Resume vs CV: what the difference is, and how to improve either

In the United States and Canada, a resume is the one- to two-page marketing document you send for a job. In the UK, Ireland, Australia and most of Europe, that document is a CV. In academia and medicine, a CV means something else: a full record of publications, grants and posts, which can run to dozens of pages.

So "resume improvement" and "CV improvement" are the same job with different local rules. If you are applying across borders, the rules are what matter.

Where the conventions differ

• Length: one page preferred and two absolute maximum in the US; one page early career and two typical in the UK.
• Spelling: American (organize, program) for a resume; British (organise, programme) for a UK CV.
• Summary: expected in a UK CV, optional but common on a US resume.
• Education: often below experience in the US; often above it in a UK CV for early career.
• Photo, date of birth, references: none of them, on either side of the Atlantic.

Getting spelling and length wrong is the fastest way to look like an overseas applicant firing off applications.

How to improve a resume (or a CV — the steps are the same)

1. Rewrite the summary. Three lines: what you are, how long, one proof, what you want next. Not "results-driven professional seeking a challenging opportunity."

2. Convert duties into results. Every bullet should lead with the outcome: what changed, how much, how many, how fast. Where a number exists, use it. Where it does not, use scale or consequence.

3. Cut hard. A resume gets one page in the US by convention. Keep the last ten years, one line each for older roles, and delete anything that does not support the job in front of you.

4. Match the advert's vocabulary. If they say "stakeholder management" and you wrote "worked with senior people", a keyword search will not find you. Say it their way where it is true.

5. Fix the formatting. One column, standard headings, selectable text, .docx or a clean PDF, and a filename like Firstname-Lastname-Resume.pdf.

6. Read it aloud. Every awkward sentence, every repeated word, every claim you would not say to someone's face.

Resume summary examples that work

Accountant, five years: "Management accountant with five years in manufacturing, owning the month-end close for three entities. Cut the close from nine days to five by rebuilding the reconciliation process in NetSuite."

Software engineer: "Backend engineer working in Go and Postgres on a payments platform handling 40,000 transactions a day. Led the migration off a legacy queue with no customer-visible downtime."

Career changer into UX: "Former primary teacher moving into UX research. Ran structured observation and interviews with 300+ children over six years, now completing a research methods certificate with three portfolio case studies."

Each one has the same shape: role, context, scale, one result. None of them contain the word "passionate".

One document, adapted rather than duplicated

If you are applying in both markets, keep one master document and export two versions: swap the spelling convention, adjust the length, and change the heading from "CV" to "Resume" in the filename. The content does not need to change much — the conventions do.

Improve your CV or resume in a few minutes — the refined version comes as a PDF and an editable Word file, from £0.99, with no subscription.