CV vs Resume: What Is the Difference in the UK and the US?

In Britain, CV, short for curriculum vitae, is the everyday term for a job application document. Whether you are applying to be a retail assistant, an accountant or a marketing director, the advert will ask for a CV. It normally runs to two sides of A4, opens with a personal statement, and lists work experience in reverse-chronological order.

British academics also use the word CV for their much longer record of publications and teaching, so in the UK the same word covers both the short and the long document. Context tells you which one is meant.

In the United States the everyday job application document is a resume. It is tightly edited, usually one page for early-career candidates and two for experienced professionals, and opens with a summary rather than a personal statement.

An American CV is a different thing. It is a full account of an academic or clinical career, covering education, research, publications, conference presentations, teaching, grants, fellowships and professional service, and it grows with every year of work. It has no page limit. You will be asked for one when applying for faculty positions, research roles, fellowships and many physician jobs. If a US employer outside those fields asks for a CV, they almost always want a resume.

Here is how the two everyday documents differ in practice.

• Name: CV in the UK; resume in the US.
• Typical length: two pages in the UK; one page early in a career and up to two later in the US.
• Opening section: a personal statement, sometimes called a personal profile, in the UK; a summary, or occasionally an objective, in the US.
• Paper size: A4 in the UK; US Letter in the US. This affects where page breaks fall, so check the layout if you convert one to the other.
• Spelling: British in the UK, such as organised, programme and specialised; American in the US, such as organized, program and specialized.
• Dates: day before month in the UK; month before day in the US. On either document, writing the month as a word, for example 'March 2024', avoids confusion.
• Education: degree classification such as a 2:1, plus A-levels and GCSEs, in the UK; GPA, honors and sometimes relevant coursework in the US.
• Location: town or city in the UK; city and state in the US.
• Interests section: still fairly common on UK CVs, particularly for graduates; less common on US resumes unless directly relevant.

The similarities are greater than the differences, and good practice on one side of the Atlantic is good practice on the other.

• Reverse-chronological order, with your most recent role first.
• Achievement-led bullet points that show results, not lists of duties.
• Tailoring to each vacancy, using the language of the job description where it truthfully applies.
• No photo, date of birth, marital status or other personal details. Equality law in the UK and anti-discrimination law in the US both mean employers prefer not to see them.
• No references on the document itself. Employers in both countries ask for them later in the process.
• A clean layout with standard headings, which suits both human readers and applicant tracking systems.

If you are a UK candidate applying for a job in the US, do not simply rename the file. Work through the following changes.

• Cut for length. If you have under ten years or so of experience, aim for one page. Remove older roles, merge similar bullets and drop the interests section.
• Replace the personal statement with a shorter, harder-edged summary focused on what you deliver.
• Switch to American spelling and vocabulary throughout. Spellcheck set to US English will catch most of it.
• Translate your education. Give your degree in a form an American reader will recognize, for example 'Bachelor of Science in Economics', and consider adding a brief note that a first-class or upper second-class degree is a high classification. Leave out GCSEs.
• Change the page size to US Letter and recheck the page breaks.
• State your work authorization if you have it, since this is one of the first things a US recruiter will want to know about an overseas applicant.

Going the other way, you have a little more room and a slightly different tone to aim for.

• Call it a CV in your file name, email and cover letter.
• Expand to two pages if your experience justifies it. You can restore useful detail that the one-page limit forced out.
• Rewrite the summary as a personal statement that also says what kind of role you are looking for.
• Switch to British spelling, A4 paper and UK date order.
• Explain US-specific terms. Spell out GPA context or replace it with a plain description such as 'graduated with honours', and give your state licence or certification its full name.
• Mention your right to work in the UK if you have it.

Use the word the employer uses. If a London-based company asks for a CV, send a two-page British-style CV. If a company in Chicago asks for a resume, send a one or two page American-style resume. If a US university or hospital asks for a CV, send the long academic or clinical version.

For international organisations that recruit across both markets, follow the conventions of the country where the role is based, and if the advert is unclear, a clean two-page document with no personal details beyond your contact information is acceptable almost everywhere in the UK and the US.