CV vs résumé: what is the difference?

This question has two correct answers and which one applies depends entirely on who is asking. That is the actual difficulty — not the formatting.

Answer one: two different documents

In North America, and in academia and medicine everywhere, a CV and a résumé are genuinely different things.

A résumé is short and targeted. One page, maybe two, rewritten for each application. You cut things. The document argues for you against one specific role.

A curriculum vitae is a complete record. Publications, conference talks, teaching, grants, supervision, peer review. It runs to many pages and it accumulates over a career. You do not cut it — the completeness is the point, and a committee expects to see everything.

Answer two: the same document, different word

Across most of Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and the UK, "CV" is simply the ordinary word for the one-or-two-page document you send with an application. Nobody means a twelve-page publication list.

If a job posting in London, Bangalore or Berlin asks for your CV, it wants what an American posting would call a résumé.

How to tell which you are being asked for

• Academic, research, clinical or fellowship application → the long document, whatever it is called.
• A corporate job posting → the short one, whatever it is called.
• The posting states a page limit → the short one, definitively.
• The posting asks for a publication list or teaching statement → the long one.
• Genuinely unsure → send the short one. It gets read. A long one might not.

What actually changes

Length and selection

The résumé is an argument, so everything on it should support the argument. The CV is a record, so omitting things is closer to an error.

Tailoring

A résumé is rewritten per application. A CV is largely stable — you might reorder sections or add a cover letter that frames it, but you do not rebuild it for each committee.

Who reads it, and how

A résumé is often read by software first and a recruiter second, for a few seconds. An academic CV is usually read by a committee of people in your field, slowly. Optimising a CV for keyword parsing is solving the wrong problem.

Which one ORQILO builds

Both, in the same studio — the sections are free-form, so a CV can carry publications, teaching and grants alongside the standard blocks. What changes is the document you choose to build, not the tool.

One caveat worth knowing before you use the score: the seven-dimension analysis assumes résumé conventions, and length is one of them. On a long academic CV that dimension is measuring against the wrong standard and should be ignored. The section-level feedback — passive voice, vague verbs — still applies to any document.