CV or resume: what is the difference?
The two words describe the same file in most of the world and two different files in the United States. The question is worth two minutes, because sending the wrong one is a visible mistake.
- UK, Europe, Türkiye: CV and resume mean the same short document.
- US: a resume is one to two targeted pages; a CV is the long academic record.
- What really changes across markets is the photo and the personal details, not the word.
In most of the world they are one document
In the UK, across Europe and in Türkiye, "CV" is simply the word for the document you send with an application: a short, targeted summary of your career, usually one or two pages.
Nobody there will expect anything different if they say resume, and no employer will think twice if your file is called a CV. The distinction below matters in exactly one market.
In the US, a resume is the short one
An American resume is one to two pages, written for a specific job, and it leaves things out on purpose. It is a marketing document: recent, relevant, measurable.
An American CV is the opposite — a complete academic record with publications, grants, teaching, conference talks and references, running to many pages. It is used for academic, research and some medical posts, and almost nowhere else.
Which one to send
Decide by market and role, not by the word in the job posting. Applying to a US company for an industry job: send a one to two page resume, and it is fine to name the file "resume". Applying anywhere in Europe, the UK or Türkiye: send the same short document and call it a CV.
Applying for a PhD position, a postdoc or a faculty role anywhere: that is the long academic CV, and length is expected rather than penalised.
The same document has a name in every market
German speakers call it a Lebenslauf, and the tabular Lebenslauf has its own conventions. In Spain it is a currículum or currículum vítae; in much of Latin America, hoja de vida. In Brazil it is a currículo, in France a CV or curriculum vitae.
They all mean the short targeted document. What differs between them is not the length but the local norms: which personal details are expected, whether a photo is usual, and how formal the letter beside it has to be.
What actually changes between markets
The word is the smallest difference. The photo is a bigger one — common in Türkiye, Germany and France, and deliberately avoided in the US, the UK and Canada. Date of birth, marital status and a national ID number are normal on some Turkish CVs and are left off entirely for anglophone applications.
So "one CV per country" is closer to the truth than "one CV per word". The same experience, arranged for where it is going.
Questions
How long should it be?
One page early in your career, two pages once you have several roles worth describing. Academic CVs are the exception and have no useful limit. Length is not a virtue: a second page has to earn itself.
Should I translate my CV or rewrite it?
Write it in the target language rather than translating it. A translated CV keeps the sentence shapes of the original and reads as foreign, and job titles rarely survive word for word — the local title for your role is the one recruiters search for.
What should I name the file?
Your name, the role and the format: "deniz-kaya-frontend-developer.pdf". It is what a recruiter sees in a folder of two hundred files called cv.pdf.
Letterin keeps one master profile and writes a separate document for each application — in the language and the length that market expects.
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