Transforming the curriculum vitae as a new practitioner.

Abstract

A well-written curriculum vitae (CV) is an instrumental part of any practitioner’s application for a number of activities, such as employment, a faculty appointment, grants, awards, and committee work. While resources for practitioners regarding general CV building continue to emerge, postgraduate year 2 (PGY2) pharmacy practice residents, other postgraduate trainees, and new practitioners who recently completed residency training are often faced with the necessary task of revamping their CV.1,2 This CV transformation continues into the new practitioner’s career. Many new practitioners find that the rules for CV writing in this stage of their career are unwritten, and frustration often accompanies the first attempt to revise their CV once postgraduate training has been completed. While no gold standard exists to guide a new practitioner in CV writing, this article highlights common ways that the CV transforms as the new practitioner’s career begins. Perhaps the most notable observation when comparing a well-written student’s CV to a new practitioner’s CV is the number of high-impact activities listed. During residency training, new practitioners are likely to add a wealth of “CV builder” activities, and these activities should be weighed against other activities listed on the student CV. The activities that may have dominated a student’s CV are less likely to be as substantial as the accomplishments of the new practitioner and should be removed to make room for these more recent high-quality accomplishments. As such, the removal of information that is no longer pertinent should be a major focus during the initial CV revision for a new practitioner. Another major focus of the transformation commonly involves removing bullet points, paragraphs, or descriptors detailing the activities completed. While these items helped to provide as much detail as possible about a student’s activities to potential residency programs, they only dilute the content of a new practitioner’s CV.