I am sure the majority of us (in North America at least) are familiar with the term “Resume”, I would bet that a large majority of us have heard the term “CV” or “Curriculum Vitae”.  What is the difference? Why are they titled differently? Would I ever submit one instead of the other?

Enquiring minds want to know! Spoiler Alert! I have provided examples of each type down below (CV courtesy of ExciteRecruitment.com). 

Let’s first appease our inner book worm and look at the actual definitions of each;


​Resume;

noun
- a summing up; summary.
- a brief written account of personal, educational, and professional qualifications and experience, as that prepared by an applicant for a job. (source, dictionary.com)

Ok, how about,

Curriculum Vitae;

noun
noun: curriculum vitae; plural noun: curricula vitae; plural noun: curricula vitarum
- a brief account of a person's education, qualifications, and previous experience, typically sent with a job application. (source, dictionary.com)

Well, if you ask me they basically sound the same.  What gives?? The main difference is how they are formatted, the order of the information and the length.  Overall, a resume will tend to be a bit shorter page wise while a “CV’d” version could easily be several pages.  It is mostly just North America that utilizes a “resume” format whilst the rest of the world follows a “CV” format.  Some countries such as Canada will borrow from both, here for example a resume is usually longer than a CV. 

Let’s first break down our initial questions asked in the first paragraph:

1. What is the difference?

As already hinted at above, the major difference is the format.  Skills, Accomplishments and Education will generally be visible first on a CV before the professional experience, opposite on a resume.  It is also very common for a CV to have a head and or a full body shot of the candidate housed in the upper right corner of the document (see note below on photos and job applications).  Versus, a resume which will almost never have any pictures on it and professional experience will be seen before education, skills and accomplishments. 

2. Why are they titled differently?

This is a great question, because as we know the structure by definition is basically the same.  I have asked colleagues around the globe and nobody seems to know.  My opinion is that a CV or Curriculum Vitae was already the norm around the world and in North America, especially in the United States the term was not, well, “English”.  So the word Resume was chosen to fit in more culturally.  If you have any more thoughts on this please comment below. 

3. Would I ever submit one instead of the other?

In short, yes.  Why? It depends on where you are applying geographically.  In our global employment market these days it is becoming more and more common, even for entry level positions to apply to foreign employment opportunities (barring meeting foreign Visa requirements of course).  When applying for positions in Europe and the Middle East especially a CV will be the preferred document to submit.  How will I know? Simply, the website of the company you are applying to, pay attention to their verbiage.  Does it say “attach resume” or “attach CV”.

Ok, back to this business about pictures and job applications.  When I was fresh to the world of recruiting and human resources I sometimes received applications from job seekers with photos of themselves attached, sometimes embedded into the resume or CV and sometimes separate.  Often the photos were professionally done and looked good, I will not lie though, I did sometimes receive photographs that were, to say the least… "provocative" and not something mom or dad would like to see floating out there on the world wide web.  Although I thought the practice was “silly” at first, I discovered that in fact, this is a very normal practice on a CV.  It is done to make a great first impression and like a sea of black suitcases in an airport, with that one pink one sticking out, a picture of you professionally looking your best helps you stand out and personalizes what is a very standard document.  

What do you think? As always, please comment, like and share.  As promised below are examples of my own, both as a resume and a CV version of the same.  Note: below are samples, phone numbers and actual home addresses have been changed.  
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Until next time, happy hunting. 


Jeff

I have written before on social media use, misuse and abuse, targeted more as a tool kit for HR Managers.  I also have written about personal brands “what is your brand”.  The other day something very interesting happened to me.  I was scrolling my facebook feed as most of us do and I came across a meme that jumped out at me (posted below).  I was instantly horrified and sad at the same time, it’s 2018 for crying out loud and considering the massive wave of gun violence in the United States I found it very distasteful.

Then I saw who posted it.  A comedian, jokester, YouTube star that I had followed since his career first started, In all his videos and posts he has always stayed away from politics, religion, etc.  I always looked up to him for that and thought being a younger guy he would be for equality and inclusion.  I posted a comment on the thread basically sharing my upset and disappointment, then I read the hundreds of comments.  There were a small few bigoted comments in support of the meme and post but there were many dozens and dozens that clearly felt the same way I did, many with the comment “unfollowing you”.

Lance is a very popular YouTuber and I never expected him to reply to my comment and I was still so dumbfounded that someone would post something so mean.  I took to twitter, Lance has over 826,000 followers there, mine is measly but the power of social media can be amazing.  I shared the meme, tagged Lance in it and spoke out about how bigoted and hateful this was and that there are children all around the world that kill themselves because they aren’t accepted for who they are. 

Lance responded.  He immediately apologized and shared with me something that I had already assumed.  Lance is his own business and social media is his platform so he does have staffers that help to manage his various social media platforms, one of them had decided to re-share the meme from another site and Lance had no idea it was even posted.  Lance immediately regained my respect as a fan of his, he was so upset about it and assured me this was nowhere close to his outlook or opinion.

This was an interesting lesson though and Lance and I had a back and fourth text discussion about it.  He “is” his own brand as @Lance210, in his face on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.  The general public has no idea if it is him posting, or someone doing it for him, with an impressive 11.3 million facebook followers he has earned a lot of fans, this is his income.  Social media gurus make money from many of these platforms it is literally their careers.  The lesson here is that even ONE tweet, post, pic or meme can tarnish your brand, badly.  How many hundreds or even thousands of fans unfollowed Lance that day?  

Some fans were so outraged they reported the post to facebook internal security as an inappropriate post.  Imagine the impact if his page had been shut down by facebook? You just lost the ability to communicate to your 11.3 million fans who are your customers and who you rely on for your well being.

In this day and age, it does not matter if your brand is just about you, a small company or a large corporation with thousands of employees.  One single post to social media can damage that brand, very quickly.  Lance managed it very well, reacted immediately, apologized and investigated how it all happened in the first place.  If I am one of his customers then he did the absolute right thing and went into customer recovery mode, I am an even more eager fan than I was before. 

So where do we go from here? Education, Education, Education and ensuring that we closely monitor what we are posting ourselves and what others might be posting on our behalf.  I always ask myself before I post anything “would my mother be proud of me for posting this?” If I cannot give an emphatic YES, then I don’t post it.  If you are a blogger and you have help managing your social media image make sure they know your moral code and brand standard.  

Let me know what you think, feel free to comment below.

Practice Safe Social Media,

Jeff

​

Like I said, Lance is actually a cool funny guy.  Check out one of his recent prank videos here.  You can follow him as @Lance210 or Lance Stewart. 

By now you have all seen the headline, or even watched the jarring video of a male passenger being dragged off of an aircraft, screaming and bloodied.  The United Airlines flight 3411 incident that took place in Chicago was very interesting to me.  I spent 12 years in the airline industry so I tend to view aviation related events through a few different lenses.

When the story first broke, it seemed like the usual overly sensational news about another unruly passenger being removed from an aircraft.  This does not sway me as this happens if not hundreds, but thousands of times a day around the world.  I watched the main video that was all over social media and aside from the chaos that took place in the cabin of that aircraft I was floored to see the explosive way that this story spread not only on traditional media, but the wildfire it created on Facebook, Twitter etc.  The comment threads that I reviewed were angry, judgmental, and very opinionated.  The whole sphere of social media was out for blood and the mass online condemnation caused United Airlines stock to plummet in value by one billion dollars in the first 24 hours.  

United tried in vain to turn the tide, releasing several statements that were not received by the public well, the first was supportive of the employees and their actions and this caused mass anger again towards the airline.  The public hatred towards United Airlines did not begin to turn around until the CEO came out and took full blame for the event, announced major procedural promises and changes and offered compensation to every passenger onboard flight 3411, the airline had dug themselves into a hole with no way out and had to make unrealistic promises that it cannot keep.  What surprised me most by this point, was that although the poor finesse of how this situation was handled, United Airlines was actually in the right.  I am not defending the injuries sustained by the gentleman involved, the fact is, based on federal law and established policy United had every right to take all the steps that they did, and yet because of the prevalence of smart phones and social media, being right or wrong did not matter, the public made up their mind and wanted to punish United for it. 

But why did the public turn so negatively toward United? Because of the social media firestorm.  People were posting and re-posting articles and videos with highly sensational, angry, opinionated statements.  People like to be heard and with social media, everyone has their own soapbox,  truth, facts, and objectivity ceased to matter.  This issue is not going to go away, since the United 3411 incident there have been several other airline related incidents that have also played out on social media.  Recently JetBlue was the subject of this amazing hyped up headline “Family kicked off flight to Vegas for stowing birthday cake in overhead bin”.  This could have gone poorly for JetBlue but it didn’t, there are several factors.  JetBlue has clearly established policies, procedures and training in place that are good for both the company AND the customer.  JetBlue CEO Robin Hayes was even interviewed on a morning news programme and was eloquently able to defend his employees and the decisions they made, he backed this up with facts related to the case, the training provided to the employees and the applicable laws and regulations.  

In todays world we are literally surrounded by smart phone technology where anyone can film or photograph whatever is happening around them.  So, how do we prepare for this new world where social media can take one incident and ruin a person or a companies reputation?  We will explore strategies for this in Part II of this topic. 

#TweetWell​

Jeff