How a German CV is different

A CV is the document that lists your jobs, education and skills. You can send 40 applications to German companies with the CV that worked at home and hear nothing back. There are many possible reasons, but the format is the easiest one to fix.

Make it in Germany, the German government's official portal for international workers, describes the German CV, the Lebenslauf (German for CV), on its page Applying for a job. It gives an overview of your personal and professional career, and it typically has the format of a table. The sections:

• Personal data: name, address and contact details.
• Work experience: the companies you worked for, your position and the tasks you did, with the most recent job first.
• Education: school, vocational training, studies and further training, most recent first, with the names of the schools and universities, your courses and your final grades.
• Language skills: each language with a level from the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR), for example "English: C1". The levels run from A1, the lowest, to C2, the highest.
• Skills and interests: strong computer skills, interests that matter for the job, and social or political involvement.

Before and after

Here is part of a CV written for jobs back home, and the same part in the German style. The person is a software tester from Pune.

The career objective is gone. None of the official sections asks for one, so it only takes space your work experience could use. The dates now need months, the tasks need specifics, and "some German" needs a CEFR level. Each [confirm] is a fact only you can fill in, from your own documents.

Try the whole conversion in the German CV lab: fix an example CV one rule at a time and watch the Lebenslauf update, in English or German, with the official source for each rule.

Try it