4. Your webpage and CV

You need a webpage
This may sound a bit strange, but I do think it is true. This link has a pretty good summary. There were many times during my interviews when it was clear that people had looked at my webpage, and I think this helped me in the end. My current webpage is here, although I've expanded it a bit recently. In general I think a webpage is something to spend a little bit of time on, it is how many people will first learn about you. If you don't already have a page you like, I would recommend looking around and modeling your page after one that you find appealling, at least initially.

Your CV

There are many ways to write a CV and I don't want to spend time debating style. Most of that is a personal thing. Like all things I would make it simple and easy to read, but otherwise it probably doesn't matter.

For ease I would recommend writing your CV in html (my CV is here). This serves a few purposes:

1. You don't need to worry about formatting details. Make the title header1, all the section headings header2 and use numbered and unnumbered lists. No need to bother with formatting fonts, sizes, margins etc. in Word. If you want to be fancy use a CSS style sheet, which is easier that doing things by hand in Word anyway.


2. Everyone can read html, at least everyone who has a computer. There is no need to have any commercial programs or viewing plugins, any web browser can view the thing. Believe it or not, some people don't use Word and if you sent them a .doc file they are stuck, but not html (see the following article on why we should Put an End to Word Attachments.)
   


3. HTML yields just about the smallest file size you could ask for. For my current CV the html file is 8 KB, the PDF file generated using Mac OS X's built in PDF printer is 76 KB, and a word file with the same content is 50 KB.


4. It's really easy to add to your webpage, just put it on your server and link to it from your webpage.
   

A few minor points. Many schools want you to send in your CV as an Adobe PDF file. This is easily done by printing your webpage to a PDF file, or using something like html2pdf. You could also write your CV in latex if you wanted and send it to people as a PDF or PS file. To put it on the web you'd have to convert it to html using something like latex2html.