the academic CV

[lookingouttosea]

Thank you to all who replied to my post the other day on confidence looking for jobs. It was so helpful.
I wonder could I ask you all something? I'm re-jigging my CV for academic positions since I'm finishing up my PhD and many jobs advertised now for Sept.
One thing confuses me.
I essentially moved from one area of study/work to a completely different one over the course of 15 years. Should I include the bits of research experience I have through that other area? It has precious little to do with my current field of study, although where links can be made I have tried to emphasise them.
Basically I had a couple of reports/papers that I complied/helped compile for organisations (NGOs and public sector) that I worked for, mostly for internal use but some that are published on their websites. Does that count?
Otherwise I'm afraid the "publications" section of my CV looks rather empty!
Thanks :-)

If applying for academic positions, then include anything & everything you ever wrote (I include a magazine article about a hobby of mine). Even if it's just grey literature or unpublished reports (but still something paid for & used for policy- or decision-making, as long as you used analytical skills to produce it). Organise your skills & experience presentation part of CV to spin as strongly as you can your evidence about how you fit what you think they are looking for. You can do all that successfully, even if the pubs list isn't very long.

I jumped areas (Science X to medical research) successfully. I customise CV & cover letters for each job applic, according to what I think they'll read & look for.

Yes, absolutely you should include them - any publication demonstrates that you can analyse material and write it up and that someone else thought it worthy of putting it out there or using it. You might want to have section entitled "Commissioned Reports" if that works with your cv?

do you have any academic publications from your PhD? if so, put those first in the 'peer-reviewed publications' section, and then have a second section on 'other publications' and include all the previous bits of writing. This makes it clear that you have done all this writing but you recognise that is it not peer-reviewed.

I hate seeing a CV that mixes up real academic publications with other stuff (commentaries, magazine articles etc). To me it looks like padding and I am more likely to distrust the applicant.

I agree with parietal. I'd add that you should give page span, to give a sense of the length of the publication. Try and not pad out with public talks - or, at least, list them separately if they're not written up. Basically, as a recruiter, I want to see your peer-reviewed papers and articles (perhaps posters if appropriate to the discipline) as a separate entity from oral presentations, talks, book reviews etc., the latter which should drop off the list once it's comprehensive enough to stand without them.

If you can get together a page of contributions, I would have a separate publications page as well as your cv with headings to indicate the type of work eg

Articles/Book chapters/Commissioned Reports/Book Reviews/Conference Papers/presentations (adjust as appropriate to your discipline).

Thank you all for your replies. Its only recently I've realised how little (um, zero) time I've devoted to any kind of professional development over the last four years of this PhD. I have no publications from it, peer reviewed or otherwise, no posters, no conferences. Just a couple of semesters of possibly-dodgy teaching.
I had two very difficult pregnancies and a some other disruptive life events so I just had to concentrate hard on not just dropping out altogether. I thought to myself: finish first, think about all that later. Problem is my scholarship runs out this year and I'll need a job thereafter but all of them require much more than a nearly-finished PhD. I'm working on making my past life/work more relevant.
I swear though, there reaches a point in your life (I'm 38) where your CV is just painful to look at.
Thanks again

can any of your phd chapters make a stand-alone publication? If so, turn the chapter into a paper asap (cut & paste is fine) and get it submitted. then you can list a 'submitted' paper on your CV.

There is no point in listing papers 'in prep' on a CV because 'in prep' could mean 3 years from being submitted. but seeing a list of 'submitted' papers on a CV from a just-finished-phd person is useful in knowing that person can complete the academic writing process.

Are you in a discipline where you could join a team that could be publishing soon?

@parietal yes I think I can do this. There are chapters/sections in my thesis that can be relatively quickly turned into papers but what's holding me back is getting last-minute checks/edits from my supervisors. I still have some edits to do so I'm assuming I'd better do them to their specifications before sending anything off. Plan to during the summer. It sounds crazy but I just keep getting ill at the moment! Since having my baby in January I've had one thing after another. Just recovered from stomach flu! This on top of having no childcare is just a NIGHTMARE in terms of getting anything done. Currently sending job applications while breastfeeding baby and with Peppa Pig blasting (I know, its late for Peppa but needs must!)

@ghislaine to be honest nobody knows I exist and circumstances keep landing on me that keep it that way. I'd love to get more involved in things I just lack time and childcare. Not sure if that's why nobody suggests anything to me...or my distance from my university geographically. I've started trying to reach out to people more but it can be difficult to break in. Thanks for the reply