As A Bioinformatician, Do You Have A Specific Way To Design Your Cv

Question

[Flow]

I have several publications in JCR journals, so in my CV I list them in the section "publications", subsection "publications in journals". I also have book chapters (subsecion "book chapters") but now I am working in a new computer science group where most of the publications come from proceedings and conferences. I list them in the subsection "proceedings".

How do you do this and you think it can be improved? I ask this since, depending on the field, some points or others should highlighted

And in practice, in which format you edit your CV (I use LyX)? This is also a problem as some applications ofr different funding agencies need to same information to be compiled/supplied in very different format; with or without impact factor information, number of citations, JCR quartile, etc

[Khader Shameer]

I think Bioinformatics career / academic related question should be discussed here in Biostar. As Pierre suggested, question may need some edits - this should be reopen.

[Egon Willighagen]

How is this related to bioinformatics?

[Neilfws]

I think the question is, what problem specific to bioinformatics does this question address? In my opinion, there is nothing "bioinformatics-specific" about CV writing.

[seidel]

Relevance? A look at the view density (views/time) suggests a lot of interest. Maybe interest isn't relevance, but I think info on hiring tips is relevant to a field. Knowing that there is nothing "bioinformatics-specific" about CV writing is indeed information in itself, and so might be asked in a community forum. I've hired bioinformaticists, and know what i think is important, but I have no idea what others think, and found it useful to see the discussion.

[Pierre Lindenbaum]

I would change this question to "As a bioinformatician, do you have a specific way to design your CV"

[Flow]

yes, I wanted to say that in the way Pierre suggests, edited!

[Flow]

to mr. willighagen; this is related to bioinformatics in the way this thing can be improved in the bioinformatics research world. Also, if you do not present your CV in the proper way, you do not get funding, and finally, you can not do research

[Khader Shameer]

Glad to note this is re-opened. IMHO, we should discuss career related questions. This will be much useful for students, post-docs and job-seekers among us.

Answer 1

[Hranjeev]

A while back, I did some research on how to write a CV from a programming job's perspective and I thought of sharing but sorry no specifics here. I came across something that was intended to be humorous but I think it holds some realities to it - refer the pic below. ;-)

And, if you're after an academic or research position, ideally add your journal publications and the proceedings/conferences/books in seperate sections and it is sometimes important to display and sort the journals by ISI Impact factor or Eigen factor.

Answer 2

[Casey Bergman]

I agree with Egon and Neil that this is not a bioinformatics-related question and I previously closed this question as off topic (which still is my view) but re-opened it on request from others in the community.

The only point I can make about an academic CV with relevance to a bioinformatics, is with respect to the issue of journal publications vs. conference proceedings. If you are applying to a post that is being evaluated by a biologist or bioinformatician from a biology (not CS) background, de-emphasize conference proceedings, as most biologists don't understand or value these publications. All they care about is publications in journals with an ISI impact factor. One specific piece of advice is do not list multiple versions of a manuscript published as first as conference proceeding then as journal publication -- to a biologist, this is confusing and looks like you are either self-plagarizing or padding your CV. Only list the final version under journal publications. If you are applying for a post evaluated by a computer scientist, this obviously does not hold, since conference proceedings are the lingua franca of CS.

Personally, I fall into the former camp and don't value conference proceedings as highly as journal articles. Why? In my experience, many conference papers are assembled in a hurry for a deadline, have a light-touch review process (either reject or accept with minimal revision), do not have strong editorial mandate for author compliance with reviewer comments, do not have strong copy editing, are rushed to publication, and do not have strong open source code or data deposition policies. Thus, they typically only provide a sketch of a system that is often neither available for use (without request) or described in detail enough for reproduciblity.

[David Quigley]

+1. I'm glad you re-opened this question and provided particularly helpful feedback because this is valuable advice for someone who is transferring into a biology-centric world from CS. There have been several career-oriented questions posted on the site in the past, and I think it adds a lot of value to have this sort of experience available to people new to the field. Check the number of pageviews for questions tagged "career" to see the level of interest.

[Casey Bergman]

See also the following post for a 2nd opinion on conference pubs: http://theresearchwhisperer.wordpress.com/2011/06/21/how-good-am-i-publication-quality-at-a-glance/

Answer 3

[Neilfws]

The question suggest that there may be something specific to CVs for bioinformatics positions, as opposed to other CVs. This is not the case in my experience.

My advice for writing a CV would be the same for any job application: lay it out neatly and professionally, check for spelling errors, highlight the important stuff and most importantly, address the specific selection criteria. Lastly, don't confuse the short form resume with the longer form CV.