Resume formats for 7 countries

Every country judges a resume differently — a German CV wants a photo, a US resume must not have one, and an Australian resume is expected to be long. Pick your target country for the full guide: page count, photo rules, section order and the mistakes that sink applications.

All seven countries compared

The three questions everyone asks first, side by side.

CountryLengthPhotoLanguageDatesFile formatReferences
🇺🇸United States1 page — 2 only past ~10 yearsNeverUS English, US spellingMon YYYY — Jan 2023 – Mar 2025PDF, US Letter, single columnLeft off entirely
🇨🇦Canada1–2 pages; 2 is completely normalNo — remove itEnglish — French in QuebecMonth Year — Jan 2023 – Mar 2025PDF, Letter size, plainly named"Available upon request"
🇩🇪Germany1–2 pages, two is normalCustomary — a professional BewerbungsfotoMatch the job adMM/YYYY – MM/YYYYOne merged PDF, A4Not listed — you attach Arbeitszeugnisse
🇮🇷Iran1–2 pagesExpected on a Persian resumePersian at home, English for outsideJalali at home, Gregorian abroadPDF — always, for Persian textListed in full, with contact details
🇬🇧United Kingdom2 pages — "two sides of A4"NoBritish English throughoutMon YYYY, DD/MM/YYYY elsewherePDF or DOCX, A4"Available on request" or omitted
🇦🇺Australia2–4 pages — length is expectedNoAustralian EnglishMon YYYY; DD/MM/YYYY elsewherePDF or DOCX, A4Two referees, listed in full
🇳🇱Netherlands1–2 pages, 2 is the ceilingOptional — genuinely your callEnglish is widely acceptedMM/YYYY or Mon YYYYPDF, A4Left off the CV

Common questions about resume formats across countries

Why does resume format change from one country to another?

Because employment law and hiring convention change, not because designers disagree. A photo is still customary on a German CV, while US anti-discrimination practice has all but removed it — send a US resume with a photo and it may never be read. Page count, section order, date of birth and references are defined country by country in the same way. One resume for every market means a wrong resume in most of them.

I'm applying from Iran to Germany or Canada — which format do I pick?

The destination country's, not your own. A German employer reads your CV against German expectations, and their screening software is tuned to the same thing. Open that country's guide and build to its rules from the start; translating a Persian resume into English does not fix its format.

What if I'm applying to several countries at once?

You need a separate version per country. The underlying content — experience, skills, education — stays the same; what changes is the personal fields, the length and the section order. In Resumito you switch the target country and those adjust automatically, so you are not rewriting from scratch.

Should my resume be in English or in the local language?

It depends on the posting, and the table above gives each country's default. The general rule: if the job ad is written in the local language, so is your resume. For Germany and the Netherlands international firms usually accept English while local employers do not; for the US, Canada, the UK and Australia, English is always right.