What is CV?
CV is a mini, written summary of an individual’s education and qualifications.CV stands for curriculum vitae, derived from a Latin word which means ‘course of life. CV is like a snapshot of one’s life, covering various aspects of her life, including the education, accomplishments, certifications she has done or any conferences one has had in her life.
It also includes any publications or any other achievements she has done in her life.
CV has the ability to contain all of the major contributions of life in a single place.
There is no range for a CV to get extensions. You can write about whatever you have done in life. A CV can range from 2 to 8 pages even.
When someone does something mark worthy, he needs to update it in the CV, each time.
A CV contains all the skills and the focus points that you can have in your career or your educational period. CV has the essence of your life.
You can add as many things to your CV as you require, the references section of the CV makes you stand out from the rest when someone trustworthy gives a good reference of your educational and professional capabilities.
What is Resume?
A resume is a French word meaning ‘summary’. As the meaning implies that a summary is a short but specific detailed-oriented document that is specified to just one job.
Due to the summary kind of nature, a resume, it has to be kept minimum and short. It is always advisable to keep the resume short like a single page but if you have experience in a specific area and it is covering a vast number of years, you can write the resume up to 2 pages, but that is the maximum for a resume.
A resume is target-oriented, which is built on the experiences and education towards the specific field you are targeting to.
You can create the resume as per your own interests but the skills and the work experience you have must be relevant to the job you are focusing.
A perfect resume must only highlight the specific contributions or achievements you have made while on a previous job having the same skills and specific criteria for that job.
A resume has a cover page that focuses on the contributions and skills you discuss in the resume itself.
The cover page gives you extra space to discuss your remarkable achievements targeting a specific industry.
Difference Between CV and Resume
CV can be extensive, while a resume is crisp and short. CV has the details of each bit of life, covering the education you got as a whole, while a resume contains only the part of education that you are going to target in a specific job proposal.
Owing to the detail-oriented nature, a CV can be long covering all aspects of life, however, a resume is really to the point.
The resume is accompanied by a cover letter but a CV has no cover letter.
The resume is targeted towards a specific industry, CV is not industry-based, it is general information about all the achievements the person has made.
Comparison Between CV and Resume
| Parameter of Comparison | CV | Resume |
| Function | CV is generic version of achievements and accomplishments | Resume is comprehensive, focused and targeted towards an industry |
| Length | CV can be long from 2 to 8 pages | Resume is small documented version of your specific experiences |
| Information | CV includes academic achievements, mostly used to get researches | Resume is customized for each job |
| Cover page | CV is long detailed version of your overall achievements, does not have a cover page | Resume may have a cover page that describes what the resume targets about |
| Updates | CV needs to get updated each time a new contribution is added | Resume only needs specific industry knowledge and contributions towards that industry only |