European CV formats

The German CV Format: How to Write a Lebenslauf

What a German Lebenslauf actually contains: photo, date of birth, nationality, two pages, MM/yyyy dates, Zeugnisse, and when to write it in German.

A Lebenslauf is a British CV with three things added back that the UK spent twenty years taking out: a photograph, a date of birth, and your nationality. The rest is more familiar than people expect. A4, reverse chronological, two pages at the outside, no decoration for its own sake. If you already have a decent CV in English, most of the work is in the header and the dates.

The shape of the document

The section headings, written properly, are Profil, Berufserfahrung, Ausbildung, Kenntnisse, Sprachen and Zertifikate. A role you are still doing ends with heute, not present. Personal details are labelled Geburtsdatum and Staatsangehörigkeit, and the photo sits top right on page one.

Nothing about that list is decorative. A German recruiter opening a two-column CV with a skills bar chart and no date of birth is looking at a document from somewhere else, and the first thing they do is wonder what else you did not check.

The personal details block

This is the part that makes people from the UK, Ireland and the Netherlands uncomfortable, and it is worth being clear about why the discomfort does not transfer.

Photograph. A Bewerbungsfoto is a proper headshot, taken against a plain background, business dress, looking at the camera. Not a cropped holiday picture. It goes at the top right of the first page and it is the single most visible signal that you understand the format.

The convention here is genuinely shifting, and you should know that rather than being told a flat rule. Germany's General Equal Treatment Act means no employer can require a photograph, and a number of large organisations and public bodies have moved to anonymised applications that strip photos and personal details before a human sees them. Those employers say so in the posting. Absent that instruction, the photo is still what a German hiring manager expects to see, and leaving it off reads as unusual rather than principled.

Date of birth. Expected, written under Geburtsdatum. Age discrimination is unlawful in Germany as it is in Britain, but the convention of stating your date of birth survived, and omitting it does not protect you the way it does in London.

Nationality. This one is not optional. German employers screen for right to work early, and a Lebenslauf with no Staatsangehörigkeit line invites the reader to assume you are hiding a permit problem. If you hold an EU passport, saying so removes a question. If you do not, state your nationality and, in one short line, your permit position. We have written separately about how to handle visa status on a CV without turning it into an apology.

Marital status. Leave it off. It used to appear and it no longer needs to.

Dates, gaps, and the chronology

Germany reads a Lebenslauf as a timeline, not as a highlights reel. Dates are MM/yyyy, ranges are written 03/2021 to 09/2024, and they are expected to join up.

An unexplained six months between two jobs will be asked about. The fix is not to blur the dates into years only, which reads as evasion, but to label the gap in one line: Elternzeit, Weiterbildung, a sabbatical, a period of caring, a course you took. A named gap is a fact. An invisible gap is a question mark, and the German convention of a lückenloser Lebenslauf, a CV without holes, means the reader is specifically looking for it.

The same discipline applies to the order. Reverse chronological, most recent first, in both Berufserfahrung and Ausbildung. Functional and skills-first layouts exist and Involve Resume offers them, but they land badly in Germany because they make the chronology hard to reconstruct.

Zeugnisse: the paperwork that comes after

Germany has a documentary habit that has no British equivalent. When you leave a job you receive an Arbeitszeugnis, a written reference from the employer describing what you did and how well you did it. Degrees come with certificates. Courses come with certificates. Employers expect to see them.

None of this goes into the Lebenslauf itself. The CV stays two pages. The certificates travel as attachments, usually a single merged PDF, either with the application or brought to interview. What the Lebenslauf does carry is a short Zertifikate section listing the qualification, the issuer and the year, so the reader knows what exists before they open the bundle.

If you are applying from outside Germany and have no Zeugnisse because your previous employers do not issue them, say so plainly when asked rather than manufacturing something. Reference letters written on request are an accepted substitute.

German or English?

The rule is simpler than the anxiety around it.

Writing in German when your German is not strong enough is a real risk, because the document is then a language sample as well as a career summary. A Lebenslauf in stiff, slightly wrong German makes a worse impression than a clean one in English at a company that works in English. If the posting is in German and your written German is shaky, that is information about the role, not just about the document.

There is a middle option that people miss. Localising a CV, so the headings and dates follow German convention while your own sentences stay in English, is a different thing from translating every sentence into German. Involve Resume treats those as two separate choices for exactly this reason, and warns you about the second one: a translated CV that says something slightly different from what you actually did is still a CV saying something you did not do.

Putting it together

The practical order of work, if you already have a CV in English:

1. Cut to two pages of A4, oldest roles demoted rather than deleted.
2. Rewrite every date to MM/yyyy and close or label the gaps.
3. Add Geburtsdatum and Staatsangehörigkeit, and reserve the photo space top right.
4. Switch the headings to Profil, Berufserfahrung, Ausbildung, Kenntnisse, Sprachen, Zertifikate.
5. Add a Sprachen section with named levels, not bars.
6. Decide German or English on the evidence of the posting.

In Involve Resume you pick Germany as the destination country and steps two through five happen to the document, with the German headings and MM/yyyy dates applied and the photo space reserved and labelled. The photo itself never leaves your machine: the image is handled in your browser and you drop it in before you send. The per-job tailoring works the same way it does anywhere else, reordering what you already wrote rather than inventing anything, and every change arrives as a diff you approve.

Start from a German-format posting on the job board and the country is already chosen for you.