A CV or resume is a way to briefly summarize your qualifications, including your education, work experience and other relevant achievements and skills. You can find many examples of curriculum vitae online.
A CV often also provides a brief overview of your accomplishments, not related to your profession or job. Additional skills and interests are regularly used by many people in their examples of resume, and can give you an edge—for example, being a musician can be an asset in a teaching job!
A resume also summarizes your career history and accomplishments. You use it to show your career history and personality. It can be an important part of a cover letter because they highlight your qualifications.
There is no one correct way to write a resume and no specific curriculum vitae format used world-wide; you can make changes if necessary. However, the European Union uses a popular Europass CV format - it’s supposed to be standardized within this community, to provide workers and employers with more transparency. In practice, not everyone uses it, and unless it’s expressly asked for, you don’t have to use this CV template.
How is a resume different from a CV?
Although the terms are sometimes used interchangeably. CV and Resume are not exactly the same thing. CV is the standard term used in the European Union, Asia, and the Middle East, while Resume is the term more commonly used in the United States. Both terms can be used in colloquial conversation, in reality, though, they must meet slightly different expectations.
The purpose of a resume—from French for “summary”—is to showcase your qualifications by providing an overview of your work history, and other relevant information that can help you find a job. As the name suggests, it summarizes your skills and demonstrates what you do for a living. This resume format is prevalent in the United States, but in practice the CV format also keeps to this idea all over the world.
What does CV stand for? Curriculum Vitae is Latin for “course of life” or “life story”. It is one of many resume formats, usually it’s based on chronological order. In Europe, CV format is prevalent—but in the United States, it is a specific resume format that is often provided when applying for academic positions; its purpose is to demonstrate qualifications by listing academic achievements. Curriculum vitae format in the USA must contain your publications, scientific accomplishments and rewards.
What does it mean in practice?
Very often in an "American" resume, people do not list their education, especially if it is not job-related. Resumes in the US are related to competencies and soft and hard skills, while the CV forms are related to achievements, especially academic ones. In Europe, Asia and the Middle East, however, CV is simply a very generic term for all application documents.
This also suggests that you should avoid calling it a Curriculum Vitae or CV if you are not a scientist or an American citizen, but are applying for a job in the United States. Some Americans may not even be familiar with the term, and they don’t know what does CV stand for. Just change the name in the template of resume—and you’ll do fine!
How to create an effective resume?
There are two schools of resume creation, and you can find them in various CV examples you’ll find online. If you’re wondering how to do a resume for a job, think over these two methods and choose the one that works for you.
The first school of thought is to keep the length of your resume to a minimum. Many experts advise that you should try to keep your resume to one page, but you can use up to three or four if necessary, depending on the CV format you pick. The premise is that a resume is an introduction to an interview—if something interests a recruiter, he or she will invite you to learn more. You can read more about how to prepare for an interview on our website.
On the other hand, others recommend a longer resume. The more comprehensive it is, the more it tells others about you. Creative types can get by with a one-page resume, as can be the case with a resume for college students who are still looking for their first job. However, if you have a long list of accomplishments and the organization prefers to hire experienced managers, don't be shy about including it.
The specific layout depends on your expected end result, the template of a CV you select, the nature of your current and future employment, and the industry in which you work. If you’re just starting out and creating a resume for the first job, you should use the space to present your skills and experience you might already have.
How to write a resume for a job in the real world?
A professional resume should be truthful, well-designed, and exude a professional atmosphere from the very beginning. A resume's visual appeal and appropriate CV format can pique the reader's interest and convince them to read further before they even have time to read the content. Logically, most resumes may not make it past the initial review stage—so you need to take care of the look of your resume so that you can land this job interview.
Remember that there are many online CV templates, and you can write a resume in a program like Google Docs, Word or Libre Writer—you don't have to use expensive professional online programs. It's easy to prepare a resume yourself—we have some templates for you to set up:
- Copy this Free Resume Template to your Google Drive and edit it to create a modern, elegant CV
- You can also use this modern template to create a more professional-looking resume.
- This MS Office template has a place to place your photo and links to social media profiles.
Choose a readable font size and style. Formal and sophisticated, unlike Comic Sans, but at the same time modern and fashionable. As a rule, people assume that a serif font looks good in print and a sans-serif font looks good on a computer screen, but this is not a strict rule.
Don't be afraid to experiment with different font styles in your resume. Don't forget to use legible line spacing; if your resume doesn't fit on one page, that’s not a problem. Add more pages to your resume, that’s great.
Don't give too much detail about yourself. It's not a good idea to give personal details such as marital status or racial background, as these can make it difficult for a recruiter. Something like this may come up during an interview; just remember that you have the right to refuse to answer any question.
