CV vs resume vs biodata

The short version

• Resume — a short, targeted summary of your experience and skills, one or two pages, rewritten for each job. The standard word in the United States and Canada.
• CV (curriculum vitae) — in Nepal, India, the UK and Australia, the everyday word for exactly that same short document. In the United States, a CV is something else: a long academic record used for university, research and medical posts.
• Biodata — a personal-details-first document: date of birth, father's name, permanent and temporary address, nationality, then education and experience. Used in Nepal for some government, local and institutional posts, and in India overwhelmingly for marriage.

In Nepal, CV and resume mean the same thing

A Nepali employer who asks for a CV and one who asks for a resume want the same document. Banks, INGOs, IT companies and hospitals use the two words interchangeably, and you do not need two versions.

What matters is not the word on the advertisement but what goes on the page: your experience newest first, what you achieved rather than what you were responsible for, and the registration or licence your field requires — an NHPC number for a nurse, a Nepal Engineering Council number for an engineer. Those are what get read.

What makes a biodata different

A biodata leads with the person rather than the work. The first block is a table of personal particulars — full name, date of birth, gender, nationality, marital status, father's or husband's name, and both permanent and temporary address — and education and experience come after.

It survives in Nepal because many offices still ask for it: local-level posts, some government and semi-government bodies, schools and cooperatives. If a vacancy notice says बायोडाटा, send one; the particulars table is what they are checking against your citizenship certificate.

Do not add a citizenship or passport number unless the notice or form asks for it. A biodata gets passed around an office, and those numbers are worth protecting until an employer genuinely needs them.

Which one to send

• Private company, bank, INGO, hospital, IT — a CV. One to two pages, A4, as PDF unless they ask for Word.
• Government, local-level or cooperative post that asks for बायोडाटा — a biodata, with the particulars table first.
• Lok Sewa — neither. The Public Service Commission uses its own online application form; fill that.
• A job in the Gulf through a manpower agency — a CV. Agencies commonly want date of birth and passport details on it; include them only for that application, not on the copy you send everywhere.
• A job in the United States or Canada — a resume in the American sense: US Letter paper, no photo, no date of birth, no marital status. Those are expected in Nepal and a liability there.
• A university, research or academic post abroad — an academic CV, which can run many pages and lists publications, research and teaching.

Why a Nepali CV looks different from an American resume

Most online advice is written for the American market, and following it exactly works against you here. A photo is normal on a Nepali CV and its absence is sometimes read as an omission; in the US it is left off because of discrimination law. Nepal prints on A4; US Letter is shorter and wider and prints with uneven margins here. References are still commonly listed in Nepal; in the US they are usually left for later.

None of this makes one version better. It means the document should be built for where it is going — and the same content can be rearranged into either shape.