What is the difference between Notes and Pages? Which is better suited to typing up a resume?

Pages is a professional word processor, comparable to Word or WordPerfect.

Notes is an informal word processor comparable to Notepad or Wordpad.

You'd use Pages to do the resume.

Notes is just a barebones text App. The name says it all.

On the Mac TextEdit is much closer to a full Word Processor, but you have a long list of choices, these two are not everything.

More to the point is how do you have to submit your Resumé and to whom? If they expect it as a Word .oc/x file then use Word or a Word clone like LibreOffice [free].

If a pdf is fine, then anything on a Mac can print to pdf.

Peter

Notes is just that, for jotting down largely unformatted notes. The underlying content is HTML, and there is no word processing document (Word, or RTF) export, or sharing.

Pages v5 and later have the consumer product, word processing tools to build a sharp looking résumé from scratch, and some canned templates as well. It can export to PDF, and translate/export to Word .docx. If you are required to submit your work in Word format with a document size restriction — the single show-stopper is that Pages v5 and later create gargantuan Word documents that start at nearly 500KB. Even if you type a single letter 'a' and export it. This remains true for Pages v6 on macOS Sierra.

Secondarily, the applicant tracking software that electronically scans your résumé is expecting a document generated by MS Word, and Pages makes no accuracy guarantee on Word exports.

If you know that the submission criterion is in MS Word format, then I recommend the free LibreOffice Suite, or Word 2016 for Mac. In one form or another, LibreOffice has been in continuous, active development since 1992, and is purpose-built as an MS Office replacement suite. Its Writer application (Word clone) saves very small Word documents, that are far more compatible with MS Word than Pages exports.