Resume is not the American word for CV, it is the preferred application document in the US and Canada, whereas in the UK we use the CV, but there are quite substantial differences between the 2 documents. We get many applications from people all over the world and thought it would be useful to highlight the differences.

CV

CV (Curriculum Vitæ, which means ‘course of life’ in Latin) is an in-depth application document that can be laid out over several pages. It covers in-depth all information about your career, your achievements, your education. Hobbies and interests should be included as well as personal information such nationality/visa status and if you hold a driving licence.

The document tends to be organised chronologically and should make it easy to get an overview of an individual’s full working career. A CV is static and doesn’t change for different positions, if you want to highlight/tailor your application, this would be done in the cover letter.

Resume

A resume (or résumé) is a concise document typically not longer than one page; a recruiter spends only around 8 seconds to skim applicant’s resume. The resume should make you stand out from the competition.

It is a brief summary of your skills, abilities, qualification, work history and educational background of a candidate. It can be customised to the specific job opportunity and may contain only relevant information to the current position. It’s important to adjust a resume to a specific position in order to fit the needs and requirements of the job. A resume does not have to be ordered chronologically or cover your whole career.

The major differences between the CV and Resume

The major differences between a CV and resume is the length, the purpose and the layout. A resume is a brief summary of your skills and experience over one or two pages and The resume will be tailored to each position, a CV is more detailed and can stretch well beyond two pages. the CV is not tailored to the job, highlights can be made in the cover letter.

A CV has a clear chronological order listing the whole career of the individual whereas a resume’s information can be shuffled around to best suit the applicant.

To summarise; a CV is intended to be a full record of your career history and a resume is a brief, targeted list of skills and achievements.

Have you had any feedback on a CV or resume you have used? Let us know, it would be great to hear of your experiences.

Please read our related articles:  The CV and Writing a technical CV