March 11th, 2004

So im polishing up my resume/cv and have come upon a dilemma…

One thing ive noticed is the different meanings. Seems in the US, resume and cv are two different documents. The resume being 1 page max and giving a brief overview and the CV being pages long and detailed in depth the persons education / past jobs etc.

Whereas over here, resume and cv are used interchangeably. I spoke with the careers dude at the uni here and he said nowadays both terms are used interchangeably, resume = cv, cv = resume. He said that the average student resume is around 4-6 pages long and there is no way you could fit the information on one page. I queried him about employers and if it is more beneficial to have a short 1 page document or not and he said no. He even told me that employers actually will read thousands of 4-6 page documents when people apply for jobs.

Seems silly to me, as an employer if I had the option to read a 1 page document compared to a 6 page document I know which one I would read. Wouldn’t employers just shuffle through the documents and pick out the ones they like and then ask for an interview / cv? That’s the impression I got from my last job. Maybe im wrong…

Anyway, i now have a 1 page resume. woohoo