What Language Should Your CV Be In? English vs the Local Language, Country by Country

There are two questions hiding in one

"What language should my CV be in?" sounds like one decision, but it's really two — and getting the second one wrong is what quietly sinks otherwise-strong applications abroad.

• Language: do you write the CV in English or in the country's language? This follows the job ad and the market.
• Localisation: does the CV follow that country's conventions — photo or not, one page or two, which date format, which personal details, a GDPR line or not? This follows the country regardless of language.
• Most guides (and every CV-translation service) answer only the first and ignore the second. A CV in flawless German that's still laid out like a US résumé is only half-localised — and it shows.

Which language: English or the local one, by country

The single most reliable rule is: write your CV in the language of the job advert. If the ad is in French, apply in French. Beyond that, the markets split roughly like this:

• English is widely accepted: the Netherlands, the Nordics (Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland) and Ireland. English-first job ads are common, and an English CV rarely counts against you.
• The local language is expected: France, Spain, Italy and Portugal. Nearly all job ads are posted in the local language, and an English CV reads as a mismatch — send a French CV to France, a Spanish CV to Spain.
• It depends on the employer: Germany, Austria and Switzerland. International corporates, startups and tech teams often work in English and accept an English CV; traditional Mittelstand firms and anything public-sector expect German. Match the language of the posting.
• Central & Eastern Europe (Poland, Czechia, Romania, Hungary): mixed — international employers accept English, local employers prefer the local language. Again, follow the ad.

Why "just translate it" is the wrong instinct

Search "translate my CV" and the results are mostly translation services telling you to… buy a translation. That's the self-interested answer, and it's wrong on two counts.

First, a word-for-word translation reads as non-native — job-search phrasing ("spearheaded", "stakeholder management") rarely maps cleanly, and a literal rendering signals "translated document" to a native recruiter. Second, and more important: translating changes only the words, while what a recruiter in another country actually expects is a different document. You can translate a CV perfectly and still hand a German employer something that looks foreign — because the photo, length, dates and personal details are all still wrong.

What actually changes when you localise (not just translate)

Localising a CV means adjusting the conventions, not only the language. The pieces that change by country:

• Length. One page is a US and French norm; Germany, the UK and most of the EU expect two. A one-page CV can read as thin in Germany; a two-page CV can read as padded in France.
• Photo. Expected in Germany, Austria, France, Spain, Italy, Portugal and much of Central/Eastern Europe; left off in the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden and the US. (See our country-by-country photo guide.)
• Date format. The US writes MM/DD/YYYY, Germany and much of the EU DD.MM.YYYY, Sweden the ISO YYYY-MM-DD. "05/03/2026" means March in the US and May in Germany — don't leave it ambiguous.
• Personal details. Continental Europe often still expects date of birth and nationality; the UK, Ireland and the Netherlands expect neither. Marital status lingers only in a couple of markets (Germany, Italy) and is fading even there.
• A data-protection line. In Germany, Poland and much of the EU a short GDPR/consent line is customary; in the US it's unheard of. Omitting it in Germany can look incomplete; adding it to a US résumé looks odd.

One master, many versions — don't maintain several documents

The trap is ending up with three half-maintained CVs in three languages that slowly disagree with each other. The fix is to treat one version as the source of truth — usually an English master — and derive each localised version from it, so the facts (employers, dates, titles) can never drift, and only the language and the country conventions change.

That's the honest difference between translation and localisation in practice: the language is handled by translation, but the format — photo, length, date format, which fields to show, the GDPR line — is set by the target country. Do both and you have a local CV; do only the first and you have an English CV wearing another language.

Applying across several EU countries at once?

If you're sending the same CV into several markets and can't tailor each one, a neutral English CV with no photo, no date of birth and a two-page length is the safest single version — it won't be perfect anywhere, but it won't be wrong anywhere either. The moment you're serious about one specific country, though, switch to a version localised for it: that's the one that actually competes with local candidates.