50 CV Quotes to Unlock Your Employment Potential

By Lia Munson | Published September 29, 2023

Get tips on creating a killer CV to score your desired job with these CV quotes!

A CV, or curriculum vitae, is a document that presents an individual’s educational and professional qualifications, accomplishments, and experiences.

A well-crafted CV can set the tone for a successful job application and increase the chances of securing an interview.

Tell us your favorite CV quote in the comments section.

Why Read CV Quotes?

Whether or not you’re looking for a new job, reading CV quotes will help keep you informed of the latest trends affecting job-seekers.

The most important things to remember when creating a CV are:

Keep it concise
Tailor it to the job
Showcase achievements
List education/training in reverse chronological order

How is a CV Different From a Resume?

There are a few key ways that a CV is different from a resume.

One is the purpose and length of the CV.

While a resume is a brief overview of skills and experience, a CV is a more detailed description of relevant experience, education, and skills.

Unlike a resume which is usually confined to a single page, the ideal length of a CV is typically one to two pages.

Second is what you put in the CV.

A resume focuses on work experience, skills, and achievements, with the most recent and relevant experience that aligns with the job requirements.

But a CV covers the candidate’s entire academic and professional career, including education, research, publications, presentations, honors, awards, and affiliations.

A CV also includes detailed references, something usually omitted from a resume unless explicitly requested by the employer.

A well-crafted CV is an essential tool for job seekers to increase their chances of securing an interview and ultimately landing their desired job.

Please enjoy these CV quotes!

Short CV Quotes about resume content

We begin with these CV quotes about truthful and fictitious resumes.

1. “Resumes are dead.” ― Richie Norton

2. “Life is our resume.” ― Matthew McConaughey

3. “I can put on my resume: ‘Can play dead.’” — Tom Verica

4. “Google-ing is a skill that should be put on CVs.” — Pooria Arab

5. “No one creates a perfect resume on their first try.” ― Matthew T. Cross

6. “Your CV is just a commodity, package yourself.” — Bernard Kelvin Clive

7. “I’d update my resume so you’re ready for any outcome.” — Bob Weinstein

8. “School programs the schooled to type a CV.” — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

9. “Your digital footprints speak volumes than your CV.” — Bernard Kelvin Clive

10. “Andrea Leadsom flatly denies she has changed her CV.” — Laura Kuenssberg

Best quotes about skills and qualifications

These CV quotes are pertinent and also pretty funny!

11. “The most important tool you have on a resume is language.” ― Jay Samit

12. “My favorite special skill on my resume is ‘excellent monkey noises.’” — Ciara Renee

13. “I hand him the single greatest work of fiction known to man: my resume.” ― Tyler Knight

14. “If you haven’t had a few dents in your resume, you haven’t tried.” — Andrew Forrest

15. “I need my eulogy to look better than my resume. I’m living for that.” ― Darnell Lamont Walker

16. “I want to have a resume that is substantial enough to hold itself as respectful.” — Aldis Hodge

17. “I’m the guy to call. Look at the resume. I have kids of my own. I have dogs.” — Jeff Daniels

18. “Most people, when they hire you, they want some experience on the resume.” — Scott Rogowsky

19. “Don’t choose men by their CVs but by their TVs; their Talents and Visions.” — Bernard Kelvin Clive

20. “Show me your resume, and I will tell you what occupational diseases you may have.” ― Steven Magee

The top CV quotes about experience

Check out these CV quotes about what bullet points can and can’t tell you.

21. “Resumes are incapable of holistically communicating a candidate’s value.” ― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr

22. “The easiest way to obtain an updated version of a candidate’s CV is via social media.” — Bernard Kelvin Clive

23. “Emphasize your strengths on your resume, in your cover letters, and in your interviews.” —Marcus Buckingham

24. ”We all bullet point our triumphs, but I am who I am because of everything you don’t see on my CV.” — Aimee Mullins

25. “If you call failures experiments, you can put them in your resume and claim them as achievements.” — Mason Cooley

26. “An over-decorated CV is usually an overcompensation for being uneducated and/or inexperienced.” — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

27. “Give a typical employee a million, and he is most likely to use the money to print his CV on fancier paper.” — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

28. “Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two.” — J.K. Rowling

29. “If I ever had needed to put together a CV, it would be quite short. Like many young people, I’d highlight my desire to work hard.” — Cameron Russell

30. “I think it’s very hard for coaches to work with me. They’ll no doubt have a good CV afterward, but at the same time, they’re under a lot of pressure.” — Roger Federer

CV Quotes and sayings about what you can learn about a candidate

The next quotes are about finding the right fit for your team.

31. “What’s funny about my resume is so much of what I’ve done has not been seen.” — Nicholas D’Agosto

32. “I thought that was the crown jewel of the reporter’s resume – to actually go to jail protecting a source.” — Trey Gowdy

33. “The right personality with a weak resume can be filled in. That’s the employee who will become great.” — Jon Taffer

34. “My resume, my career, and my legacy in this sport means more to me than collecting some checks.” — Daniel Cormier

35. “We don’t need a resume to come to God. It’s not our good deeds. We come broken, and we need a savior.” — Sonny Sandoval

36.“I was lucky to get really good films, even though I don’t have 100 films in my resume.” — Shefali Shah

37. “I’ve learned that a resume is only part of what makes someone a great fit for your team.” — Kendra Scott

38. “Nobody wants to have in their CV in the upper echelon of the American economic family that they nationalized major banks.” — Paul Keating

39. “I find it a challenge to cooperate in a society where it’s considered moral to critique a résumé yet immoral to critique morality.” ― Criss Jami

40. “The challenge of life, I have found, is to build a resume that doesn’t simply tell a story about what you want to be, but it’s a story about who you want to be.” — Oprah Winfrey

Famous CV quotes about moving to a new job.

We close our list with these CV quotes about looking for new work.

41. “The very first thing I tell every intern on the first day is that their internship exists solely on their resume.” —Jay Samit

42. “Every actor has a few movies on their resume that they’re not terribly proud of, but that’s how you learn.” — Chris Evans

43.“As a visual person, I love a creative resume. Putting in a little effort on the design side will show that you care about making things look good.” — Sophia Amoruso

44. “I thought to myself, ‘All right, let’s take a look at your resume. You have no financial background. You have basketball, that’s what you have, for your whole life.” — Jason Kidd

45. “If someone out of work knows only three words about their impending job-hunt, I’m willing to bet those three words will be: resumes/CV, interviews, and networking.” — Richard N. Bolles

46. “I’ve learned my lesson hiring strictly on resume. At the end of the day, if they didn’t match our core values, it was a disaster, and I ended up losing other great people within the company – and that’s time and money.” — Kendra Scott

47. “Here’s what my CV usually does not say: I was trained as a teacher. My first job lasted less than 60 days. I was an assistant professor at a good college at Delhi University, but I found it very political very suffocating.” — Amit Bhatia

48. “It may sound obvious, but you’d be surprised how many people simply list everything they’ve ever done. Convey your passion and link your strengths to measurable results. Employers and interviewers love concrete data.” — Marcus Buckingham

49. “If men and women are at all times supposed to be a kind of walking CV, constantly networking, constantly advertising themselves, then this ‘body’ is the prime locus for any understanding of the way in which the logic of employment overcodes our very comportment.” — Nina Power

50. “With the average tenure of sales directors being three years, it’s not too great a stretch to conclude that they spend their first 12 months finding out what’s broken, the next 12 months papering over the cracks, and the final 12 months shopping their CV for a new job.” — Nicholas A.C. Read