Pharmaceutical researchers and professors in pharmacy must have an up-to-date, professional curriculum vitae, or CV, to find a job. A curriculum vitae is similar to a resume that a worker in the pharmaceutical industry might write, except that it has a special focus on research and academic pursuits such as teaching and giving conference presentations.

Planning Your CV

A curriculum vitae for an academic or researcher in the pharmaceutical industry usually has several headings. Like a resume, the CV will have a heading for your education and employment experiences, but it will also have additional headings. Some headings that a CV for the pharmaceutical industry might include are licenses and certifications, research experiences, publications, courses taught, conference presentations, professional organization memberships, service, skills and conferences attended. You may not need all of these categories, or you may need additional categories because of your wide range of experiences. To determine which categories you need, write a list of all of your experiences related to pharmacy, all of your skills, all of your employment and educational experiences and everything else related to your experiences with the pharmaceutical industry that you can think of. Then, arrange these items into categories.

Writing and Organizing to Highlight Strengths

Once you have a comprehensive list of categories and experiences, you must organize the CV and type it. Arrange the information on the CV to highlight your strongest or most relevant skills. The organization of your CV depends on the type of job you are looking for. For example, if you are applying for an academic job, your CV should list your educational experiences, such as your education and the courses you have taught, before your licences and pharmaceutical industry-related experiences. If you are looking for a job in research, the opposite might be true because your research and employment history in the pharmaceutical industry may be more important than any courses that you have taught in a pharmacy department at a university.

Formatting for a Good First Impression

The formatting of resumes creates the first impression and affects the readability of the documents. Curricula vitae for the pharmacy industry, like resumes, must include clear headings that are easy to skim, as well as sufficient white space. White space makes the resume look more organized and less difficult to read. CVs for the pharmaceutical industry are very plain and easy to read. Use a legible, standard typeface for the main text, such as Times or Garamond. Use a font that is clean and easy to read for your contact information and for the headings, such as Arial or Helvetica.

Revising to Eliminate Errors

Although researchers and professors in the pharmaceutical industry are not expected to be experts in grammar and spelling, you must still make sure that your CV is free of errors. Errors show the hiring committee or human resources manager that you lack attention to detail and professional work habits. Proofread your curriculum vitae carefully. Reading the text out loud can help you to catch some errors, as can leaving the CV for a few days and reading it later. If you find that you can't proofread your CV effectively, ask a friend or colleague to do it for you.