Ever since I’ve graduated on September 2022, I’ve not had a job. Maybe a crappy internship, but I wasn’t provided with a ‘certificate’, or letter that proves if I’ve worked for them. That was around October 2022, and I quit voluntarily at the end of January 2023. Since then, I’ve not worked anywhere as a software dev, be it internship or full-time, because the job market is so fucked up in India.
Now, how do I explain this to avail scholarship? I have yet to read other scholarship docs from other countries in Europe, and I’m already shitting solidified blood-clots reading this from the DAAD Helmut-Schmidt announcement document:
a curriculum vitae in reverse chronological order including the date of issue (format: europass, please note: the europass template does not include a date, please add it yourself) with exact information about your studies and practical experience; gaps of three months or more must be explained
(Update: And I just realized that I am an idiot for not reading that this is only for non-STEM folks. Well, it looks to me that DAAD for STEM is also almost the same, with more stringent requirements.)
In my college, there was no research programs - I mean, you know the typical ‘Indian colleges encouraging academic plagiarism’, so I didn’t learn or do shit. And obviously, I have no job experience. I did contribute to open-source from GitLab, a few Ruby gems, a new unknown front-end framework for JS, then Nixpkgs and now Guix, but that’s it. Honestly, I wouldn’t even call it contribution, because only a few patches were merged - most of it was just me interacting with those folks. After that, I’ve done nothing since September 2023, because my laptop broke and there were no spare parts. Maybe a little bit of playing around with Nix and Guix, writing package expressions and that’s it.
How do I explain this? CVs are supposed to be at least 2-3 pages, but this? I can’t even write half a page with this.
Where is it the case ? I always heard CV are expected to be kept short, and stay on one page unless you’re one of these senior experts with a crazy experience. A young graduate sending a 2-3 page CV sounds at minimum pretentious and would go direct to the garbage.
Now, it seems that “Not being able to find a job” is a great reason to pursue further education.
Agree - I’m mid 40s with both deep and broad experience, US based so no picture or irrelevant biographical bits, and I still absolutely cringe at the idea of sending out 2-3 page resume/CV.
Could I reasonably fill that space with relevant and compelling information? Sure.
Do I think anyone would read it? Not a chance.
In my experience a Resume is a one page. A CV is 2-3.
College CV’s are different and are meant to go more into detail regarding specific accomplishments.
Cv vs resume. Different.
Not outside of the US
I’m in Australia
Obviously not discounting your experience but most things I can find online indicate that CV and resume are synonymous in Oz.
K. They’re not but I can’t account for what you’ve read online
These are the first two results I found for “Australia CV”:
https://www.visualcv.com/international/australia-cv/
https://www.resumestoimpress.com.au/career-resources/how-to-prepare-an-australian-cv/ - this seems to imply a “true” CV for specific acadaemia purposes as well but also implies this is not what most people mean
So see your last reference.
Over 20 years I’ve worked in the federal and local governments, for academia adjacent organisations, NGOs and commercial companies, retail and hospitality, health services - as both a hopeful candidate and a hiring manager.
Different industries require different things and the distinction between the 2 is relevant. It’s the white collar roles that expect CVs or will actually make that distinction in the job advertisement. In retail etc they might ask for your cv but they mean a resume. More commercial companies I’ve worked with just want a resume and they mean a resume. If I submitted a resume for one of my most recent gigs, they’d say that’s not enough and ask me for my long form cv.
There is a distinction, it just depends on the industry.
I do appreciate that, I do recognise the term is used differently in different contexts and cultures but the point is that it is at odds with your blanket statement of “Cv vs resume. Different.”. OP mentions some stuff about European unis so I assume that is what they are going for and, at least within the UK a CV literally is, in all contexts, what other people may call a Resume. We might make a distinction to specify an “Academic CV” to make sure a longer format is understood but generally the right format is based on context rather than terminology.
I was taught that resume’s are experience-focused and cv’s are education-focused. Obviously there’s a lot of overlap but the latter is used more in academia, and by recent graduates with little work experience.
If that’s the case you should update Wiktionary which currently claims that they’re synonyms: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/resume#Noun
YOU’RE A SYNONYM!
Um, ok…?
To validate your perspective: I am a hiring manager in tech in the US. I will greatly discount any resume over 2 pages (especially for a higher level candidate). For entry level candidates, one page is sufficient for me. I’m also less concerned about gaps in resumes and more concerned with ability to learn - so I look for things that demonstrate that.
CV’s are expected to be wall-of-text and as long as you can make it. They can easily go for 6+ pages. You are probably thinking about resumes