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Ask HN: Help choosing App name: Resume vs CV

8 points by robeastham ↗ HN
I needed to do my CV as I'm looking for a new job and so instead of just opening the word processor and writing it like a normal person I started writing an app to do it for me. After getting a bit carried away for a couple of weeks just before Christmas I ended up with something that I realised others here on Hacker News would perhaps find useful. I've now started to add features that I think would specifically appeal to Silicon Valley tech types.

I'm planning to launch a beta pretty soon and am going to provide as many Hacker News readers who show interest with a free account. Watch out for that post here. In the meantime I'm struggling with the name and consequent domain name registration. I really want to use CV, short for Curriculum Vitae for those in the dark, instead of Resume. But I'm not sure whether you guys in the US use CV and Resume interchangeably like we tend to do here in the UK. My tagline will more than likely have the word Resume in it if I do go with CV in the main name. I'm probably making too big a deal of this one word, but I'm concerned about a) recognition of CV by my target market (Silicon Valley tech types like your good selves) b) that Resume has about 10 times the volume of searches in the US vs CV according to SEMRush. So I should probably have resume in the domain name rather than the tagline.

Any input that you US readers have on this CV vs Resume debate would be great. Is CV even recognised in the US as the thing you send along with a job application?

29 comments

[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 60.4 ms ] thread
marklabedz
One data point: I've always thought of CV as more common in academia/research type fields and as some of my foreign colleague's name for a resume.
nchlswu
This. I always liked the term "CV" (I was just trying to be different - lame I know), but I realized in North America - I'm Canadian - "resume" is the defacto standard. A position in academia will mention CV, or rather, "CV/Resume". In my experiences, I've noticed there are some distinct differences between a CV and a Resume. The most obvious difference being the focus on papers, publications and research in a CV that's not usually found in a resume.
iwwr
Resume for the US.

CV for the rest of the world.

Let users chose the name.

And post a link to show your work :)

notyourwork
From my experience in university, a resume is a shorter summation of a person whereas a CV is more detailed.

That was my understanding anyway.

robeastham
I think I like the idea of letting users choose.
ig1
It doesn't matter.

The bonus you get on google for a keyword matching the domain is only on an exact match. So cv.com will get a bonus, but mycv.com won't. Also because "mycv" is treated as a single word it won't even get a normal match for the term "cv", my-cv.com would get the match as Google treat the hypen as a a space, but in general you should avoid hyphenated domain names.

jhancock
Can you provide some rational or data points on why hyphens are not a good thing, particularly given your example of google parsing the words accurately? I hear this often but always without explanation.
robeastham
I was wondering about this too after reading:

http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/17702/17-Mutable-Sugges...

Great advice in this article on the whole I think, but I did wonder about the rational for removing hyphens. Could it just be they are out of fashion? I remember when they used to be much more popular way back when.

Also thanks for all the comments so far guys!

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ig1
It's because users are used to multi-words companies being a single word in a domain (i.e no hyphen). So when people type your domain a non-insignificant percentage of users are going to type it without the hyphen.

If you buy both domains (with and without the hyphen) and 301 redirect the hyphenless domain to the hyphen'd one you'd get over the worst of the issues, but there's still the potential for confusion and different people spelling it in different ways.

WillyF
I agree on the hyphens, but I disagree strongly with your suggestion that mycv.com won't get a bonus for relevance to the term cv.

I've seen plenty of sites with inferior link profiles (to the sites below them in the search results) rank because of domains with a couple of relevant keywords along with a generic one. It's nowhere near an exact match, but it's still worth something.

Let's use the term "entry level jobs" for an example.

http://www.entryleveljobsite.com ranks #9 right now, yet it's link profile is far inferior to my site http://www.onedayonejob.com which ranks at #16. Yes, there are probably some other factors included, but my feeling is that the domain name has a lot to do with it. If you look at the SERPs, you'll see that the entryleveljobs in entrylevejobsite.com is bolded. That right there tells me that Google sees the keywords in the URL.

Btw, I'm using SEOmoz's Open Site Explorer to compare link profiles.

Additionally, many of the links that you build will have CV in the anchor text because of your domain name. That's huge.

A domain like mycv.com would be great if you're trying to rank for CV. CV.com would be better, but that's unrealistic.

However, I'd push you to use Google's AdWords Keyword Tool to do some more research on what keywords you want to use in the domain name.

Jun8
In your target area, i.e. business, resume (don't forget the acute accent on the last e) is the defacto standard in the US, most people I encountered don't know the term CV.

Think of the situation as similar to "elevator" and "lift". I think most educated people, since they travel around, have contact with foreign people, etc., would know what a "lift" is but when you're going to a build a business, you want to avoid the awkwardness, unless, of course, you deliberately want to elicit the European or foreign feel (this is why some radio commercials for tea use people with British accents).

olalonde
Kind of funny that Americans use a French word and French people use a Latin word :)
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simias
Curriculum vitæ is latin. Most french words have latin roots, but that doesn't make them latin words. A literal french translation of CV would be something like "le cours de la vie".
olalonde
French being my mother tongue and having had to go through 3 painful years of Latin in high school, I can definitely tell you we don't use much Latin words ;)
mahmud
That was a cheesy joke that fell flat. So I took it back :-P
timdellinger
For academic and PhD people in the US, a CV is a multi-page document that goes into more detail, for instance, listing all of the details of all of your publications. A resume is generally a one page (sometimes two page) summary.

These are a bit flexible, though. I've seen three or four page resumes, and two page CVs.

From my perspective, having professional looking templates, each with a different look and feel, would be a major plus.

richbradshaw
Just out of interest, all the people typing resume instead of resumé, is that because they can't type the accent, or is it actually pronounced resume?
fossuser
It's because they can't type the accent.
gnok
On a Mac, you do "Alt+e e" to get the acute accent for "Résumé". To get a grave accent, use "Alt+~ e". "Alt+i e" gives you the circumflex on the e: "ê". Hope that helps anyone looking.
mdasen
I'm guessing you use a Mac where it's a simple "Opt+e; e" combination. You just have to remember that an acute accent is Opt+e and then type the letter you want it over. On Windows with US settings, it's Alt+0233 (for "e" with an acute accent; you have to remember other codes for other letters with an acute accent). So, with Windows, you omit the accent mark because it's painful. Unless one has a stellar memory, you have to go into the character map, find the letter you're looking for and then use the 4-digit code to produce it.

If someone knows an easier way of doing it on Windows, I'd love to know (since one of my friends has an accent in her name).

dublinclontarf
Have you heard of jobrary.com? You might want to check it out.
aurora72
In Turkey, CV is used interchangeably with the turkish "özgeçmiş" Resumé is almost never used.

By the way, does anybody remember the CodersCV.com? It was a great site for displaying the CV but it no longer works. For a sample shot of that site, see http://img365.yukle.tc/images/2880Coders_CV_-_Resume.png

phpnode
When I launched trackmycv.com I had this exact problem, no one from the US seemed to know what a CV was, I had to buy whoreadsmyresume.com in the end. Almost everywhere apart from the US uses CV, not resumé, but CV doesn't seem to be used at all in the US.
unsane1
Wondering if the possible reading of that as whore-ads-my-resume.com hurts you... I'm thinking it at least raises spam flags.
mryan
Tangential feature suggestion, which you might already have: LinkedIn integration. If you could pull my work history from my LinkedIn profile, that would save me huge amounts of time.

Looking forward to your ShowHN :-)

lmai
This may be an obvious statement, but why not try both? I assume you can get domains for both and test it out.

I work in finance and I've seen CV and resume used interchangeably. But more resume than CV.

robeastham
Actually no the domain I wanted when using resume is not available and this has lead to my dilemma.

I like iwwr's suggestions of letting the my early adopters choose choose. I've got a bunch of other possibles and so I'll give some thought as to how best to approach this.