Academic CV example (postdoc to lecturer)

How long an academic CV should be

Forget the two-page rule. An academic CV is a record, and hiring panels expect every publication, grant and teaching role on it. A PhD student applying for a postdoc might have two or three pages. A postdoc going for a first lectureship, like Tomasz above, usually lands at three to five once the full publication list is in. The example here shows a shortened version with selected publications; on the real thing, list them all.

Length is fine. Padding is not. Each line should be something a panel member might ask about, and the first page still has to do most of the work, because that is where a busy reader decides whether to keep going.

The standard order of sections

UK academic CVs follow a fairly settled order. You can move sections up or down for a particular post (see below), but a reader should find each one where they expect it:

1. Name, current post, contact details, and your ORCID iD or a link to your university profile.
2. Education, most recent first: PhD with thesis title and funder, then your first degree and classification.
3. Employment, including postdoctoral posts, fellowships and any relevant work outside universities.
4. Publications, split by type and status.
5. Research funding, with the funder, amount, dates and your role.
6. Teaching, then supervision.
7. Talks and conference presentations, with invited talks listed first.
8. Service, citizenship and public engagement: committees, peer review, seminar organising, outreach.
9. Referees, or a note that they are on the application form.

A short research profile at the top, three or four sentences on what you work on and what you want to build, helps panel members from outside your field. Keep it factual. Your cover letter and research statement carry the argument.

Listing publications

Pick one citation style used in your field and apply it to every entry, down to the punctuation. Inconsistent references on a CV look careless to people who spend their working lives checking references. List all authors in the published order and put your own name in bold on the real document, so a reader can see your position at a glance.

• Separate peer-reviewed articles from book chapters, reports, datasets and conference proceedings.
• Within each group, list newest first.
• Label status honestly: published, in press (accepted), under review. "In preparation" means very little to a panel, so use it sparingly and only for work that is close to submission.
• Add a DOI to each published item so reviewers can find it quickly.
• If your field uses equal first authorship or alphabetical author order, add a line explaining the convention.

Funding: amount, funder and your role

Grants show a panel that other reviewers have backed your ideas with money. Give the funder, the title, the amount awarded, the dates and your role: principal investigator, co-investigator or named researcher. Small awards count at postdoc level. A travel grant or an early career pilot grant where you were the principal investigator proves that you can write a successful application on your own, which is what a lectureship will ask of you. Unsuccessful bids that were highly rated can go in a cover letter, not on the CV.

Teaching and supervision

Be specific about what you taught and at what level. "Teaching experience" is vague. "Four lectures a year in a third-year environmental analysis module, plus the assessed data exercise" tells a head of school you can take on part of a module from day one. Lab demonstrating, tutorials, marking, module design and online teaching all belong here, each with the level and roughly how many students.

Many UK universities ask new lecturers to gain a teaching qualification or fellowship if they do not have one. Advance HE awards fellowship in four categories, from Associate Fellow to Principal Fellow, assessed against the Professional Standards Framework. If you already hold one, list it. For supervision, give numbers and levels: undergraduate projects, MSc dissertations and any PhD students you co-supervise.

Tailoring for research-led and teaching-led posts

Read the job description and the person specification closely, because they tell you how the post is weighted. A lectureship at a research-intensive university usually weights publications, funding and your research plan heavily. The Research Excellence Framework, the UK's system for assessing the quality of research in universities, is part of the context panels work in. A teaching-focused post, or a lecturer post on a teaching and scholarship contract, weights teaching quality, curriculum work and student support more.

• Research-led post: publications and funding straight after employment, with your strongest outputs flagged.
• Teaching-led post: move teaching and supervision above publications, add module design, assessment and student feedback work, and include any fellowship.
• Both: keep the profile at the top in line with the post, and mirror the essential criteria in the wording of your sections.

What goes with the CV

Most UK academic posts are applied for through the university's own online system. Expect to upload a CV and a cover letter, and often a research statement, a teaching statement or a supporting statement against the person specification. The CV holds the facts. The other documents explain what those facts add up to and what you will do next. Do not repeat long passages between them.

Where academic CVs go wrong

• A publication list in three different citation styles, pasted from different places.
• Teaching described in one line, when the post is half teaching.
• Grants listed with no amount, dates or role, so the panel cannot tell whether you led them.
• Conference attendance listed as if it were a presentation.
• An industry-style two-page summary that leaves out outputs the panel wants to count.
• No research profile, so a reader outside your subfield has to guess what you work on.

Pay for lecturers

The National Careers Service gives an average of £37,000 for a starting higher education lecturer and £65,000 for an experienced one. Universities set pay on their own grade scales, and the advert states the grade and range for the post.