Curriculum vitae: challenges and potential solutions

An academic usually has a curriculum vitae (CV) or CV summary (resum) that highlights their professional career paths. CVs contain information which is written by the academic to signal their qualifications and academic achievements to employers, granting agencies, or promotion and tenure committees. Decision makers face numerous problems with CVs as a vehicle that carries important information, including incomplete, outdated, biased, private, as well as falsified and fabricated information. To complicate matters, decision makers themselves could be making biased decisions even when CV information is complete and accurate due to potential discriminatory practices. There is weak consistency or standardization in implementation internationally, and little verification. This paper proposes a set of guidelines for verifiable, accurate, complete, updated, and public (VACUP guidelines) CVs, whether these be private, institutional, or owned by third parties. For the effective implementation of these guidelines, a new market in which a third party certifies the CV as VACUP-compliant, is recommended.