Top 10 tips on writing a winning CV to secure a job in Germany in 2023? (Template Included)
👋 Hi, my name is Tejas, and I am writing this article to address the many applicants who have been asking me to critique their CVs. This article will provide you with my experience-based tips for crafting a winning CV that will help you secure a job in Germany 🇩🇪. An editable Google Doc template is linked at the end of the article.
I did a year long job hunting and made tons of mistakes and found what works for crafting a winning CV (at least for me 😅). The insights are more than just my experience as I was consulted by many external HR consultants and was actively seeking feedback from the companies after every rejection. I got 26 rejection from my 40 applications. Many times I got rejected in final stage so it was really stressful and self doubting for me. Anyways, let’s jump to the foundation of a how job application in germany is different and then to the tipps.💪
Are German CVs different/special? How? Why?
Your CV is like a marketing flyer to sell yourself, and in marketing, you need to understand who your end consumer is. German companies are accustomed to reading simple single-column CVs. Unlike the US format, they can be longer than one page but no more than two pages. Nowadays, CVs are first read by an Application Tracking System (ATS) due to the large number of applications. Therefore, you should ensure that your CV is both machine-readable and human-readable. If you are getting rejections within an hour or a day, it is generally the ATS rejecting you, and there is a high chance that no human ever read your CV. It hurts! 😑
You don’t get a chance to explain your CV to a manager, so you need to be super clear in conveying what you have achieved and what skills you have in plain simple sentences. German CVs have left-justified text. They do have a photo of a candidate, but some companies ask not to include it.
🔥 Top 10 Tipps to craft a winning CV:
🔟 ️Format: 📄
Your CV should be in a single-column format, and avoid using fancy designer CVs. Stay away from designer CVs crafted by various websites, as they can be confusing for ATS to extract information and unclear for a person to interpret.
The simple format gives a proper flow to read the CV from top to bottom. It provides chronological highlights of your life that a reader can connect with as they follow the CV. It should only be in black and white and not background or other font colors. Create a CV in Google Docs so that you can change things on the fly and also ask other people to comment on it. You can send me your CV to get a new perspective. I will read and point out common mistakes so you get less rejections and more interview calls. Contact me on Linkedin by clicking here.
9️⃣ Structure: 📄
Your CV should start with a maximum 50-word summary (if you want to summarize).
Your first section should be Work Experience. It should start with the recent job title, duration, location, and 3–4 bullet points about what you were doing, what you achieved, and what impact it created for the company.
The next section should be Education, which starts with chronologically reverse degrees. You should only include degree courses or e-learning courses that are longer than 6 months. I would not suggest adding irrelevant certificates here. Write the master’s degree followed by bachelor’s and high school grades. Include grades, years, and the university with location. It will play a role in knowing how diverse is your experience.
The last section should be Activities. This section can include your extra achievements, courses, soft skills, languages, and software, interests, and hobbies (if you have any). Your hobbies and interests should be included in a CV to give an overall perspective of yourself as an employee because you are not only hired to do a job, but you are also a part of the team, so you should fit culturally too.
You can also use this section to show your work portfolio by linking it to an external site. For example, if you have designed a website or written code and you want to show that, you can link to your Behance or GitHub repo.
So follow this sequence:
- Summary (Optional)
- Work Experience
- Education
- Activities
✔️ Pro Tip: Try to write impact in terms of saving money, generating revenue or saving time.
8️⃣ Use KISS Framework: 🫶
Keep it simple, stupid! (KISS) Sentences are highly appreciated than jargony ones. Give your CV to someone outside of your industry and ask them to read it. If they don’t understand the sentences, simplify them. Remember, you won’t get a chance to explain your CV to an HR representative who may not be familiar with your industry.
✔️ Pro Tip: Ask ChatGPT to simplify the sentence for you. Don’t use ChatGPT to write complete sentence because at the end the interviewer wants to know your writing skills too. You can use Forefront.ai to user ChatGPT 4 for free and ask HR manager persona to critique your CV.
7️⃣ Quantify your achievements with numbers 🔢
It’s important to showcase your achievements in a quantifiable way, as it gives your future manager an idea of your ability to convert qualitative accomplishments into quantitative terms. This shows that you have a number-oriented perspective in life, and are capable of measuring and improving performance.
Examples:
❌: I was responsible for sales in North region and closed big deals.
✅: I was responsible for sales in North Europe. Closed deals worth 10M€ in the first 6 months of my job and achieved the best salesman award.
Make sure to provide a logical explanation of how you achieved those numbers. During an interview, the interviewer is likely to ask you how you approached a problem and how you achieved those results.
6️⃣ Length: 📐
Make sure you do not write your experiences in more than 4 bullet points. Total CV length should not be more than 2 pages.
.Make sure you do not write your experiences in more than 4 bullet points. Total CV length should not be more than 2 pages.
Why?
HR people do not have a lot of time to read essays. Save their time and also show your efficiency and space saving mindset by being concise. Your CV is a reflection of how you work and think in real life. I have seen 5 page CVs of freshers and 2 pager CVs of directors with 20 years of experience. If they can do it, you can do it. Save space and time of the reader.
5️⃣ Be relevant 🎯
I used to fill the pages by writing everything I did in my previous job because I thought the company should know how much I can do. It was totally wrong. A company is hiring you for a specific job. You have small set of tasks that you need to perform. You just need to provide relevant experience to the job description to convince the company that you can perform the job. May be a little more to show that you can do the job and XYZ too but it should still stay relevant and not too off the requirements.
✔️ Pro Tip: Your CV should be tailored to the job description. Avoid going above 700 words and don’t write more than 1000 words in any case.
4️⃣ Use words than signs: ✍️
It is better to describe things than to leave at the other person’s interpretation. In the following image, you can see that the language level is shown by filled dots. What exactly is the value of each dot? Are 5 dots supposed to mean mother tongue? If yes, is this person speaking mother tongue level German, Hindi and English?
An ATS system will not understand your dots or graphs and will keep the value empty. You are at the mercy of the ATS here.
It is always a good idea to make it idiot proof. This brings clarity and reduces ambiguity.
✔️ Pro Tip: Indicate a language fluency by beginne, business fluent and mother tongue level and a software skills by beginner, intermediate and advanced level.
3️⃣ Acronyms: 🔤
There is a high chance that you are using acronyms from your industry which may be unfamiliar to the reader and can only be interpreted by the hiring manager. Sometimes, English short forms are not self-explanatory for Germans, as they are used to the German language. Instead of using an acronym, spell out the term in full the first time you use it, and then use the acronym in parentheses afterwards. Some exceptions for widely used acronyms are MBA, PhD in the education section, SLA for sales roles, and SEO for marketing, etc. They are expected to be known by everyone.
✔️ Pro Tip: Try to limit yourself for up to 5 acronyms in the entire CV.
2️⃣ Hyperlink Contact Info: 🔗
The CV should have clickable links to your Linkedin, mobile number, email and company websites. I would recommend you to format the hyperlinked text just like a normal text because it feels smooth while reading but still works as intended. (shown below)
One reason to hyperlink is that sometimes ATS systems require your Linkedin profile and it would fetch directly from the CV. Also, it makes it handy to click on email or number to contact you directly.
✔️ Pro Tip: Hyperlink email id with “mailto:youremail@gmail.com” and “callto:+4912345678978” so that whenever a person clicks on it, it opens in mail app or call app directly.
1️⃣ Match Keywords: 🔎
It’s a good idea to think like an SEO manager when crafting your CV. After submitting your application, the ATS (Applicant Tracking System) will scan your CV to see how many keywords match the job description. While you shouldn’t force matches, it’s beneficial to try and match as many keywords as possible. You can use websites like jobscan.co to paste your CV and Job Description (JD) to see how many matching keywords both texts have. The website suggests that a 70% match is ideal, but I believe that a 50% match is sufficient. The optimal match percentage also varies depending on the company’s size. If you’re applying to a company like Amazon, it’s crucial to aim for a high match percentage. However, if you’re applying to a local company, the pool of applicants is smaller, so it’s less critical.
It’s important to use your common sense and not obsess over the matching percentage. Remember, this is just an extra layer of fine-tuning your CV. Nonetheless, it has worked for me in increasing my interview-to-application ratio. I think this step will increase your interview ratio drastically.
Bonus tip: ➕1️⃣
Your nationality might play a role too as the companies have to sponsor your visa and not all companies have manpower, knowledge and budget to do that. Please include that in your CV.
If you have read till here, congratulations 👏 you have got my months of experience in a few minutes. Feel free to get in touch with me via Linkedin. I will share a tip with you on how to increase your chances of getting hired by 3x.
Click Here to copy my CV template in Google Docs.
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