Curriculum Vitae. You can think of it as a long form resume if I understand the US notion of a resume correctly. They are commonly used in place of resumes here (Netherlands, and presumably larger parts of the EU).
I think calling something so common as "obscure" is in danger of seeming ignorant. Each and every search result on the first page for the acronym was regarding the term in question.
This is just a normal American reaction when we find out that other parts of the world do things differently than we do. In a purely defensive measure, we say that it is "obscure." For example, A4 paper is ubiquitous in the world. Except North America. Try to buy A4 paper, ask for A4 compatible accessories, etc. will draw only blank stares. There is no difference between a "cv" and a "resume." The terms are synonyms.
Now back to the post....
Two issues: lots of places ask for Word-format. This is because (at least some of them) are machine-reading the documents. This leads to the second point: if your cv does not contain the keywords in the job description, it will not be kicked out of the slush pile. So you have to write each cv/resume particularly for each job. If they take pdf's; fine, otherwise, it's a little bit easier to make a quick change in Word than to make a change in your favorite editor and then compile.
Oh and should you compile for A4 or letter? Article or scarticle? Isn't there a Dutch artikel class?
