Résumé or CV? What Academic Library Search Committees Should Make Clear

Before We Ask Applicants to Edit

Most people who have served on a search committee know the feeling.

You open an application packet and find a lengthy CV, a dense cover letter, and page after page of publications, presentations, grants, certificates, committee appointments, and projects. Somewhere in all of that material may be exactly the experience the committee is looking for, but it can take time to find it.

The first reaction may be frustration.

Why did the applicant include all of this? Why not make the case more clearly? Why not focus on what matters most for the position?

Those are fair questions. Hiring committees are often doing this work on top of everything else, and clear application materials help. Editing matters. So does synthesis. For a management position, the ability to identify what is most important can be part of the work itself.

But the applicant may be asking a different question: What can I safely leave out?

Applicants should be able to tell the story of their work

Whether a position is faculty, nonfaculty, administrative, or professional staff, applicants should be able to tell the story of their work through the accomplishments that matter to them.

For one candidate, that story may center on staff supervision, budgeting, and organizational change. For another, it may include publications, grants, presentations, graduate certificates, teaching, community partnerships, or the development of new services.

Those experiences show how someone has grown, what they have contributed, and what kind of professional they have chosen to become.

A short résumé may work well for one person. Another candidate may need more space to show the range of initiatives, writing, research, leadership, and problem-solving that shaped a career.

A job title rarely captures every initiative someone developed, problem they solved, partnership they built, or service they created. This is especially true in libraries, where people often work beyond the boundaries of their formal job descriptions.

They may introduce new technologies, redesign programs, secure grants, build cross-campus partnerships, lead professional organizations, publish, present, or respond creatively to years of declining resources.

A concise résumé may show where someone worked and what responsibilities they held. It may not show what changed because they were there.

What looks like an inability to edit may be an attempt to show the difference between holding a position and elevating it.

Faculty status does not settle the question

A hiring manager may explain a preference for a short résumé by noting that the opening is not a faculty position or that librarians at the institution do not have faculty status.

That provides some context, but it does not settle the question.

Academic librarians work under many different status models. Some are tenure-track faculty. Some have faculty or academic status without tenure. Others are professional staff. Their formal expectations may differ, but the work itself often overlaps.

A nonfaculty librarian may still publish, present at conferences, pursue grants, teach, participate in shared governance, lead professional associations, and complete advanced certificates. In some institutions, those activities are expected. In others, they are encouraged. Elsewhere, librarians pursue them because the work improves their practice and allows them to contribute to the profession.

For that reason, an applicant may not interpret “nonfaculty” as a signal that publications, grants, or professional activity should be removed from consideration.

A publication may demonstrate subject expertise, persistence, project completion, and the ability to respond to criticism. A grant may show persuasive writing, budgeting, collaboration, planning, and accountability. Professional association leadership may reveal someone’s ability to build networks and influence work beyond one institution.

Faculty status is an employment classification. It is not a complete description of what a librarian has done, what they know, or what they may contribute.

Professional accomplishments can shape practice

Publications, grants, and graduate certificates can matter because they influence the work librarians do with students, faculty, and researchers.

A librarian who has published has experienced the research process from the inside. They have developed a question, worked through the literature, revised an argument, responded to peer review, and perhaps faced the dreaded comments from Reviewer Two.

That experience can make conversations about scholarly communication more concrete. Peer review is no longer an abstract process to explain. It is something the librarian has navigated personally.

The same is true of grants. A librarian who has written a proposal, developed a budget, assembled supporting evidence, or managed a funded project may be better prepared to help others understand what happens behind the scenes.

Graduate certificates and continuing education may show that someone has deliberately built expertise beyond the minimum requirements of a position.

These accomplishments should not automatically outweigh management experience or the qualifications identified in the posting. But neither should they be dismissed because the position is not classified as faculty or because the institution does not expect librarians to publish.

The more useful question is how those experiences shaped the librarian or leader the applicant became.

Applicants also need to pay attention to the response

Applicants should have some freedom in deciding how to present their careers.

They also have to pay attention to whether their approach is working.

If a lengthy CV is consistently leading to interviews, there may be no reason to abandon it because one hiring manager prefers a shorter version. If callbacks are rare, however, that may be useful information.

It may be time to reconsider the length, organization, opening statement, cover letter, or the way accomplishments are connected to a particular role.

That does not mean the work was unimportant. It may mean the story needs to be told differently for a particular audience.

A statement at the top of a résumé can help a committee understand the shape of a career. A cover letter can connect a broad record of accomplishments to the needs of the position. A selected list of projects, publications, or grants may communicate more effectively than a complete record at the first stage of the search.

Applicants should not have to erase parts of themselves to fit a position. They may, however, need to decide which parts of the story the committee needs first.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach. A complete CV can serve as a professional archive, while a shorter résumé can foreground the experience most relevant to a particular role. A separate list of selected publications, grants, projects, or presentations can preserve important work without placing everything in the main document. The right choice depends on the position, the employer’s instructions, the applicant’s career, and the story they are trying to tell. 

Employers need to say what they want

The employer’s responsibility is more straightforward.

If the committee wants a two-page résumé, the posting should say so.

If it welcomes a longer CV, it should say that.

If applicants may submit a portfolio or a separate list of publications, grants, presentations, or projects, that should be clear.

If the institution is primarily interested in management, operations, staff development, and organizational leadership, applicants should know that. If scholarship and professional engagement are valued, the posting should explain how they fit the role.

A posting might say:

Please submit a résumé of approximately two to four pages highlighting the experience most relevant to this management role. A complete list of publications, presentations, and professional service is not required. Applicants may include a separate list of selected scholarly or professional contributions if those materials help demonstrate relevant experience.

That gives applicants permission to be selective.

It also gives the committee a fairer basis for evaluating whether candidates followed the requested format.

Without that guidance, it is difficult to criticize someone for making a different but still reasonable choice.

Fit includes professional culture

I have been in interviews where someone explained that publications and professional writing were not expected or particularly valued in the position.

The status of the position had been clear. It was a nonfaculty role. What had not been clear were the broader expectations surrounding writing, publishing, grants, and professional engagement.

The message during the interview was essentially, “We do not do that here.”

I appreciated the candor.

It also told me that the position might not be a good fit.

Writing, publishing, grants, and professional engagement are part of how I understand my work. I would not want to join an institution where those activities were viewed as irrelevant or as distractions from the job.

At the same time, the presence of publications on an application should not automatically disqualify someone from a nonfaculty position. A candidate may have published because the work strengthened their practice, supported students and faculty, contributed to the profession, or simply reflected an important part of their career. None of that means the candidate cannot also manage staff, oversee operations, balance a budget, or meet the primary responsibilities of the position.

I did find myself wondering why I had been invited to interview if such a visible part of my record seemed so disconnected from the institution’s culture. But perhaps that was the point of the interview: the committee saw relevant management and leadership experience and wanted to learn more, while I needed to learn how the institution understood the role.

That does not make the institution wrong, and it does not make me wrong. It means our expectations and professional cultures may have been different.

The problem was not that the job’s status had been hidden. The problem was that the posting had not communicated whether writing, grants, publishing, and professional engagement would be welcomed, tolerated, unsupported, or viewed as outside the role.

A search process works better when both sides can recognize that kind of fit before investing significant time. Employers do not need to value every professional activity equally, and candidates with publications should not assume that every institution will support continued scholarship. But institutions should be as candid as possible about the culture candidates would be joining.

Applicants can then decide whether the position gives them room to continue the work that matters to them while still meeting the responsibilities for which they were hired.

The application process begins with compensation

There is also a more basic question that can get lost in conversations about résumés and CVs.

Before someone decides how to format an application, they decide whether they can afford to apply at all.

A potential candidate may compare the salary range with housing, transportation, childcare, student loan payments, health expenses, or the cost of relocating. They may compare the compensation with the scope of the role and conclude that it does not add up.

That person never enters the applicant pool.

The committee may never know that a qualified candidate considered the position and decided the salary did not appear to support a reasonable standard of living. But that decision still shapes the search.

Compensation affects who is able to take a chance on a position. Some candidates may have savings, family support, a higher-earning partner, or fewer relocation barriers. Others may not.

When we talk about equitable hiring, salary has to be part of the conversation, and up front in the posting.

Clear application instructions help. They do not solve the larger problem if the compensation itself discourages qualified people from applying.

Employers should be curious about the accomplishments they see

An application should not only be a document the committee scans for required qualifications. It can also be the beginning of a conversation.

If a candidate lists grant experience, ask about it, even when grant experience was not included among the qualifications. The grant itself may not be central to the position, but the work behind it may reveal something important. Perhaps the candidate identified the opportunity, wrote the proposal, coordinated partners, developed a budget, managed the award, or remained accountable for the results.

That experience may not have appeared in the candidate’s formal job duties. In many libraries, people take on significant work because a need arises, not because it was written into their original position description.

Perhaps the CV and cover letter should be understood, at least in part, as conversation starters. They may contain accomplishments that help the committee see beyond a job title and understand what the person actually did.

A grant may show how someone identifies opportunities, writes persuasively, builds partnerships, manages resources, leads a project, or assesses outcomes. Those abilities may be relevant to a management position even when the words “grant experience” do not appear in the posting.

The committee can ask what role the candidate played. Did they identify the opportunity? Write the proposal? Build the partnership? Develop the budget? Manage the award? Assess the results?

The same approach can apply to publications, certificates, conference presentations, systems projects, campus partnerships, or major initiatives. Rather than deciding in advance that an accomplishment does not matter because it falls outside the institution’s usual expectations, the committee can ask how the experience shaped the candidate’s work and what skills it demonstrates.

The important distinction is between learning from a candidate’s experience and changing the rules of the search.

Grant experience should not quietly become a new requirement after applications arrive. A candidate should not receive an unexplained advantage for possessing a qualification others were never told would matter. The committee should still evaluate everyone against the same core responsibilities and competencies.

One candidate may demonstrate resource development through a grant. Another may discuss advocating for additional staffing, reallocating a budget, building a campus partnership, or creating a program with limited resources.

Each applicant will bring accomplishments the employer did not know to request. Sometimes the most interesting part of an application is the experience the institution did not think to include in the posting.

Committees should be careful about what they infer

A long CV can be hard to read. That does not necessarily mean the applicant cannot communicate clearly.

A short résumé can be easy to scan. That does not necessarily mean the applicant is the strongest candidate.

Search committees can get into trouble when personal preferences about formatting begin to stand in for assessment. One reviewer may dislike long documents. Another may expect a full scholarly record. One may value design. Another may see design as unnecessary.

Before long, the committee may be responding more to application style than to evidence of whether the person can do the job.

This does not mean presentation is irrelevant. How candidates present themselves matters. The organization of the application, the clarity of the writing, the tone of the cover letter, and the care taken with the materials all communicate something. During an interview, preparation, voice, presence, and the ability to connect with others also shape how a candidate is understood.

For many roles, especially those involving leadership, supervision, teaching, fundraising, or public-facing work, presentation is part of the job. Candidates need to show that they can communicate with confidence, read a room, respond thoughtfully, and represent the organization well.

But committees need to distinguish between effective presentation and personal preference. A candidate may communicate well without sharing one reviewer’s preferred résumé format, speaking style, personality, or level of polish.

Those impressions are part of the process. They should not become the process.

A rubric can help the committee maintain that balance. The responsibilities and qualifications in the posting should drive the rubric before applications are reviewed. If the role requires supervision, strategic planning, budgeting, collaboration, assessment, and organizational change, the committee should agree on what evidence would demonstrate those competencies and how that evidence will be evaluated.

The rubric should do more than list broad categories. It can describe what weak, adequate, and strong evidence looks like, giving reviewers a common point of reference. Interviewers should also discuss how they are interpreting the criteria so that one person is not consistently scoring more generously or harshly than everyone else.

That structure does not eliminate judgment, but it makes the judgment easier to explain and examine. Instead of saying, “I liked this résumé better,” a reviewer should be able to identify the evidence that demonstrates a required competency. Instead of saying, “The candidate interviewed well,” the reviewer should be able to explain what the candidate communicated, how they approached a problem, and why that response matters for the position.

Presentation can remain part of the rubric, especially when communication and public presence are central to the role. But it should be defined rather than left entirely to personal taste. The committee might assess whether the materials are understandable, whether the candidate connects experience to the position, whether relevant accomplishments are easy to locate, and whether the candidate presents ideas with preparation and confidence.

The qualifications should drive the decision. Presentation should help the committee understand those qualifications, not replace them.

The interview process can also balance consistency with curiosity. Structured questions give every candidate an opportunity to address the same core competencies and make it easier for the committee to compare evidence fairly. Some organizations build interview questions around clearly defined competencies and use shared rating scales, interviewer training, and calibration discussions to reduce inconsistency across reviewers.

But an interview does not have to stop there.

Committees can also use conversational follow-up questions to understand how candidates think, listen, adapt, and approach problems. If a candidate lists a grant, publication, systems migration, community partnership, or major initiative, the committee can ask what role the person played, what obstacles arose, how decisions were made, and what changed because of the work.

Those questions may reveal strengths that do not appear in the formal job description. They may also help the committee understand the candidate’s motivations and long-term goals and whether the institution’s professional culture will support them.

The key is to keep the underlying evaluation consistent. One candidate may demonstrate budgeting through a grant. Another may discuss managing an operating budget or reallocating resources during a difficult year. Their examples differ, but the committee is assessing the same competency.

Conversational interviews can introduce subjectivity if one candidate receives a warm, open discussion while another receives a rigid or adversarial exchange. Interviewers therefore need preparation, not only a list of questions. They should understand the rubric, the purpose of follow-up questions, and the importance of creating a reasonably consistent experience across candidates.

If concise communication is central to the role, it can also be assessed directly. The committee might ask candidates to respond to a focused question within a set word limit, deliver a brief presentation, or explain a complex project within a defined amount of time.

That gives every candidate an opportunity to demonstrate the skill instead of asking the committee to infer it from whether the applicant happened to share one reviewer’s preferred résumé style or speaking style.

The goal is not to remove judgment from hiring. That would be impossible. The goal is to use structure where consistency matters and conversation where deeper understanding is needed, while ensuring that the qualifications for the position remain at the center of the decision.

A practical approach for employers

Before posting a position, the hiring manager, committee, and human resources staff can work through a few questions together. Among them are:

• What document do we actually want?

• How long should it be?

• Which accomplishments are most relevant?

• Are publications, grants, presentations, teaching, and professional service valuable to this role, optional, or largely outside its scope?

• Are candidates allowed to submit supplemental materials?

• Will all reviewers use the same rubric?

• How will we handle accomplishments that were not listed in the posting but may still demonstrate useful skills?

• Is the salary appropriate for the responsibilities and the cost of living in the area?

Those answers should shape the posting.

During the interview process, committees can use the same core questions for everyone while allowing thoughtful follow-up questions based on each candidate’s experience. A grant, publication, major project, or certificate can become an entry point for learning more without becoming an unannounced requirement.

After the search, the committee should also reflect on what happened. If applicants repeatedly submitted materials the committee did not want, the instructions may need to change. If strong candidates declined interviews or offers because of salary, workload, or professional culture, that is information the institution should not ignore.

A practical approach for applicants

Applicants can also make deliberate choices.

Keep a complete CV, but do not assume it must be the only document you use.

Create a shorter version that highlights the experiences most relevant to the role.

Use the cover letter and opening summary to explain the larger story rather than expecting the committee to connect every item on its own.

When including a publication, grant, certificate, presentation, or project, make the relevance visible. What did you learn? What changed because of the work? What leadership, collaboration, communication, or management skill does it demonstrate?

Pay attention to outcomes. If your materials are producing interviews, the approach may be working. If not, revise the presentation before concluding that employers do not value your experience.

And use the hiring process to assess the employer as well. Ask how the institution views scholarship, professional service, grants, continuing education, and outside engagement. Ask whether there is time and support for that work.

An interview is not only an opportunity to persuade the institution. It is also a chance to learn whether the professional culture fits the career you want to continue building.

Clarity has to go both ways

Applicants should tailor their materials. They should make their strongest qualifications easy to find, connect their accomplishments to the role, and reconsider their approach when it is not leading to interviews.

They should also be able to tell the story of their work in a way that feels authentic to the career they have built.

Employers, however, have more information and more power.

• They set the salary.

• They write the posting.

• They choose the required documents.

• They decide how candidates will be evaluated.

• They know their own institutional expectations and professional culture.

That means they carry more responsibility for reducing uncertainty.

If you want two pages, say two pages.

If you want a complete CV, say so.

If publications, grants, and professional engagement matter, explain how.

If they do not, be candid about that as well.

When candidates bring experience you did not think to request, ask thoughtful questions before deciding it does not matter.

And when applicants repeatedly give you something other than what you expected, revisit the posting before blaming the applicants.

The goal is not to force every candidate into the same format. It is to give applicants enough information to tell their story clearly and enough insight to decide whether the institution is a place where that story can continue.

Before institutions ask applicants to make a clearer case for themselves, they should make a clearer case for the position.