
  Be truthful
  Be concise
  Refresh your CV
  References
  Acknowledgement

A winning CV should be easy to read. We recommend that you save your CVs as Microsoft Word files, which can be easily uploaded into databases. Try to use a font size of at least 11. Avoid special formatting such as headers, footers, multiple columns of texts, and other fancy layouts. These layouts and formats could be bad for uploading into databases, resulting in distortions. While some distortions, e.g. from bold or italic style to normal style, are immaterial and do not affect the integrity of the CV, some other distortions, e.g. rearrangement of items and missing information, may cause more serious harm and make your CV difficult to read.

USEFUL TIPS FOR FORMATTING:
- - Use CAPITAL LETTERS to highlight important items.
- - Use spacing to separate items.
- - Bullets, italics, and bold styles can help you organize and highlight your points. If you are submitting resumes to employers directly without uploading into databases, then by all means use these techniques. If you need to upload your resume into a database in order to apply for a position, be prepared that the bullets may be converted into other symbols and that italicized and bold styles are converted into normal styles. When uploading into databases, consider using the dash and/or the plus sign instead of bullets. Dashes and Plus signs are less likely to be distorted than bullets.
- - Use punctuation marks wisely to separate phrases and statements.

Organize your CV in distinct sections, each section with a specific title. Some typical sections are:
(a) Name and Contact Information
(b) Career Goal or Objective
(c) Academic Background/Education
(d) Employment History
(e) Other Qualifications, Activities, Honors, and Awards
(f) Publications
(g) References

We have seen many CVs with this very critical information missing. An employer will not be able to contact you if there is no name or contact info. If certain websites ask you specifically not to include your name and contact info when uploading your CV, then remove this section only for these websites. Otherwise, always include this section.

Start with your name and then your contact info. Your contact info should include address, telephone number, and your email. Don't forget your email! Email is the primary way of communication these days. If you are a student and your college email address may become invalid in the near future, consider using a more permanent email such as a gmail or yahoo account. That way, employers will still be able to contact you after your graduate.

If you are not comfortable giving your full home address, at least show your city and state. Your geographic location helps the employer figure out quickly whether relocation would be necessary. If you are not comfortable receiving calls or emails at work, then use your personal phone and email address.

JOHN DOE
123 Jane Doe Street, Boise, ID 12345
123-123-1234
john_doe@gmail.com

(i) To be a successful business development executive in a contract research organization.
(ii) To be a key biologist in a drug discovery team.
You need to change this statement from application to application so as to target your audience. For example, do not tell employers that you want to be a successful business development person when you apply for a research position. If you upload your resume into a general database for multiple job applications in different fields, then consider omitting the Objective.

(c) Academic Background. In this section, describe your degrees. A reverse chronological order is often used because your most recent degree is likely to be the most relevant for the job. List the institutions you attended, their locations, your majors, the degrees earned or being earned, and the time periods.

If you are a seasoned professional, this section is less important. If you are a recent graduate, then you need to put in a lot more detail. Be sure to include special recognitions scholarships or awards, e.g. Cum Laude, John and Jane Doe Scholarship, GPA (if above 3.0), etc.

For example,
JOHN DOE COLLEGE, Boise, ID    BACHELOR OF ARTS    (Sept 2003 – July 2007)
- - Double major in chemistry and math
- - GPA: 3.9, Dean's List
- - Jane Doe Scholarship
- - Represented college in national math competition; placed third overall.

In the example above, note how capital letters help the name of the college and the degree earned stand out. A few spaces between the college's name, degree earned, and the time period further help readers visually separate these key items.

(d) Employment History. In this section, describe your employment history. Include the names of your employers, the locations, your titles, and the time periods. Because your new employer would be most interested in learning what you have done recently, we recommend that you use a reverse chronological order, starting with your current or most recent job. In each position, describe the job nature and highlight your accomplishments. Be sure to describe the impacts you made, e.g. developed an assay to screen thousands of compounds, finished a complex 15-step synthesis, increased the revenue of the company by 40%. Try to be as concrete as possible. If you are a manager, highlight your managerial skills and mention the size of your team. A few succinct sentences are normally sufficient for each position.

Examples:

JANE DOE CORP, Boise, ID    BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER    (Oct 2006 – present)
- - Led the business development efforts in the western region of the USA
- - Brought in over 40 key accounts in 2 years, directly resulting in a 50% increase in revenue
- - Launched a nationwide marketing campaign with new branding and promotional materials

JOHN RESEARCH LABS, Boise, ID    SENIOR RESEARCH FELLOW    (Jan 2004 – Oct 2008)
++ Led antiviral R&D programs and managed a research team of 30 scientists
++ Discovered 5 leads from screening; moved 1 compound through IND to Phase 1 Trials
++ Co-author of 10 peer-reviewed publications; co-inventor in 10 patent applications.

(e) Other Qualifications, Activities, Honors, and Awards. Use this section to describe any relevant skills, and sometimes even your personal achievements to show your personality traits that may help you stand out. e.g. Special Nurse Diploma, Completed CFA Levels I and II exams, National Chess Champion, Volunteer in Boise Biology Society.

(f) Publications. List your publications and patents in a systematic manner. If you have a very long list, it may be a good idea to select a few while specifying that the full list of publications is available upon request.

(g) References. You can choose to list your references as long as employers can contact them without your permission. Otherwise simply state "Available upon request" or omit this section, but do have the references ready in case employers ask for them later.

Different jobs call for different qualifications. When you apply for a particular job, highlight your most relevant qualifications for that job. In this regard, you may want to have several versions of your CV ready, including one for general upload into resume databases and some others targeting specific types of positions. Suppose you are a chemist and a registered patent agent. If you are applying for an organic synthesis job, use one CV with a special emphasis on your skills in organic synthesis among your other skills. On the other hand, if you are applying for a patent agent position, then use another CV focusing more on your experience in patent prosecution and drafting.

If you have many talents, it is natural for you to want to mention all of your skills. However, the employer is most interested in what you have to offer to the company.

One common problem with scientific and technical candidates, particularly Ph.D.s, is that their CVs contain too much scientific detail and jargon. Their CVs become incomprehensible to most, except those who are experts in their fields. This kind of very technically oriented CV may be acceptable if you know that you are submitting directly to personnel with strong scientific or technical backgrounds. However, most of the time, your CVs will go through a screening round conducted by the HR people, most of whom may not understand all the jargon. They are in the HR department, not in the science or technical department which you are applying to. Therefore, it is to your advantage to submit a CV that is easily comprehensible to a lay person. Ask an educated friend, who is not in your field, to look at your CV. If his/her immediate response is "huh?", then you need to make your CV simpler and more comprehensible.

Have your technically oriented CV ready. Once you pass the HR round, you can inform the HR that you do have a more technically oriented CV to forward to the science or technical department. Again, target your audience!

In your generic CV that you have designed for database uploading, be sure to include the important key words in your target field. Employers often do key word searches on resume databases to find candidates. So ask yourself what kind of key words they would use to find a candidate such as yourself. Then, try to blend these key words into the contents of your CV. However, don't over-use the key words otherwise your CV may look awkward. Blending in key words is a special skill in CV writing.

Similarly, if you are sending your CV in response to a specific job posting, read the title and the description of the job carefully. Then, blend in the important key words in your CV to allow the employer to find you easily. For example, if the job title reads "Cancer Assay Kit Sales Manager", try to include "cancer assay", "assay kit", "sales", and "manager" somewhere in your CV to target this job specifically.

Time gaps in a CV can raise red flags. Employers often wonder what happened during these gaps. If at all possible, try to avoid gaps in the first place. Otherwise, be prepared to do some explaining. You can use a well-written cover letter to explain why there are gaps in your resume. For example, you took time off to have children or to care for an elderly parent.

Don't lie or exaggerate! Even if lies and exaggerations may get you the job, they may prove detrimental to your career later when your lies are revealed. State the facts! One benefit for stating the facts is that they are easy to remember.

A simple rule: less is more. Do not put down everything you have done. Rather, focus on the highlights. For many good CVs, 1 to 2 pages are sufficient. In a job, you are often required to give presentations which need to be succinct. Your CV is the first test for an employer to determine whether you can present yourself in a clear and concise manner. Leave the details to phone or live interviews. If the employers want to find out more, they will contact you to get the details.

Update your CV every time you have new material, e.g. new accomplishments, new volunteer activities, new publications, and new degrees.

If certain well-known people offer to give you references, by all means include an extra "References" section in your CV to put down their names. This will help add credibility to your application. However, make sure that they actually know you and can talk about you in sufficient detail.

We hope that these general guidelines will help you build your own winning CV. Whether you are applying for pharmaceutical jobs, biotechnology jobs, science jobs or medical device jobs, ePharmaExpo.com wishes you the best of luck! Please join us in our new Linkedin group "Pharma & Life Science Mixer".

We thank Meredith Dow of Proven, Inc. and Dean Hansen of Discovery Solutions for helping us put together these CV guidelines for our job seeking visitors.