CV vs. Resume: The Difference

Have you ever wondered, what is the difference between a CV and a Resume?

Have you ever thought about, if one of these is correct or both are?

Ever wondered about where to use CV and where to use Resume?

If you have these questions, here are the answers:

CV: What is it ?

• CV - Curriculum Vitæ, means course of life in Latin.
• It is an in-depth document that can be laid out over two or more pages containing a high level of detail about your achievements, a great deal more than just a career biography.
• It overs your education as well as any other accomplishments like publications, awards, honors etc.
• The document tends to be organized chronologically.It should make it easy to get an overview of your full working career.
• A CV is static and doesn’t change for different positions; the difference would be in the cover letter.

Resume: What is it ?

• A resume, or résumé, is a concise document typically not longer than one page.
• The reader is not intended to dwell on your document for very long, so keep it brief.
• The goal of a resume is to make an individual stand out from the competition.
• The job seeker should adapt the resume to every position they apply for.
• It is in the applicant’s interest to change the resume from one job application to another and to tailor it to the needs of the specific post.
• A resume doesn’t have to be ordered chronologically, doesn’t have to cover your whole career like and is a highly customizable document.

Summarized Difference between CV and Resume :

  The length :

A resume is a brief summary of your skills and experience over one or two pages while your CV is more detailed and can stretch well beyond two pages.

The purpose

The resume will be tailored to each position whereas the CV will stay put and any changes will be in the cover letter.

The layout.

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.

So, we can say that, a CV is intended to be a full record of your career history; it can be long enough to cover your entire career and is static in nature,  and a resume is a brief, targeted list of skills and achievements; which has to be brief, though high customizable.