International
Resume vs CV: what the difference actually is
Two documents and one naming collision. The naming causes more trouble than the documents do.
Most of the confusion here is vocabulary rather than substance. There are two real documents. There are also two different naming conventions, and they overlap in a way that produces genuinely wrong advice.
The two documents
The short one. One or two pages, arguing that you can do a specific job. Tailored per application. Experience first. Everything that does not support the argument gets cut.
The long one. A complete scholarly or professional record with no length limit. Publications, funding, teaching, conferences, service. Education first. Nothing gets cut; it grows for your whole career.
Those are genuinely different documents with different jobs, and that distinction is the part that matters.
The naming collision
| Region | "Resume" | "CV" |
|---|---|---|
| United States, Canada | The short one | The long academic one |
| UK, Ireland | Rarely used | The short one |
| Australia, New Zealand | The short one | Also the short one |
| Continental Europe | Rarely used | The short one |
| South Africa, India | Both used | Usually the short one |
| Academia, anywhere | -- | The long one |
So a London posting asking for your CV wants two pages. A US university asking for your CV wants twelve. Same word.
How to tell which is wanted
Look at the employer, not the word.
- UK, Irish, European or Australian company → send the short document, whatever they called it.
- US or Canadian company → send the short document; they will have said "resume".
- Any university, research institute, hospital research post, fellowship or grant application → send the long one.
- US or Canadian company that said "CV" → almost always still the short one. Occasional usage drift, not a request for your publication list.
When genuinely ambiguous, send two pages. A concise document is never penalised for being readable, whereas an unexpected ten-page CV for a marketing role is.
What differs, section by section
| Short (resume / UK CV) | Long (academic CV) | |
|---|---|---|
| Length | 1-2 pages | No limit |
| Order | Experience first | Education first |
| Summary | Often | Rarely |
| Publications | Selected, or none | Full list, formatted |
| Teaching | Rarely | Courses, levels, enrolment |
| Funding | Rarely | Grants, amounts, role |
| Conferences | No | Talks and posters |
| Referees | On request | Often named with contacts |
| Tailoring | Per application | Barely changes |
Regional details worth knowing
United Kingdom. Two pages, no photo, no date of birth. A short personal statement at the top is normal. Referees usually "available on request".
Germany, Austria, Switzerland. A Lebenslauf is more formal: photo expected, date and place of birth common, reverse-chronological, often signed and dated. Formal applications may still include certificates and references as attachments.
France. Two pages, photo common, personal details in a compact block. Formal register.
Netherlands and the Nordics. Closer to the UK convention. Photo increasingly optional and often omitted.
Japan. The rirekisho is a standard form rather than a document you design, with a defined photo box and set fields. A Western-style resume is used for foreign-affiliated and multinational employers.
United States federal. A category of its own. USAJOBS applications want detail that a normal resume omits — hours per week, supervisor contact, series and grade, explicit duties — and three to five pages is normal. Being brief is the actual risk. The Federal Style template has the fields.
There is a country-by-country photo guide in should you put a photo on your resume.
Choosing a template for each
For the short document, anything from the professional or modern collections. Europass if a European institution asks for it by name, and Minimal Formal or Traditional Serif for formal continental applications.
For the long one, Academic CV — hanging indents on every entry, small-caps headings and no page limit. Harvard Style and LaTeX Style are the discipline conventions for finance-adjacent and mathematical fields respectively. All three are in the academic collection.
Keeping both
This is the practical point. Your content is stored separately from the design, so the same underlying record can be output as either document — switch template, hide the sections the short version does not need, export.
That is genuinely useful if you are applying to a postdoc and an industry research role in the same month, which is a common enough position to be in.