Resume vs CV: what is the difference?

In the United States and Canada, a resume is a one-to-two-page summary of your experience, tailored to one job. A CV (curriculum vitae) is a complete record of your academic career, with publications, teaching, grants and presentations, and it has no page limit. In the UK, Ireland, India, Australia and most of the world, “CV” is simply the everyday word for a resume.

At a glance

	Resume (US/Canada)	Academic CV (anywhere)	“CV” (UK, Ireland, India, Australia…)
Length	1–2 pages	3+ pages, growing over a career	About 2 pages
Purpose	Win an interview for one job	Document your whole academic record	Win an interview for one job
Tailored per job?	Yes	Mostly kept as one master copy	Yes
Leads with	Experience and results	Education, research, publications	Profile, then experience
Used for	Industry, nonprofit, most government	Academia, research, medicine, grants, fellowships	Almost all jobs

What goes on a resume

• Name and contact details
• A short summary (optional, two or three lines)
• Experience, most recent first, with bullet points that show results: what changed, by how much
• Education
• Skills
• Certifications or projects, if relevant

Everything earns its place by being relevant to the job you are applying for. Older and unrelated roles shrink to one line or drop off. That editing is the craft of a resume.

What goes on an academic CV

All of the above, plus everything a resume would cut:

• Education in full, including thesis titles and advisors
• Publications, in a standard citation style
• Conference presentations and invited talks
• Grants, fellowships and awards
• Teaching experience and courses taught
• Research experience and lab skills
• Professional memberships, service and peer review
• Languages and references

A CV grows over a career rather than being rewritten. Senior academics routinely have CVs of ten pages or more.

Which one to send

1. Do what the advert says. If it asks for a CV and it is a US industry job, the employer almost always means a resume. If the role is academic, they mean the long version.
2. US and Canada, non-academic: resume, one or two pages. Federal jobs through USAJOBS have accepted resumes of no more than two pages since September 27, 2025.
3. UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, India, Singapore: a two-page document called a CV, built like a resume.
4. Continental Europe: a CV, often with a photo and date of birth, sometimes in the Europass format for EU applications.
5. Academia, research, medicine, grants, fellowships: a full academic CV everywhere.

Build either one, free

The Resume Builder handles both. For a resume, keep to experience, education and skills, and watch the page counter. It tells you when the content spills onto another page and which section pushed it over. For a CV, add Publications, Grants or Teaching as custom sections and let it run as long as it needs. Nothing you type leaves your browser.

Resume EditorWrite your resume and watch the page build itself, then download a PDF with real, selectable text. No account, no watermark, no page limit.Build a resume or CV →

For applications where a person reads it first, the templates include two-column designs with an optional photo slot, for the countries where a photo is expected. For anything that goes through an applicant tracking system, stick to a single-column template.