Should I start my CV by telling about myself?

Question

Currently, in my CV, the first section is the About me section. It goes like this (I'll reserve the format of the text):

Broad knowledge, is why my friends are proud of me.
Never stops asking questions, is what my advisor values in me.

I wonder if writing like this gives makes me look bad. Will the recruiters see me as a confident person, get a better picture of me (which is the impression I want to convey), or will they see me as just arrogant, lacking self-esteem and paranoid?

Next sections are Education, Research Experience and Activities. They are about one page and a half long.

What do you think? Please be frank. Thank you so much.

---

Thanks to the many people who answered my question, I get that I should save it for the SOP. However, there are some occasions where I'm only asked to send my CV and not a cover letter with it. Should I still keep the "About me" section as a mini SOP in such cases? If it sounds like "platitudes, clichés, and self-compliments" (thanks for being frank, I do need it), how about this idea I just came up with?

I chose science because I want to know everything. I chose physics because I think it is the buttress of other disciplines.

I can make it better later.

Answer 1

1) This is nonstandard, so people are likely to view you as odd, or at the very least unfamiliar with academic norms.

2) On a CV, you should prioritize specific, tangible achievements over things that literally anyone could say about themselves. You say you have broad knowledge, but will anyone believe you? It doesn't do anything to differentiate you from people who could also claim to have broad knowledge. Save that for your letters of reference.

Answer 2

My sense is that broad platitudes, clichés, and self-compliments like the ones you've included are not going to be particularly helpful. I would skip them.

Stick to the basics. There are many websites and templates online that will help give you a sense for what is appropriate and expected. In general, the risk of trying to be creative, especially when you don't have a good sense of your audience or what is expecting, will probably outweigh the potential benefits. If the problem is that your CV is short and weak, there are other questions like this one that might be of some help.

Most importantly, make sure that you have your CV carefully proofread by a native speaker. Both of your two examples sentences are written in poor English. If you put those sentences at the top of your CV, you're going to be sending a message that you probably would rather not.

Answer 3

In a résumé, you want to list facts and what you achieved.

I do not think anybody cares about what your friends think of you.

Those sentences look extremely cheesy because of their structure, in addition to being grammatically wrong. If you write that, you WILL scare whoever reads your CV. They are also useless as they do not mean anything specific and are not verifiable, they do not contain any HR-drone buzzwords either.

I would skip the About Me section, you can list any meaningful hobbies you have under Activities or whatever that means.

If you want to, you can add a "Profile" section at the top, but just do a brief sum up of your professional profile.

Remember that you can write about yourself and how your characteristics would make you a good fit in the cover letter.

Answer 4

This answer will be somewhat U.S. centric. In the U.S., almost everyone except academics makes something they call a "résumé". But people applying for academic jobs make something else that they call a "vita" (a curriculum vitae). There is a significant distinction between the two documents, so if you speak with people in the U.S. you have to be clear which one you mean. And, if someone asks for a vita, you need to get a sense of what they are looking for.

Quoting briefly from Wikipedia's article "curriculum vitae":

"In the United Kingdom, most Commonwealth countries, and Ireland, a C.V. is short (usually a maximum of two sides of A4 paper), and therefore contains only a summary of the job seeker's employment history, qualifications, education, and some personal information. ... In the United States a C.V. is used in academic circles and medical careers as a "replacement" for a résumé and is far more comprehensive; the term résumé (a French word which literally means "summary") is used for most recruitment campaigns. "

A U.S. academic vita is essentially just an objective list of the things you have done in your career. For example, here are vitas for Terence Tao (math) and Julia C. Lee (physics). There is no direct "sell", and the vita is not customized much (if at all) for specific applications. It's just a summary of your life. Sometimes, well-established people make a "summary" vita, which is just a shorter vita that omits less important information. There is very little "personal opinion", and very little to no commentary. "Just the facts."

Answer 5

You should not have just one CV, but you should tailor your CV based on the recipient. The distinction Veblen makes in his answer between resume and vitae is useful to bear in mind (although I do not make this distinction in what follows), and it is also important to bear in mind that expectations about what should appear in a CV vary between countries and industries. For example, CVs in Germany tend to be very long (e.g., I have just edited a German CV that is nine dense pages long), exhaustively documenting every post held, with every committee you served on at each post, every professional society attended, every journal for whom you have refereed, etc; and furthermore there is a strong expectation in Germany that the CV contains only objective information. In the UK, by contrast, CVs are expected to be short, most typically two pages, and it is quite acceptable to list only your most significant places of employment, and to add subjective information, such as what you consider to be your biggest achievement during the period you held a post.

In general, testimonials may be valuable in some applications, but they should be attributed, it should be clear why the testimonial is credible, and they are probably better in your cover letter than a CV, and if you do put them in your CV, I recommend that you have a testimonial section in your CV. They are more acceptable in the US than in Europe.

You ask about occasions where I'm only asked to send my CV and not a cover letter with it - this is a place where putting more and more subjective information into a CV may be useful. It is common for recruiters to want just your CV: be aware that the standard of ethics in the recruiting business is not high and you should not be too dependent on their services.

If in doubt, contact the human resources department of the institution to whom you apply before sending anything. Doing so demonstrates initiative, often will yield useful tips on an unofficial basis, might give you insight into what and how many applications there are for the post, and may help you avoid what the intitution regards as mistakes in a CV.

It is possible to provide supplementary information about your career if you have a page on a website, and provide the URL to this page at the top of your CV. It's common to link to Linked In pages, although bespoke pages offer more flexibility for you to tailor your presentation, include more subjective information, and probably will have higher information density and attractiveness than these networking websites can offer. I do not recommend putting exhaustive information about your career online: this material can be abused.

Answer 6

To me, it seems you are trying to include in your CV the content that belongs to your cover letter.

As previous answers highlighted, a CV is mainly to present actual past achievements. This should be a document that looks as objective, removed of feelings and subjective opinions as possible.

That's why the cover letter is a natural complement to the CV: this is where you present your achievements and yourself in a more human aspect: you describe not only your achievements, but also why and how you did them, how do you work in a team, etc. However, you still have to be, or at least sound like, as factual and professional as possible: the interviewer is not your pal, he/she doesn't want to know what your friends think of you, but how you will handle your work and how you will fit in the professional setting.

This is not to say that you cannot put a bit of subjective info in your CV, for example some people put at the head of the first page (just below the name and contact details) a short description of their academic education and their short-term and long-term goals (eg, "I have a PhD from the Amazing University, and I intend to work in the field of subquantic fields for panoptic pathologies." -- this is total gibberish, but you see the point).

So the bottom line is that if you want to give some insight about you, you should provide a cover letter, do not add this info inside your CV.

Answer 7

When I read a CV, I'm looking for why I should hire you. In particular, I'm looking for two things - how useful you're going to be in the first 90 days (how relevant is your experience right now!) and how easy you will learn things for the next 3 years (how broad is your experience, implying you can learn things as this field changes). I'm in computer programming, but I've found this holds for most fields.

I don't care about what your friends say about you. I care about what you have done. So, skills, experience, then education/other (in that order).

Remember - this is a sales pitch. You are marketing and selling yourself. Anyone who tells you a CV is anything else is wrong.