Converting your German CV

Please refer to the other sections on creating a CV for complete guidelines and instructions.

Personal information

• Do not include a photo with your CV.
• On applications for the USA, do not include personal information such as age, date of birth, gender, ethnicity or references to religious or political affiliation. Because of anti-discrimination laws, employers and universities generally will not consider applications with any of the above information.
• Do provide the information if it is specifically requested on an application.
• Do include your nationality because employers and universities need to know for visa and immigration purposes.

Titles

• Academic titles are generally not combined in English: Dear Professor Browne or Dear Dr Browne (not Dear Professor Dr Browne).
• Use of academic titles is rare in business except in medicine, technical fields and other sciences.

Dates

Write out dates to avoid confusion. Although Americans put the month first: (October 21, 2014), you can use the standard international date (21 October 2014). There will be no confusion if you write out the month. For dates in the education and experience sections, use just the month and year (10/2014).

Education

Read the section on Grade and degree conversion before completing this section of your CV. Do not include any information earlier than your Abitur.

Style

Sentences in English business writing tend to be shorter so write simple, active sentences. Long sentences with multiple clauses and complicated structures confuse the reader and lead to grammatical difficulties.

Capitalization

• Capital letters are always used for the first word in the body of the letter, nationalities, countries and languages: British, Germany, English
• The first letter of a bullet point is capitalized in the US, even though it is not a complete sentence. In the UK the first letter is NOT capitalized.
• First person singular (I)

See Grammar and Punctuation Guidelines for additional information