CV or resume: which one to send

The short answer

In the United States and Canada, a resume is a one or two page summary of your career, tailored to the job. CV there means a long academic document, used for research, medicine and university posts.

In the UK, Ireland, most of Europe, the Gulf, India, Pakistan, Australia and New Zealand, CV is simply the everyday word for that same one or two page document. There is nothing academic about it.

What changes when the word changes

The label matters less than the expectations attached to the market you are applying in. The document itself follows a short list of local rules.

• United States and Canada: one page early on, two at most; no photo, no date of birth, no marital status, no nationality.
• United Kingdom and Ireland: up to two pages; no photo; references available on request is unnecessary and can go.
• Germany, Austria, Switzerland: a photo is still common, a clear tabular layout is expected, and employers often want scanned certificates attached.
• France, Spain, Italy: one to two pages, photo optional and common, a short profile at the top.
• The Gulf: one to two pages, photo common, and employers usually expect nationality and visa status.
• Academia anywhere: a full CV with publications, funding, teaching and conferences, as long as it needs to be.

The academic CV is a different document

An academic CV is exhaustive on purpose. It lists every publication, grant, talk, supervision and committee, because those are the currency of the field, and length signals productivity rather than padding.

If you are leaving academia, do not send it. Build a two-page resume that translates research into things a company can use: methods you know, tools you use daily, projects you delivered, budgets and teams you handled.

What both documents share

Whatever the name and the local conventions, the same three things decide whether you get a reply: a structure a parser can read, the language of the job description, and bullets that state a result rather than a duty.

Keep one master document with everything in it, and cut a targeted version for each application. That is faster than rewriting, and it stops you sending a version that forgot the one thing the employer asked for.

What to call the file

Use the word the advert used. If they ask for a CV, name the file Firstname-Lastname-CV.pdf. It is a small courtesy that makes you easy to file, and it avoids a recruiter wondering whether you sent the wrong thing.

Never send a file called resume-final-v3.pdf. The file name is the first thing a human sees, and it is visible inside the applicant tracking system too.

Personal details: the part that varies most

What counts as normal information in one country is a legal risk in another. In the US, UK, Canada and Ireland, employers actively do not want your age, marital status, nationality or photo, because holding it exposes them to discrimination claims.

In Germany, much of continental Europe, the Gulf and South Asia, some of those same details are routine and their absence looks like an incomplete application. Write for the market you are applying to rather than for the advice you read first.

Dates, spelling and the small signals

Use the date convention of the country you are applying to, spell out months to avoid the 03/04 ambiguity between British and American readers, and keep your spelling consistent with the employer - organisation for a London employer, organization for a New York one.

None of these wins you an interview on its own. Together they are the difference between a document that reads as local and one that reads as forwarded from somewhere else.