How to convert a CV to a US or Canadian resume

What changes when you convert a CV to a US or Canadian resume?

Four things change: length, personal details, how you describe employers, and how you show your degree. The US and Canada share most of the rules. Both expect two pages or fewer, no photo, no age and no marital status. Both care more about what you achieved in a role than the full list of duties you held.

The table below sets out each common CV element and what to do with it. Each row comes from a government or employer page linked in the sections that follow. Where a source covers only one country, the cell says so.

Should you remove your photo and personal details?

Yes, in both countries. The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says employers should not ask for a photograph of an applicant before an offer is made and accepted. Canada's Job Bank says a photo is not the norm and can lower your chances. Age, marital status and religion come off the page too.

The EEOC's page on prohibited employment policies and practices explains the reason. It says information about race, sex, national origin, age and religion is irrelevant to whether someone is qualified. It also says questions that may reveal those traits should generally be avoided, because they can be used as evidence of intent to discriminate. A resume that volunteers them puts that information in front of a reviewer who is supposed to ignore it.

Canada's Job Bank guide on how to write a good resume, modified May 30, 2024, lists what to leave off. It names age, marital status, and religious and political views. It also says "never include your Social Insurance Number in your resume." Keep your name, city, email and phone number at the top of the first page.

How long should a North American resume be?

Two pages is the safe maximum in both countries. For US federal jobs it is a rule: an Office of Personnel Management notice says agencies should only review resumes of two pages or less. Job Bank gives the same advice for Canada. A five-page CV needs cutting by more than half.

The OPM's agency guidance on the two-page limit says that starting September 27, 2025, USAJOBS restricts all resumes to two pages. It also says that if the only resume an applicant sends is longer than two pages, the applicant is ineligible for further consideration. Private employers set their own rules, so check each posting.

There is one exception. The same OPM notice says jobs that require a curriculum vitae, "typically in the medical and research fields," may ask for it as a separate document. If a posting asks for a CV by name, send the full academic version. Otherwise, cut.

Job Bank suggests where to start cutting: experience more than 15 years old can be removed or shortened. After that, cut duties that every person in your role would have done. Keep the lines that show a result, a scale or a decision you made.

How do you describe a foreign employer and job title?

Give the reader one line of context they can't get from the name. Add what the company does or its size, and spell out the full title. A recruiter in Toronto or Chicago may not know a regional bank in Lagos or a logistics firm in Pune, so the line does the work the brand name did at home.

This matters for software too. Greenhouse, an applicant tracking system, lists common causes of bad parsing on its resume parsing help page, last updated March 2, 2026. Two of them are "Company names that don't include identifying words such as Inc., Co., LTD, or LLC" and "Resumes with incomplete job titles." Write the legal company name and the full title.

Here is an example, made up for this page.

• Before: "Asst. Mgr, Ops, ABC Logistics"
• After: "Assistant Manager, Operations, ABC Logistics Pvt. Ltd. (Pune, India; freight forwarder with about 400 staff)"

Only add a size or market figure you can check, such as a number from the company's own website or annual report. Leave it out if you can't.

Local job titles also need care. A "Deputy General Manager" in one country can lead a team of 50, while in another it is a mid-level role. Keep the real title, since a reference check will confirm it. Show the level through the scope in your first bullet: the team, the budget or the region you were responsible for.

How do you show a degree from another country?

List the degree under its real name, then add a credential assessment if you have one. In Canada, an educational credential assessment compares your degree with a Canadian one. The federal Public Service Commission accepts foreign credentials deemed comparable to Canadian standards by a recognized assessment service, and it lists six services that do this.

The Public Service Commission page on foreign credential validation, modified October 29, 2026, names them. They include World Education Services, the International Credential Assessment Service of Canada and the Comparative Education Service at the University of Toronto. WES describes itself as a provider of credential evaluation services for the United States and Canada.

An example education line, made up for this page: "Bachelor of Technology, Mechanical Engineering, University of Example, India, 2016. Assessed by WES as equivalent to a Canadian bachelor's degree." Write the equivalence line only if you hold the report and it says that. If you don't have an assessment yet, list the degree on its own.

A credential assessment and a professional licence are different things. A regulated job needs registration with the body that governs it, and an assessment report alone doesn't give you that.

Can a Canadian employer ask for Canadian experience?

In Ontario, most employers can't put it in a public job posting. Since January 1, 2026, Ontario's Employment Standards Act bars postings and application forms from requiring Canadian work experience. The rule applies to employers with 25 or more employees. It also covers Canadian education credentials and an established Canadian professional network.

The Ontario government's page on requirements for publicly advertised job postings sets out the details. Professional licensing or registration requirements are not covered by the ban, so a posting can still ask for a licence. The same rules require Ontario postings to say whether artificial intelligence is used to screen applicants.

For your resume, this means foreign experience should be written at full strength. Give the same results, figures and scope you would give for a Canadian role. Don't shrink a senior role to fit a guess about what local employers expect.

What format survives an applicant tracking system?

Use one column, plain section headings and a .docx or PDF file. Many CV templates use two columns, photo boxes and text in headers, and those cause parsing problems. Greenhouse's help page lists columned layouts, tables, headers and footers, text boxes and resumes uploaded as images as common problems. It also says it can't parse files larger than 2.5MB.

Put your name and contact details in the main body, at the top. Use a standard date format for each job, such as "March 2021 to June 2024," and use it the same way throughout. The page on an ATS-friendly resume format covers the layout rules in detail, and the page on how applicant tracking systems work explains what the software does with your file.

How do you rewrite CV duties as resume bullets?

Turn each duty into what happened because you did it. Many CVs list responsibilities: "Responsible for vendor management." A North American resume shows a result: what changed, how much, and over what time. Use only figures you can check, and keep every fact the same as it was on your CV.

Here is an example, made up for this page.

• CV line: "Responsible for vendor management and procurement."
• Resume bullet: "Renegotiated contracts with 14 freight vendors, cutting annual shipping costs by 9% in 2023."

If your old CV has no numbers, the page on what to do when your resume has no numbers shows where to find them. The page on resume bullet points gives a formula. Once the facts are set, you tailor each version for a posting, as the page on how to tailor a resume without lying explains.

If you are moving to Canada, the guide on how to find a job in Canada as a newcomer covers the search itself. The free resume optimizer checks each line of a converted resume. Prept writes tailored resumes only from facts you have confirmed, so a figure from your CV can't grow in the rewrite.