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'A CV will get thrown out if not in German style'

Published: 31 Jan 13 08:02 CET | Print version
Online: http://www.thelocal.de/opinion/20130131-47649.html

The Local's new series JobTalk offers tips for working in Germany. For the first instalment, we explore the unique aspects of the German résumé.

Landing a job in Germany as a foreigner can be tough. But knowing what German employers expect from your CV could mean the crucial difference between getting an interview and getting dumped in the wastepaper basket.

The Local spoke to professional careers advisers to find out how job-seekers in Germany can turn a English-language curriculum vitae into a slimmed-down, factual German Lebenslauf.

When sending out an application in Germany it's important to get the layout of your CV correct. If your information is where German employers will be expecting it, your document will be much easier for them to process at a glance.

"It's really important to know what you're doing when writing your German CV. It will get thrown out if you don't do it in the style which Germans are used to," career adviser Heidi Störr told The Local.

Check out The Local's My German Career series for expat success stories

The first thing to note is that a Lebenslauf is one or two pages in a formal, fact sheet format, which looks and feels very different in style and content from a typical English CV.

“The Lebenslauf is a datasheet, a fact sheet,” Gerhard Winkler, contributor to Der Spiegel magazine's online careers section, told The Local. “The cover letter is a briefing – where you show how you're right for the job. Both texts are best when they are factual, sober list free of egotistical statements.”

German CVs are also set out in a two-columned table. You need to separate the table into six rows under the following headings written on the left column: 'Personal Details,' 'Professional Experience,' 'Education and Training,' 'Voluntary Work,' 'Scholarships' and 'Computer and Language Skills.'

Underneath each of these headings on the left go your exact dates - the time frames of activities, training or jobs which you will list in the right-hand column opposite. It's best to put activities in reverse chronological order, starting with the most recent, according to career advisers.

The column on the right is where you enter your experiences. Underneath each job title or educational programme, describe your role in short, keyword sentences, concentrating on what you consider the most relevant details for the job you are applying for.

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Germans tend to consider some information you might have on your English CV to be superfluous or even egotistical, said Winkler, so leave out any description of personal qualities, interests and hobbies, but do include membership of groups or organizations under 'Voluntary Work.'

There are a few must-have personal details every Lebenslauf should include which you might not have on your original CV: a photo, your marital status and place of birth. Also make sure you cover your language and computer skills in detail.

The photo question

Unlike most English resumes, German CVs always include a passport-style professional photo in the upper right-hand corner - a detail advisers say you would do well not to leave out.

"German employers are used to seeing a photo on a résumé, they can't explicitly demand in the job advert that you put one because that goes against privacy laws," Störr told The Local.

"But they'll be looking for it so always put one. A photo allows potential employers to make a different kind of personal connection with someone and will help them connect your skills with your face when you come to an interview."

Finally, since you will be applying for a job in a German workplace, you need to think carefully about which language to use on your CV. Advisers say if your German is up to it you would do well to show it off.

“If you can do it in German, make the effort, it doesn't have to be word-perfect,” said Störr.

But if those German lessons have not quite paid off yet, then avoid the temptation to get it translated and leave it in English. This will avoid any awkward moments if you get to an interview and an employer decides to test out your language skills.

“If an applicant has no or only a little German but has written their CV in German it would give the impression they had better language skills than they actually had, which could lead to problems,” said Störr.

“Personally, if English was my first language I'd write applications in Germany in English – unless I had to prove excellent German language skills for the job,” Winkler told The Local.

Generally, said Winkler it was important to remember his golden rule for CV writing: “Stick to the facts.”

Josie Le Blond

External link: Lebenslauf examples in German »

What do you think? Leave your comment below.


Your comments about this article:

09:17 January 31, 2013 by frankiep
Ask 10 career advisors and so-called CV experts how to best produce a CV and you will get 10 different "definitive" answers.

I can't tell you how many of these kinds of articles I have read and how many different takes each "expert" has on whether or not to include interests and hobbies, if putting your marital status is still necessary, if putting voluntary work is necessary, and whether or not to write your CV in German if it is not absolutely 100% perfect.
10:42 January 31, 2013 by chicagolive
That photo is the most controversial or as a few high level HR Germans put it. This is how we weed out the unwanted, meaning most foreigners and women, especially if its a high level job.
14:30 January 31, 2013 by yllusion
The EU promotes mobility, and therefore the other widely accepted CV standard should be the Europass. It's also a synthetic, datasheet-like format. There are many EU citizens working in germany.
15:28 January 31, 2013 by Berlin fuer alles
German companies want to categorise you before they interview you. That is why they want the picture. You don't have to give a picture but you are reducing your chances considerably of getting an interview without one. This is discrimination at it's worst. Shame on Germany for allowing this. There should be no pictures on CVs. Full stop!
15:45 January 31, 2013 by lovemymac&cheez
Really poor article this time, the local. Sorry, but both "experts" you have included do not have any international experience in Recruitment or Talent Acquisition/Talent Management area. They are German, purely mittel-stand minded specialists that obviously have a very narrow view of the topic.

International applicants should not try to fit the old fashioned conservative Lebenslauf type of resume, and should enhance their experience with a Competency based resume. Reason being, is that you are very likely not going to be able to compete with the "studium" and all the German requirements simply because you come from a different system. If you do a German style Lebenslauf it will just show you as handicapped.

A competency based resume, with accomplishments descriptions (what value you created for the company, what savings you made for the company, what significance this has for the overall) is more likely to get attention and get you ahead in the race. No intelligent Hiring Manager will trash a resume that says "this guy saved the company 2M in return costs" or "this lady implemented the whole CRM system for the company and saved the company X amount".

The odds are, you are likely to be hired by a large multinational, not a small mittlestand place. The recruiters that operate in larger companies are (usually) more trained and with a wider scope than the HR Generalists that are usually assigned to smaller organizations and that only look for the date of birth and the picture.

Just 2 cents.
22:52 February 1, 2013 by Landmine
Typical German mentality to conform. The style and layout of a CV gives you an insight into the personality of the person who is applying for the job. Making them all the same is just as$$ backwards...
23:17 February 1, 2013 by vonSchwerin
I have also been told not to have any gaps in my tabular listing of work, education, etc.

For example: In an American CV, I was told, simply list my degrees, institution, and the date granted. Germans want to know the exact length of study and place of study. Degrees (Abschlüsse) gets its own category. Moreover, I was always told that it looks suspekt to have an unexplained time gap when one was not discernibly studying or working. American and British HR people don't care if a person took some semesters off to travel. It does not appear on the CV. Just the final product: for example, BA 1996, MA 2001. German HR people want to know why in the late 1990s there are 1.5 years unaccounted for, when I was not matriculated or working. Everything has to be explained to their nosy satisfaction.

I also can't believe that German employers still get to know my marital status and place of birth. It's really none of their business, and it has no impact on my ability to spent 39 hours a week, sitting in a cubicle, processing paperwork already processed by someone in another cubicle.
22:07 February 2, 2013 by charlenej
I'm skeptical of the photo. I've been told by too many people it's how they weed out foreigners and minorities. And my marital status has nothing to do with my ability to do my job and I'm not comfortable putting that down on a CV.
04:34 February 3, 2013 by jlmcnamara
That's why my CV is in Gangnam Style.
05:29 February 4, 2013 by RainerL
I am also saying Gangnam style.....?
09:43 February 5, 2013 by TheWonderer
Whether you like it or not - just accept it.

"When in Rome, do as the Romans do!".

Whem Germans are abroad, they are expected to adopt to the local habits, too.

And there are pros and cons for everything.

Of course you may ask what use employers have when they know age or marital status. Well, it CAN be (does not necessarily HAVE to be) that you can see what a person is up to: Somebody young and single may move away more easy than somebody in the middle of life with wife and children. Somebody older may have a higher standard of living (and expects higher pay) than a beginner at his/her first job etc.

Similar on photos: It is a fact that about 85% of all information is gathered optically (hence the marketing-industry spending so much on package-design etc.). So of course people judge by sympathy/antipathy at first look - WE ALL DO. At every party you will not talk to people you thbink may be boring - if they look so, you will not even give them a chance for talks. So why should an employer act differently?

Of course this may be a loss when he misses out great opportunities, but that's his risk. As said above: There is good reason for either way.

On the other hand: Why waste time/cost on inviting people for interviews when they are clearly not what you want? These modern days "anonymous" CVs (which do not reveal gender, age, name, etc.) produce a lot of extra toil but in the end, it is the employer's choice whom he wants to hire...

TheWonderer
11:02 February 6, 2013 by frankiep
I have no problem with the photo requirement. The way I see it, if the person doing the hiring doesn't want me for the job based on the way I look, he will either reject my application immediately, based on my photo, or a bit later, after meeting me for an interview. I would rather be rejected immediately rather than waste my time going to an interview if I am just going to be rejected based on my appearance anyway.
14:06 February 8, 2013 by darmstadt
I have never put a photograph on my CV and at one point it was 13 pages long (now down to 6) and have never failed an interview yet. I think you'll find that there are different styles for different professions. I do know for a fact that companies will reject people just by looking at the photograph and not bother reading the CV.
15:50 February 8, 2013 by MaKo
Well, when in Rome, ya know? I'm kinda old, foreign, and of average looks at best. My German style resume had a gap or two, but I did it their way, and I got hired, goofy accent and all.
09:09 February 9, 2013 by itchyvet
Agree with Mako, can't see what all the fuss is about. When my family migrated to Australia, my father's German qualifications were about as much use as toilet paper. To be accepted, he'd have to sit new trades examininations in English, a language which took him 20 years to successfully adapt.

If the family had waited during that period we would have starved. Instead he took whatever work was available.

So I tnink it's rather funny, that such an issue should even be in the media today in Germany. I hope Germany sticks to her guns, when in Germany, do as the Germans do, if they can't do that, tell them to bugger off.
18:37 February 19, 2013 by CorneliusPigg
lol an interview in German, huh? What do people expect if they apply for jobs in Germany? OK, I suppose this can be a daunting experience if you're just learning the language, but I suspect interviewers will take it easy on you once they realize you're a beginner. That said, it's probably more important to concentrate on your responses to the quirky, seemingly nonsensical questions you're likely to be asked in interviews. In my experience interviewing in Germany, I've learned that what you know about the job and the things you're capable of doing in order to be successful at it (should you be hired) actually don't carry much weight in interviews. Instead, figure out what to say if they ask you when you'd most likely take vacation, what your strengths and weaknesses are, and why you didn't apply to, say, Deutsche Bank as oppposed to Commerzbank (where your current interview is taking place). You can be an absolute bad ass in systems programming and high volume derivatives trading- but if you can't answer the nutty quirky questions that have nothing to do with your performance and skills, then you'll never get a job- at least not a good one that pays well and offers generous benefits.
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