{"id":61,"date":"2017-07-20T09:33:47","date_gmt":"2017-07-20T09:33:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/relocate.me\/blog\/uncategorized\/the-europass-cv-doesnt-work-for-european-tech-companies-anymore\/"},"modified":"2025-04-07T11:41:28","modified_gmt":"2025-04-07T11:41:28","slug":"the-europass-cv-doesnt-work-for-european-tech-companies-anymore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/relocate.me\/blog\/working-abroad\/the-europass-cv-doesnt-work-for-european-tech-companies-anymore\/","title":{"rendered":"The Europass CV doesn\u2019t work for European tech companies anymore"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading Time: <\/span> 4<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>\n

You\u2019ve probably all heard of Europass. Having launched the Relocate.me<\/a> tech job board, our team gets a lot of developer resumes every day, and somehow many think the Europass CV is essential to get hired by European technology companies.<\/p>\n

What is the Europass?<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n
\n

The Europass was established by the European Union to assist European citizens to make their skills and qualifications clearly and easily understood throughout Europe with a portfolio of five documents, one of which is a CV.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

30 European countries are currently participating in the Europass Initiative.<\/p>\n

Despite this, one often hears the Europass CV doesn\u2019t give any benefits to applicants for tech roles. Moreover, its template is ranked even lower than a standard (short and plain) one. On the other hand, lots of software engineers (both in and outside the EU) believe that by using the Europass CV they\u2019re one step closer to landing a job in different European countries.<\/p>\n

For you, as a recruiter, the primary questions are what companies your tech candidate has worked for, when and how long, what he\/she was doing for each company and which technologies\/tools were applied. In this regard, the Europass CV is utterly worthless. Why?<\/p>\n

First off, its template is rather generic and faceless. Consequently, many good developers have been overpassed just because their expertise wasn\u2019t expressed in a proper (clear and comparable) way.<\/p>\n

Companies like Spotify receive thousands of resumes<\/a> regularly. And one doesn\u2019t have to do the sums to see how much time on average is spent on screening each one of them. I guess it takes 7\u201310 seconds per resume and the screening is very brief. So if you want to snag a job at a hot tech company, your CV should \u2018strike\u2019 its recruiter immediately. A unique CV template may well give you a few seconds more while the Europass one can take a few seconds off. The key is the \u2018content\u2019 of your CV and whether you\u2019re a good match for the team and its product.<\/p>\n

Let me stress the following \u2014 the Europass CV is not obligatory<\/strong> to get hired by European tech companies. There\u2019s no need to use it, thus. It may be helpful as a simple CV builder, however the internet is now teeming with such things and some of them can be a good alternative to the well-known Europass.<\/p>\n

So, why is the Europass CV template NOT the best choice if you want to get tech jobs in Europe?<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n
    \n
  • The Europass logo in the header takes a decent amount of space on your resume.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
    <\/figure>\n
      \n
    • Every single word counts in your resume, so there is no strict need to headline it \u2018Curriculum Vitae\u2019. You can simply add \u2018CV\u2019 or \u2018Resume\u2019 to the title of your document (preferably PDF) and save a bit more space.<\/li>\n
    • The photo is not required for most of the tech roles. Recruiters can easily source the web and find your photograph if it is needed. By cutting it from your resume, again you can save some space as well as avoid any subjective judgments.<\/li>\n
    • I cannot fail to mention that there\u2019s neither icon for GitHub, Stack Overflow and other almost must-haves for software engineers nor Dribble\/Behance for designers.<\/li>\n
    • \u2018Jobs applied for\u2019 section is not required as well. I\u2019d suggest adding \u2018Which company I\u2019m applying for and why\u2019.<\/li>\n
    • The work experience section could be a little bit better too.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
      <\/figure>\n

      It doesn\u2019t allow you to add enough information about your company and the project you\u2019re working on. You can only shortly describe what type of problem your software\/app is solving and a few details about the project (e.g. some numbers why you can call it a \u2018high-traffic\u2019 website). There is no space to mention your main technology stack.<\/p>\n

        \n
      • There\u2019s no need to mention Business or Information Technology (IT) sector as it\u2019s obvious for software developers.<\/li>\n
      • The \u2018Personal skills\u2019 section of your CV often can take at least half of A4 page. However, there is no real added value for describing you as a team-player or the most pedantic person in a team in terms of the quality of code.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
        <\/figure>\n
          \n
        • You don\u2019t have to put your mother tongue, either. The most progressive tech companies are currently checking 2 languages \u2014 your English and how good you\u2019re dealing with required programming languages.<\/li>\n
        • Communication, organization, managerial, and digital competence can be structured in 1\u20132 sentences. That\u2019s more than enough. And this is also not mandatory to mention at all. You\u2019ll never find \u2018bad\u2019 skills in any resume, and the required ones such as a team-player, open-minded, fast-learner will be carefully checked during the interviews.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
          \n

          The Europass CV is not something you necessarily need to use and it can hardly increase your chances of getting a great tech job in Europe. In our next article, we\u2019ll share the best practices and tips from recruiters\/hiring managers of European technology companies on how to raise the bar for your resume.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

          Reading Time: <\/span> 4<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>You\u2019ve probably all heard of Europass. The Europass CV is not something you necessarily need to use and it can hardly increase your chances of getting a great tech job in Europe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":79,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[11,12,13,15,16],"class_list":["post-61","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-working-abroad","tag-tech","tag-hiring","tag-job-hunting","tag-job-search","tag-resume"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/relocate.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/relocate.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/relocate.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/relocate.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/relocate.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/relocate.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3375,"href":"https:\/\/relocate.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions\/3375"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/relocate.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/relocate.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/relocate.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/relocate.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}