Neuroscience CV Example

If you write a neuroscience CV that's more professional and engaging, it will help you progress through the ATS screening stage. Ultimately, it will also give you the best chance to impress the hiring manager, which will boost your prospects of reaching the interview stage. We’ll now go through the key sections of a CV and explain how to write them strategically.

Main neuroscience CV sections

Your approach to creating your winning neuroscience CV will differ depending on your experience, your seniority and the details listed in the job description.

However, regardless of your seniority, a neuroscience CV needs to tell a cohesive story of your professional growth. In the following sections, we’ll dive into each part of the CV step-by-step, starting with your header and moving through to your professional achievements.

CV Header

Kick off your neuroscience CV with a header listing the essential contact information such as your name, email address, phone number and location. You don't typically need to include your full address. Incorporate design elements that set the tone and design language of your document. Additionally, add your LinkedIn profile, if this is in use and up-to-date. A well-utilised LinkedIn profile can give further information to the reader about your skills, experience, industry knowledge and career achievements.

For UK applications, it's not usually a good idea to add a personal photo or any other personal details, such as your age, gender, nationality or ethnicity. These can risk introducing bias to the selection process and, as such, are often discouraged in job adverts under the terms of the Equality Act 2010.

CV Summary or Objective

The first section below your CV header is typically your CV summary. This short paragraph outlines some of your key skills, achievements and experience, so employers can quickly get an impression of whether you have the right credentials for the neuroscientist job. As an alternative to the CV summary, you might wish to write a CV objective. This serves a similar purpose, but instead of focusing on your experience, it highlights you career ambitions and objectives.

Whether you choose to write a summary or an objective, aim for a length of two or three sentences, introducing your key skills, unique qualities and key achievements or ambitions, making sure they reflect what's included in the job description.

The most effective way to approach a CV summary is to focus on one or two key skills that reflect the requirements of the job description and show how you've used them to create positive outcomes for previous employers. You'll also want to showcase your unique personal strengths, and touch on how they've contributed to your career progression up to now. See below for an example of a strong neuroscience CV summary, featuring quantifiable evidence of your impact and concise, easy-to-read sentences.

The CV summary above contains various red flags and things to avoid. While the differences are subtle, they can make all the difference. Your summary could miss the mark if it's too generic and doesn't describe unique personal qualities and strengths. It might also be vague, use long, unstructured sentences, lack quantifiable evidence of your impact, or not be tailored to the job description.

Work History

The work experience section of a CV is usually the most important part. Employers look for evidence of how you've developed and used your skills to good effect in your career to date, as an indication of your likely future performance. Remember, it's essential to tailor this section to match the job description, including keywords and phrases to help employers see how you'll fit the role, and how you might put the required skills to good use in the future.

List only relevant previous jobs, and add your job title, the name of the employer, its location and your dates of employment. Under this, write several bullet points showing employers how your skills and key qualities contributed to positive outcomes.

The difference between an average CV work experience section and an outstanding one is the use of action verbs and quantifiable evidence. You'll want to show how your actions led to measurable positive outcomes for employers, and indicate a progression in your skills throughout your career. Here's an example of best practice in a neuroscience CV work experience section:

Above you'll find a less effective example of a neuroscience CV work experience section. A less-engaging work experience section might include irrelevant roles or jobs from a long time ago, and generic information that fails to address the requirements of the job description. It could also lack evidence to support the claims made in the bullet points.

Education

In your education section you'll want to list your highest and most recent qualifications, particularly if they're a requirement for the role.

To be eligible for neuroscientist positions, you typically need to have a relevant university degree, and include it in your CV. If you have a Bachelor of Science in Neuroscience or another related degree that qualifies you for the role, you should definitely mention it in your CV, along with any other degrees or qualifications that highlight your most relevant skills, such as electrophysiology techniques or functional magnetic resonance imaging.

When creating your education section, think about which qualifications are most relevant to the role, and list them in reverse-chronological order, starting with the most recent and working back from there. For each entry, include the name and level of the degree or certification, the institution, its location and your graduation date or dates of study. To emphasise your qualifications and achievements, you might wish to include one or two bullet points, which highlight things like specialist areas of study, projects, dissertations or society memberships.

If you have any specialist certifications or licences that are necessary for the role, or help you stand out above other candidates, you may wish to mention them here. When adding any special licences, it's a good idea to also reference their expiry or renewal dates, if applicable.

Skills

In your CV's skills section, you'll want to draw attention to some of your strongest skills that make you suitable for the role. Review the job description to get an idea of the most essential skills, and create a list of hard and soft skills, including some of your strongest, most unique qualities that set you apart from other candidates. For a neuroscience CV, it's essential to include relevant skills for the role that match your skill set, such as adaptability and functional magnetic resonance imaging, to impress the reader and show you're qualified for the neuroscientist position.

Hard Skills

Hard skills and technical skills are specialist skills that are essential for carrying out the main responsibilities of the role. You might acquire hard skills through study, or through on-the-job training, and some hard skills may require a certification or licence. For neuroscientist jobs, critical hard skills you've gained in your career can include statistical data analysis, and functional magnetic resonance imaging. Check the skills specified in the job description, and add four or five key hard skills to your CV that show employers you're capable of completing the key duties of the role.

You'll want to include a list of hard skills that closely matches the skills listed as 'essential' or 'desirable' in the job description, while also reflecting your own strongest technical skills.

The following section highlights skills that are commonly listed under hard skills in a neuroscience CV:

Soft Skills

Your soft skills list should contain a list of your personal strengths that make you suitable for the role, and a good fit for the team and the organisation. In contrast to hard skills, these tend to be transferable and applicable to different roles and levels. Owing to the rapidly evolving nature of the work landscape, soft skills are growing in importance for a number of roles and industry sectors where technology is replacing hard skills. Additionally, soft skills are particularly valuable for junior and entry-level candidates, who might not have much work experience but have the right building blocks for a successful career.

Adopt the same approach as you did with your hard skills list, reviewing the job description to understand the requirements, before assessing which soft skills you can provide evidence for throughout your neuroscience CV. Your soft skills list should reflect the job description as closely as possible, while also reflecting your strongest, unique talents and personal qualities. Aim for a list of around five key skills.

Explore the examples below to identify soft skills commonly presented in a neuroscience CV.

Languages

If you speak any languages in addition to your mother tongue, you might want to include them in your neuroscience CV as a languages section. These can be valuable for your application, whether languages are specified as a requirement in the job description or not. Within this section, list the foreign languages you speak to a reasonable degree of competence, together with an indicator of your skill levels.

The ways to indicate your foreign language skills depend on the level of detail you want to provide. They include assigning a basic descriptive word, such as:

• English: Fluent
• Spanish: Intermediate

You could adopt the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR), as this provides standardised levels to describe your competence, as follows:

• A1: Beginner
• A2: Elementary
• B1: Intermediate
• B2: Upper intermediate
• C1: Advanced
• C2: Proficiency

Certifications and Licences

Depending on the role you're applying for, and the type of qualifications you have, you might want to include a separate section for certifications, in addition to the education section. Having a separate section can draw more attention to your training, and show employers your proactive, motivated mindset towards professional development, which could be a key asset. Furthermore, if there are any necessary certifications or licences for the job, this CV section takes on even more importance. If you're applying for a technical role or a position that involves the use of specialist software or equipment, these might make it more necessary to include a section showcasing your training.

Here is a list of some key certifications and licences that can be particularly useful for neuroscientist applications:

Optional Sections

In addition to the core sections of your CV, optional sections can be a useful way of proving you've got the necessary neuroscientist skills. If you're struggling to show all the necessary skills for the job through your work experience or other core sections, optional sections can give your CV the boost it needs to progress you to the interview stage. This could be particularly helpful for entry-level candidates or career changers.

You’ll find more in-depth guidance on structuring your CV in our career resources, designed to help you present your skills as effectively as possible.

Hobbies and Interests

If you have any hobbies and interests that can showcase skills relevant to the job description, it might be worth including them. Additionally, this section gives you the chance to show employers different facets of your personality and interests beyond work, which can help them to differentiate you from other applicants. However, it's important to only mention hobbies and interests that are relevant, or related to, the role you're applying for. If your hobbies don't help you to show skills required for the role, that are missing elsewhere in your CV, it's best to leave this section out.

Key Achievements

Compiling your key career achievements into a single list is an effective way of making your CV more readable at a glance. In this section, add any awards or recognition you've received for achievements, and any career milestones you've reached that show you're a strong candidate for the job.

Voluntary Work

Another valuable optional section for your CV is volunteering. This section can offer a great alternative showcase for your skills and experience, if you don't have much relevant work experience. Consider adding this section if you have any relevant unpaid experience, either as a junior candidate or a career changer. Structure your volunteering section the same as your work experience section.

Add your job title or the name of the volunteer role, the organisation, its location and the dates you volunteered. Also add some bullet points outlining your skills and experience in the role, as well as any key achievements.

Best action words for a neuroscience CV

Including strong action verbs with your work experience bullet points can help you show the impact you made in previous roles. Starting each bullet point with an action verb is a great way to match your experience and achievements to the job description, giving the reader an easy way of identifying your key skills and seeing how you've applied them. When adding action verbs to your work experience bullet points, just remember to always provide quantifiable evidence that shows the value you added for each employer. Use past tense for any action verbs that describe previous roles (for example, 'developed') and present tense for current roles (for example 'collaborating').

Neuroscience CV example

Now that you know exactly what to include in your neuroscience CV, we can take a look at a final, finished example below:

If you're not sure what your one-page, finalised CV design might look like, check out our examples.

Tips for optimising your CV for ATS

Applicant tracking systems (ATS) are becoming more and more integral to the recruitment process for many employers. These systems ease the burden of the recruitment process by performing various tasks, including scanning and ranking CVs based on their likely fit to the job description. This task can relieve some of the strain on hiring managers through the recruitment process, which can become very resource-intensive, with roles often eliciting hundreds of applications.

The increasing usage of ATS apps by recruiters and employers means it's critical to adapt and prepare your applications to successfully navigate this stage of the selection process. Following the tips below will give you everything you need for an ATS-compatible CV:

• Include keywords and phrases that mirror the job description to maximise your chances of ranking highly in the ATS screening stage.
• Use clear headings that reflect standard CV conventions, such as 'work experience', 'education' and 'skills'.
• Choose a standard CV layout that avoids the use of any special design elements that might make your CV less compatible with ATS scanning software.
• Select a font that increases the readability of your CV, such as popular serif and sans serif fonts, between the sizes of 10 and 12 for main text and 14 and 16 for headings.
• Use bullet points instead of writing full sentences, to reduce the overall length of your CV, make it more keyword-dense and help ATS apps to scan it more easily.

It's easy to get overwhelmed by the steps to creating an ATS-compatible neuroscience CV, but a few small changes can make a big difference. To smooth the process, use one of our expert-designed, ATS-optimised CV templates to increase your chances of success at this stage of the screening process.

Key takeaways for an impactful neuroscience CV

To grab the attention of the reader with your CV, tailor it to the exact specifications of the job description, incorporating keywords and phrases that match the employer's requirements. Pick a CV format that matches your experience level, and focus on showing the reader how you've developed relevant skills and put them to good use to add value for previous employers.

Finally, using a clean, professional CV template like those offered by Jobseeker, can help your CV stand out among its competitors and give you the best chance of success with your applications.

References:

1. Barnet Council (UK local government), Recruitment tips: How to write a supporting statement
2. Jobseeker, Hiring Trends