Québec, French, Canadian or US Résumé: What Actually Changes From One Market to the Next

A good résumé for Montréal can be a bad one for Paris. Not because it is badly written, but because each market has its own expectations — about the photo, about what you are allowed to state, about length, about how you present who you are. Sending the same document everywhere means meeting only one of those expectations.

The photo: where everything starts to diverge

It is the most visible difference, and the most misunderstood.

In Canada, the federal government’s Job Bank is categorical: although a photo may be acceptable in some countries, it is not the norm in Canada, and it can lower your chances by diverting attention from your skills. Polytechnique Montréal’s guide lists the photo among the details never to include, because it exposes you to discrimination without demonstrating anything about your ability to do the job.

In the United States, the question is framed from the employer’s side. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) states that employers should not ask for a photograph of an applicant — and that a photograph, if needed for identification, may be obtained after an offer of employment is made and accepted.

In France, it is the law that draws the line: physical appearance is one of the criteria on which it is prohibited to distinguish between candidates.

What you may — or may not — state

Beyond the photo, the three markets converge on the same restraint, for the same reason: keeping information unrelated to the job from weighing on the decision.

• In Canada, Job Bank recommends leaving out age, weight, height, marital status, religious preference and political views — and never including your Social Insurance Number.
• In Québec, Polytechnique Montréal’s guide excludes the photo, date and place of birth, marital status, any reference to religion or politics, and citizenship or permanent residency unless the role requires it.
• In France, article L.1132-1 of the Labour Code prohibits any distinction between candidates based notably on age, family situation, physical appearance, family name or place of residence.

The consequence is the same everywhere: the old personal-details block — age, family situation, nationality — adds nothing for a recruiter and can hurt you. Keep your contact details, drop the rest.

One page or two

The one-page rule travels badly. In Canada, Job Bank advises limiting a résumé to two pages, with the emphasis on your most recent experience. In Québec, Polytechnique Montréal’s guide says two pages is the most common format, and invites candidates to detail their experience rather than condense it.

One page remains an excellent choice when a background does not yet honestly fill two — the case for many students. What hurts is not length, it is amputating relevant content to fit a format.

The summary: bullets or prose

This is the subtlest difference, and the one most tools ignore.

In Québec, Polytechnique Montréal’s guide presents the summary as a bulleted list, and insists that it is not a general summary of your skills: each bullet must be an asset tied to a requirement of the role. Elsewhere, the profile is more commonly written as a few lines of prose establishing who you are, at what level and in what field.

Both forms work — each in its own market. A bulleted summary sent to Paris, or prose sent to a Québec employer used to bullets, is not wrong, but it signals a document that was not thought through for its reader.

Verb form

In Québec, Polytechnique Montréal’s guide asks candidates to open every statement with an action verb or a noun, and above all to be consistent; its model CV is entirely in the infinitive. Université Laval also recommends the infinitive for describing tasks. In North American English the norm is the past-tense action verb, and Job Bank advises using simple words and action verbs.

Whatever form you choose, the shared rule is consistency: a résumé that alternates forms is spotted at a glance.

What Carriv does with all this

Keeping track of these differences by hand, application after application, is exactly the kind of detail that slips. Carriv applies them for you — and here is precisely what it does, without overstating it.

1. 1 It determines the market from the posting’s WORK LOCATION, not its language. A French-language posting in Montréal and one in Paris do not produce the same résumé.
2. 2 It adapts the summary to the market: bulleted in Québec — three or four bullets, so the summary does not push your first experience down the page — and prose in France and in English-speaking North America.
3. 3 It picks the market’s verb form — infinitive in Québec and France, past tense in English — and holds it from one end of the document to the other.
4. 4 Its readability score flags details to remove — date or place of birth, marital status, citizenship, religion or political affiliation — before they reach a recruiter.
5. 5 It writes the résumé entirely in the posting’s language, job titles and degrees included, without ever changing a fact or inflating a level.
6. 6 It offers one page by default and two when your background genuinely fills them — without ever shrinking the text below a legible size to make it fit.

The rest is yours: your experience, your results and your choices. Carriv only presents them in the form that market’s recruiter expects to read.