Curriculum Vitae

HSO Curriculum Vitae (CV) Preparation Guidelines

• Introduction
• Presenting Yourself
• The Audience
• The CV Summary Sheet
• The CV Content
• What NOT to Include In Your CV
• Where to Send Your CV

Introduction

The Curriculum Vitae (CV) may be used to apply for HSO positions with the Commissioned Corps and for documentation in your personnel folder.The following recommendations pertain primarily to preparing your CV for use as summary documentation in your OPF.

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Presenting Yourself

When preparing a CV for your OPF, think of yourself as an individual on stage — alone, presenting yourself to an audience.

This is probably the only document that you will prepare yourself for your OPF.  (Publications do not go in the OPF.) It is your best opportunity to present yourself not only through the content of the document, but also through the appearance of the CV itself. Style, clarity, print, paper, cleanliness, and attention to details such as grammar and spelling are all important when preparing your CV.

Be informative, but concise. For example, you may wish to indicate that you were an Eagle Scout; however, listing all of your merit badges would be excessive.  More will be presented about appropriate documentation in this section.

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The Audience

A wide variety of people will have the authority to review your OPF.  These individuals will include, but not be limited to:

1. Promotion and Assimilation boards;
2. those writing award nominations; and
3. those involved in personnel actions, e.g., filling vacancies, billet descriptions, hiring, and special assignments.

Ensure that your CV is complete and that it contains information relevant to those who are authorized to review your OPF.

Any commissioned officer eligible for a promotion should have an updated CV in his or her OPF before the published deadline of the promotion year.  Each spring, the Health Services promotion board, comprised of five senior HSOs, meets to review and rank all HSOs who are eligible for temporary or permanent promotion during that promotion year.  These officers examine computer-generated summaries and OPFs for each candidate while looking for information pertinent to each promotion precept. The information in your CV should be in a concise, easy-to-read, easy-to-find format. This will make the job of the reviewing officers easier and lessen the likelihood that they will miss some important, perhaps even pivotal, facts about you.

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The CV Summary Sheet

Each CV should begin with a one page cover sheet addressing each of the five promotion board scored precepts. This gives the individuals reviewing your CV an overview of your accomplishments as they relate to the five promotion board precepts.  Remember, this is a one page summary and it should be brief. The detailed information should be contained in the body of your CV.

The CV Summary Sheet example provided below does not reflect the education, training, awards, or participation of any one officer, but is an attempt to capture many of the items listed in the 2006 HSO Promotion Benchmarks.  Modify as appropriate to make it your own, but make sure that the font is large enough to read on the computer screen and do NOT exceed 1 page.

If you have Microsoft Word available on your local machine, you may prefer to use the document in MS Word format, which will enable you to copy and paste the contents of the page.  The same document is also available below in Adobe PDF format:

• HSO CV Summary Sheet 1 [MS Word]
• HSO CV Summary Sheet 2 [PDF]

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The CV Content

(Documents are in Adobe PDF format and require Reader.  You may download a free copy at Adobe website )

Also, if you have Microsoft Word available on your local machine, you may prefer to use these documents in MS Word format, which will enable you to copy and paste the contents of the page:

• HSO CV Format Instructions [MS Word]
• HSO Sample CV [MS Word]
• HSO Sample CV [PDF]

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What NOT to Include In Your CV

Do not include the following types of information in your CV:

• Summaries of performance appraisals (COERs)
• Conferences attended
• Medical information
• Personal Information — some suggest omitting this type of information: birth date, marital status, children, hobbies, etc.  Although you may expand this information in CVs that are circulated for new jobs, for purposes of the OPF, keep this section very brief.

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Where To Send Your CV

FAX your dated CV and other documents to be included in your OPF to:
(301) 480-1436 or (301) 480-1407

To verify receipt, view your OPF online or call the CorpsLine at
(301) 443-6843.

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