@Pandya These things are somewhat country-dependent. For example a typical German CV wouldn’t even make it past the basic checks in the US and vice versa.
@CaptainBohemian If you wish to apply in different countries, I strongly recommend that you do not blindly send them the same CV (or even same style of CV), but learn about the target country’s application culture first. Of course, this matters less in academia due to its internationality, but there are still certain hard criteria that could cause trouble.
I only write English CV to send. I only know Chinese and English, but it's like I have never written Chinese CV, or maybe I have written but I forget.
Well, I mainly send CV to universities or research institutes, so I assume they all understand English.
but I used to get an experience that when I sent my application documents all in English for a teaching assistant position in a university, I got the reply: We just need a person for teaching assistant and thus you don't need to brag your English ability.
sorry, I may use brag gramatically wrong. I mean boast.
@CaptainBohemian That has nothing to do with grammar.
Anyway, here’s the thing: I once stumbled upon a tutorial of German CVs for Americans and it was prominently remarked upon that German CVs really just list facts.
well, I mean show your English ability. I am not sure which word to use. After all, she means I deliberately wrote all application documents in English to show them how excellent my English is.
Also, in German application culture it is (sadly) quite common to have all sorts of things on a CV that are at least frowned upon in the US, like a photograph, marriage status, number of children, etc.
@CaptainBohemian Oh, I got that. It just has nothing to do with grammar. It’s semantics.
An example of using the word brag grammatically wrong would be: “I did bragged about my English ability.”
Do Germen care about photograph, marriage status, number of children?
I think these are not related to academic jobs.
Well, I never mean to brag about my English ability by writing all documents of application in English. I just feel writing those documents in English is more convenient for me.
@CaptainBohemian There are tendencies to change this, but in general the German application culture is ridiculously conservative, and there is such a big fear of being instantly rejected due to not adhering to some silly standards that almost everybody adheres to them. The worst thing is that there is no agreement on what these standards exactly are.
Two decades ago, I was taught in school that one has to put the jobs of one’s parents on the CV.
I never put those in my CV. The application form of Heidelberg graduate school has columns to fill in marriage status, number of children. I didn't understand why is so. Now I know it turns out it's their culture.
@CaptainBohemian Yes, but this is at best correlated. E.g., in the US photographs on CVs are frowned upon, but racial segregation is still very prominent in their culture.
@CaptainBohemian As someone from the Netherlands, but not an expert on CV's in any way, I think that 1) there are no 'silly standards', as far as I'm aware. 2) CV's aren't really a big deal, at least I think considerably less so than our neighbours to the east. In general, Dutch culture is less formal than German culture. (but also more frugal!)
@Wrzlprmft Are Dutch really very conservative? But I found Germen tend to spell wrong some English words according to my experience of interacting with some German professors.
Well, they often misuse some words for what they really mean, but those misuses are very obvious, so I can usually tell.
@CaptainBohemian Are Dutch really very conservative? – Not that I know of. What makes you think so?
@CaptainBohemian But I found Germen tend to spell wrong some English words according to my experience of interacting with some German professors. – I fail to see the connection to the rest of the conversation.
@CaptainBohemian Also, I've never made an academic CV, but my latest CV contains (on 2 pages total): Personal info (name, address, phone number, email, date of birth, nationality). Marital status is possible, but I think this is a bit old-fashioned. List of education. List of work experience and extracurriculars. Awards (just one for me) and all relevant skills. Languages placed seperately (for your case, I'd consider English relevant. Not sure why someone would think that is bragging).
Finally, a short list of some hobbies (called 'interests' or such) is allowed and makes you more 'human'.
@CaptainBohemian Hey! If you're making comments like that, I'd prefer you'd give a source on them. Although I do admit that everyone in the Netherlands thinks they know English, but not everyone actually does.
@CaptainBohemian I cannot confirm that observation, but then German is my native language so I am less likely to spot typical German mistakes in English orthography.
(Still, I feel like I am missing some connection to the rest of the conversation. If there is none, just ignore this comment.)
@Discretelizard --for your case, I'd consider English relevant. Not sure why someone would think that is bragging--Well, because our native tongue is Chinese and I am a native, so they think I should send application documents in Chinese rather than English.
@CaptainBohemian If you have better stuff to write, then write about that instead. It's partially to 'pad up' my rather meager work experience due to being a student. Still, most Dutch employers seem to like it if you note that you've been on the board of a (student) club of X or have been president of club Y or took entrepreneurial action Z. I think this also counts for academic employers.
I did attend some social clubs in my undergraduate school, but I was preoccupied with studies in my master studies. But I have never mentioned those clubs in my CV, because I just feel they are not relevant to the job.
@CaptainBohemian Well, it isn't attendance of clubs they're interested in. It's showing that you took some 'role of leadership' for something, which is most likely a club. Something like this is good to mention when applicable, but it is by no means a requirement.
but I have never been a president of any club. I was not that devoted to any social club. Actually most of my classmates in my physics department in my undergraduate class didn't join social clubs or were not that dedicated to social clubs due to the heavy schoolload.
@CaptainBohemian In general, the Dutch tend to be fairly liberal. (this extends pretty far into our history. One of the causes for the Dutch 'golden age' was religious refugees (e.g. jews) settling in Amsterdam) However, there are some that go rather far in their 'progressiveness' nowadays and others who in return go rather far in 'conservativeness' (leaning extreme-right and such, but this happens all over west-Europe nowadays)
As we're having elections for local councils soon, the national parties are meddling to inject their national issues into local politics, leading to absurdities such as "While we know we cannot enforce this law on a local level, we still make it a local issue, as we can still act in the spirit of the law without the actual law". Of course, the media are extensively covering the local politics of only Amsterdam, sigh.
Anyway, the reason I'm mentioning the elections is that this is the best time to check the political 'alignment' of the public. So, I do think that currently most of the Netherlands and especially business owners, managers or people who work with highly-trained foreigners are indeed fairly liberal, according to national standards.
Fun fact about CVs: in my university this is the period of the year where undergraduate internships start, and so many students send out their CVs. Being undergraduate CVs they are almost empty, but all those we have received specified that the sender was unmarried, as though we could care about that piece of information.
@MassimoOrtolano Filler, I suppose. The mean reason I don't mention my marital status is because I'm not married and most people would guess that for someone of my age.
@MassimoOrtolano Well, if you are at the receiving end, you may actually be able to change something about this by specifying that they should not provide certain information (of course, depending on how these things are communicated, this may actually be difficult).
if you need any intership with any professor, you just go to talk with that professor to ask about the possibility; I have never seen they require a CV.
@Discretelizard Right, but changing such a culture is easiest if it happens by those on the receiving end. If many companies/universities/etc. actively say: Please do not include a photo, your marital status, etc., the culture is likely to change.
@CaptainBohemian I guess that would depend on the size of the institution or the degree of formality. In my university, I'd describe most academics as either collegial or teachers. The degree of formality is similar to a small-medium company working environment. Also, due to the (still) relatively small size of my uni, most academics are quite alright to you simply dropping in at their office with e.g. homework questions.
@Wrzlprmft To my PhD students I usually give indications on how to write an academic CV, taking into account possible differences among countries. For interns, apart rare cases, I have very few contacts with them, because they are mostly directly supervised by postdocs and PhD students, and so we usually don't have occasion to discuss this.
I think they didn't require a CV mainly because professors know most students' work history is void by being from high school to undergraduate school to master program.
asking the marital status of students is also very strange to me. I have never had a classmate in my class who has married in all schools I have attended.
@CaptainBohemian When I was a student at least a couple of my class mates were married, and one also had a child. About the CV, it's true that an undergraduate CV is virtually empty, but the way in which the CV is written and the style of the accompanying email can tell a lot about the attitude of a student, especially about the care they put into doing things.
@Discretelizard My feeling is that they just copied some standard template containing a "marital status" field, without thinking too much about it.
when I was in school, I didn't have the habit of writing email to professors. I usually just went to professors' offices directly when I wanted to find them. I only wrote email to professors after I graduated because I didn't in school anymore and going to their office is not that convenient.
when I was still a registered student in university, I was in school every day, so even if I wrote an email, I wrote it in school to the professor in the same campus, so why bother? Just several footsteps would lead me to professor's office.
@CaptainBohemian I would find it annoying having students dropping by my office unannounced, and I explicitly tell my students to ask for an appointment. And most of the time, I'm out of office for lectures, exams, meetings, activities in another institute and the chances of finding me in the office are very thin.
and actually my dorm had no computer, so I still need to go to the department or library or computer center to write the email. Going to professor's office may be faster than going to those places having computer to write the email.
my chance of finding professors in their office was usually very high.
and those professors always welcomed my sudden visit without notice in advance.
The culture can be different: where I live, sudden visits are usually considered annoying, also between colleagues. If I want or need to speak with a colleague of mine outside of the closest ones I usually first write an email or make a phone call to check if or when they have time. And they do the same with me.
@MassimoOrtolano did you also write an email in adavnce when you wanted to talk with your collaborators who shared the same laboratory (office) with you and thus you can meet them every day when you were a graduate student?
@CaptainBohemian No I didn't, but I don't expect my students and collaborators to write me an email to discuss quick stuff. But if we need to have longer discussions we usually setup some kind of appointment. In our lab we frequently employ Telegram and Whatsapp to ping someone to know if anyone of us is free.
@CaptainBohemian I also tend to say in advance to my collaborators what is my daily and weekly schedule, so that they can know when I'm relatively free or not.
@MassimoOrtolano I admit to copying standard templates, but I'm thoughtful enough to run it past more experienced people before calling it final. My first edition had my marital status on it, but I quickly heard that was silly.
@MassimoOrtolano I'm a proponent of minimizing non-verbal communication. Although I do understand people like to structure things with meetings and such, I'd much appreciate it when people allow me to 'drop in' sometimes.
@Discretelizard I certainly allow my PhD students to drop-in, and actually I have one office shared with 3 of them, so they just usually say: "Max...". But the issue is that I have a long-standing collaboration with another institute, which means that sometimes I'm in one place, sometimes in the other, sometimes I have two-three meetings per day, lectures, administrative stuff and so on. This means that I'm rarely stable in the office and this needs a bit of coordination.
@MassimoOrtolano Oh sure. It's just that I'm much better at direct rather than indirect communication. I think it is best that colleagues can negotiate methods of communications that work best for all parties involved.
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The Ivory Tower
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