Dos and Don'ts of Writing a Compelling Narrative CV

Are you a PhD student or early career researcher? If so, you may have come across the Narrative CV – a new document used across parts of Europe and by the URKI to assess how your research has been impactful, and how you have contributed to innovation, rather than the raw metrics of your number of publications and journal impact factors.

Research and impact can occur in many different aspects of your work including conference organising, public lectures, supervising and collaborating with others, and writing blogs and this CV is designed to capture this information that sits outside a traditional Academic CV.

‘In enabling a broader range of people to evidence a wider variety of skills and experience, it helps see the whole person, helping identify the best people and ideas so they can be supported to flourish’. UK Research and Innovation

We have recently put together some bespoke helpsheets for students looking to write Narrative CVs, which are available on your 英国伦敦大学 and School of Advanced Study, University of London VLEs.

To summarise these documents, our Dos and Don'ts of Narrative CV writing are:

DO:

• Check that a Narrative CV is the correct format for your application (it should be made explicit in the application process). Also, each organisation will have their own template so make sure you use the right one (this should be publicly available on their website).
• Carefully balance metrics with reflection and qualitative information with quantitative examples. Focus on the specifics of how your research had impact.
• Include as many examples of skills as possible. UKRI focuses both on visible and invisible skills, and those reviewing your CV will often be looking for a well-rounded, broad range of experiences, rather than just the traditional academic ones.
• Think about how you directly helped to develop others, whether through mentoring, supervising, teaching, or collaborating.
• Focus on well-chosen, relevant examples for all of your answers and always emphasise what you specifically did and what the outcome of your interventions were.
• Use active verbs (supervised, led, developed) when describing your contributions.

DON’T:

• Rely on journal names or impact factor, it won’t help you here and may lead to your application being rejected outright.
• Focus too much on raw numbers (i.e. number of conference attendees) but instead think about how you impacted these people. ?

Written by Dr Edwin Marr

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