Shaili Gour

The real CV and emails that got me a postdoc at UCSF, annotated with everything I got wrong.

What you get

1. My CV, annotated - The full document with ten margin notes. Why the technical skills sit above the experience. Why nine words inside a bracket did more work than a whole paragraph. What I would cut today, and why.

2. The emailing script - Both letters, in full, with the reasoning. The long one that failed and the five-line one that worked. If you take one thing from this package, take this.

3. The checklist - Twenty-one things I check on my own CV now. Print it, sit down with your CV, and every box you cannot tick is something specific you can fix tonight.

4. The template - Blank, editable, built on the same structure, with the reasoning written in as prompts you delete as you go.

What I am not claiming - That there is a formula. There is not, and I am suspicious of anyone who says otherwise. My honest guess is that I got the job because the fit was right and the paperwork did not get in the way. That conclusion is in the product too.

If you want a polished template and nothing else, there are cheaper ones. This is a document about judgement. It assumes you would rather understand a decision than copy a layout.