Foundations of Career Planning Session #2: Self-Branding and Compiling Professional Work Search Documents

This session is part of the Foundations of Career Planning Program. Visit the Foundations of Career Planning page for more information and to register.

Compiling professional work search documents is an essential step in your career journey; however, effectively communicating your expertise and value to potential employers, whether for academic or industry positions, can be a difficult task, even for the most seasoned writers. Participants will leave this two-part session equipped to identify relevant positions, analyze job advertisements, and customize a wide variety of work search documents with clear, concise, and consistent messaging, style, and tone.

Your Academic CV is a key part of many job and grant applications and, as your academic “life story,” is a vital tool for researchers at any stage of their academic career. Over time, your CV will continue to grow in length and complexity; however, subtle organizational and design elements can support readability.

Your resume is one of the most important tools in your job search. It is used by employers to assess your fit both for a specific position and for the overall organization, and unlike an academic CV, the expectation is that your professional resume will be customized for the industry, employer, and specific position for which you are applying. Compelling, targeted resumes quickly and concisely express your value and expertise; generic resumes get lost in the shuffle.

This interactive session mixes small group activities with content delivery to provide participants with practical, hands-on experience in creating work-search documents. Participants are asked to come prepared with their current resume and/or CV, bios, profiles, or any other work-search documents they would like to refer to. Please also bring or bookmark at least one specific job description or posting of interest.

This session will discuss the essential considerations for your CV, review the Canadian Common CV (CCV) system, and touch on the basics of writing equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) statements and teaching philosophies. Participants should leave this session feeling better equipped to build and maintain their CVs. It will dive into how to craft compelling resumes and associated work-search documents (e.g., cover letters, profiles/bios) for industry positions. Participants will leave equipped to effectively communicate their “elevator pitch” and to prepare an industry-ready resume format, customized for a specific position or sector.

Learning objectives:

• Explore the full spectrum of employment possibilities within academia (e.g., lecturer vs. tenure track; research-focused vs. teaching-focused universities and colleges; local vs. international)
• Critically analyze qualifications for positions of interest using job posting criteria (e.g., years of experience, skills/competencies, professional designations)
• Practice crafting and customizing your CV and other support documents (e.g., teaching philosophy, EDI statement), applying key content, structure, and design considerations
• Explore the full spectrum of employment possibilities within “industry” (e.g., part-time, full-time, or contract work; research laboratories; government; corporate)
• Critically analyze qualifications for positions of interest using job posting criteria (e.g., years of experience, skills/competencies)
• Practice crafting and customizing your resume and other support documents (e.g., cover letter, profile/bio), communicating your relevant accomplishments, and applying key content, structure, and design considerations

Pre-work:

• Gather your existing resumes or CVs so that you’ll have all that you need to create a “master” resume. Please create one Word document with your existing bios and/or profiles.
• Search online for 1-2 samples of resumes and/or CVs, identifying what appeals to you and what doesn’t.
• Identify at least one job description, posting, or advertisement that interests you – even if you aren’t in a position to apply for that position at the moment, it will give you some concrete information to help with targeting your work search documents. The job description will be used as a reference tool to help in the creation of these work search documents.
• Come to the session with 2-3 specific questions or areas to focus on.

Participants may be encouraged to share work search documents with the cohort (~24 participants) for the purpose of workshopping these documents.

FACILITATORS

Dr. Roberta Borgen

Dr. Roberta Borgen (Neault), CCC, GCDF-i, CCDP, is an award-winning leader in the career development sector, in Canada and internationally. She is a published author and international speaker on topics related to career management. Roberta's academic career has involved contract work at 10 universities across Canada, the US, and Asia, including serving as the Associate Dean of a university in New Brunswick and later serving as an Adjunct Professor and Director of the Psychological Services and Counselling Training Centre (PSCTC) at UBC while running her BC-based consulting company. Her extensive experience supporting graduate students, postdocs, managers, executive leaders, and professionals brings unique perspective to crafting professional work search documents.

Cassie Taylor

Cassie Taylor, Managing Director of Life Strategies, has over 15 years of experience supporting a vast array of diversity-focused projects from conceptualization, data gathering/analysis, and creation of tools, resources, and presentations/workshops. From local to international, Cassie’s work seeks to improve career development services through fostering culturally informed practices rooted in empathy, understanding, collaboration, and data.

Registration

This session is part of the Foundations of Career Planning Program. Please note that space in the program is limited, and submitting this registration form does not guarantee a seat in the program. Those successfully registered in the program will receive an email with additional information. Those successfully registered will receive a confirmation closer to the program date.

Accessibility

If you have a disability, medical condition, or accessibility concern that may affect your full participation in the event, please email postdoctoral.fellows@ubc.ca in advance of the event.

PDFO EVENT COMMUNITY AGREEMENT

The PDFO has created a community agreement for our events in order to foster an inclusive, welcoming, and respectful environment in which all event attendees feel safe and supported.

By participating in a PDFO event, we commit ourselves to:

• Treating one another with kindness, courtesy and respect in all interactions;
• Engaging in gracious, active listening and valuing others’ opinions;
• Not dominating discussions so that others can share during the session;
• Ensuring that any potentially confidential or sensitive information shared as part of the session is not shared outside of the session;
• Actively participating in the session; and
• In online sessions, when possible and if comfortable sharing audio and/or video to create a greater sense of community and participation.