CV or Resume?

If you have been regularly applying for jobs, you will have noticed that in some job advertisements the employers ask for you to send them a CV and in others they ask you to send your résumé. While many people assume a résumé and a CV are the same thing, they actually aren’t, even though employers use them (incorrectly) interchangeably.

A CV or curriculum vitae, is an account of your entire employment history to date. This includes all of your education details and additional qualifications, as well as each job you have had, your duties and how long you held that position.

Writing a CV is generally just for your own records so you have it straight in your mind what positions you have held, what skills you have developed and the chronological order of your career, to make it easier to write your résumé when you need to. 

A résumé is, by definition, a summary, meaning that while a résumé also details your employment and education history, it only details the skills and positions relevant to the current position.

It is a résumé which you should send to potential employers as they really only want to know about your experience which is relevant to the position they need to fill and may not care that you spent two weeks working at the local service station when you were eighteen.

However, where a CV and a résumé can be interchangeable to a degree is when you have a long career and employment history in a certain field and are looking for another position in that field.

In this case, all of your previous experience is relevant and can be included, still your potential employer may still be uninterested that you played in the winning under 15s netball team in 1980.

Therefore, while the terms CV and résumé are generally incorrectly used interchangeably, it is best to double check with the advertiser of the position what they are really after in an application.

For more information, hints and tips to get you the job of your dreams, check out the other articles and jobs listed on this site, good luck!

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