A Dutch CV (Curriculum Vitæ, which means course of life in Latin), mirrors the culture: it’s direct and to the point. In the Dutch work environment, direct and straightforward communication seems to work best and this spills over to the CV. A typical CV can be up two pages, as it includes a great deal more than just your career biography; it covers the your education and any other accomplishments like publications, awards, honors, etc.
The first section of the CV should include your name, contact information, birthday, languages you speak fluently enough to use in a work environment, nationality, and optionally your work permit status.
The sections that follow should be arranged in order of the areas where you have the most experience or have accomplished the most. If you have a top tier education and only limited work experience, list your education first. On the other hand, if you have remarkable work experience but have been out of school for over 10 years, your education is less relevant now, so your work accomplishments should be listed first. Also highlight any training and certification you have by listing it first. In this way, the CV format is customizable as there are no hard structural rules.
The CV tends to be organized chronologically and uses bullet points so the reader will easily get an overview of a candidate’s full working career. Your CV is static and doesn’t change for different positions, so the phrasing should be general enough to apply to a range of opportunities. Your cover or motivation letter, however, should be customized to focus the reader.
An American resume, or résumé, is a more concise document that’s usually kept to one page as the goal is not for the reader to dwell on the document, but for it to make the candidate quickly stand out from the competition. Because of its restricted length, the information you give on your resume, detailing your employment history, skills and achievements, needs to be kept relevant to the position you are applying for. Employers sometimes request longer resumes for more technical roles, and within the academic world, called a ‘professional resume’ rather than a ‘short resume’
A resume also doesn’t have to be ordered chronologically, as again, it’s not intended to cover your whole career life but highlight how well-suited you are for a particular position. In this way, the resume is a much more customizable document than the CV.
By: Jerry Grimes