Political Science Graduate Student Workshop (PSGW)
The First Professional Workshop: Creating Attractive and Effective CVs
Speakers: Professor Melanie Manion, Alice Kang, and Stephan Lavertu
Date: February 26, 2010
Professor Melanie Manion
: You can call it Vita or Curriculum Vitae (make sure put “e” here) and there are five components of CV
1. Strategy: CV is a strategy document that signals how you want to be perceived, the word choice
and its order of contents should be strategic.
2. Truthfulness: it should present facts, but in a strategic way.
3. Clarity: it communicates clearly, and your word choice is extremely important for clarity –
formatting clearly and make your CV clearly (stylish)

For instance, project assistance vs. research assistant: the outside word uses the latter
one.
4. Obsession: obsession is better than overlooking obsessiveness, you want “natural” but contrive
over natural

Using bold, cap, font, underline – everything should be strategically used

Need to use a decent paper, but not the thick one that aren’t folded

Default font: Times New Roman or Calibri – Melanie loves Calibri (it is clear and looks
good) – Times New Roman is more like “soft down” and “academic” – Garamond is like
signaling that you think about it too much (in her opinion)
5. Actual Activities: this determines your job

Publication: extremely important – if you don’t have it, put conference paper – it signals
you are part of the scholar world

Prestigious awards: it signals someone is back on you and your work is worthy

Prestigious school: we don’t need to worry about it because UW-Madison is fine.

Dissertation topic, Method or language skills
: Every CV is tailored differently, depend on what you want to emphasize
: She believes that it should not over 2-pages
: Make sure to place your signal (what you want to emphasize) early in the page
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Political Science Graduate Student Workshop (PSGW)
Alice

As a comparativist, she put her previous experience early in the page (ex) Peace Corse

Your CV can be a reflection of model CVs: she found and looked others’ CVs from other
institution (for the women’s study, she looked up one professor in MN & for the African study,
she looked up others in other universities)

By doing this, you can see what kinds of work she needs to follow, what kinds of journals she
needs to aim at, etc.

Feedback is important: asking comments from your committee members and her sister who is a
graphic designer helped her too

Title of Dissertation: her peer in a writing group helped her to get a tailored title

Synopsis of your dissertation: 200 words in the first papge
Stephan

His CVs was 4-pages long although the final page is about reference (committee members’
contact information)

He used Times New Roman because he wants to “soft down” the methodology (he wants to
emphasize his “policy” interest and strength more than methodology) – Method people never
use Times New Roman

He put his publication in the second page because he wants to emphasize his teaching and
research strengths: here, Melanie and Alice disagree – they believe publications is the most
important one that must be in the first page
Q&A

If you present the same paper in two different conferences, write like: “Title,” presented in
MPSA and SWPA

Stick with one CV: Both Alice and Stephan did not change their CVs for every time they apply –
instead, they changed the “research/teaching” sections & The most important part is your cover
letter: here, you can put the information that fits to your applied school, so doesn’t need to
change your CVs every single time.

Put your working papers: they can see your interests & “under review” and “revise and
resubmitted” are important
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Political Science Graduate Student Workshop (PSGW)

Put better stuffs first!!!! Don’t put “book review” at the top in the publication.

No explanation necessary for Awards or grants: For instance, Meina got NSF and Villas Travel
Grant in 2009 – absolutely, NSF is so important – then, put it at top!!!!!

Don’t go back too far: no information about your undergraduate – just put “summa cum laude”
or something under Education, put your undergraduate scholarship information under EDU

Put your committee members and indicating who is a chair is a good idea: if you put reference
who is outside of UW-Madison, it can be appealing too sometimes – might get a question like
“how do you know this person” in the interview

NO TYPO !!!!!!!! NEVER EVER

Melanie doesn’t like indentation, she prefers “.”
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