A German CV is called a Lebenslauf, and it is the most rule-bound document in this list: it is expected to carry a photo and a birth date, to run one to two pages in a strict table layout, and to arrive inside a complete application file alongside a cover letter and scanned certificates. Get the container wrong and a strong candidate looks careless before a single line is read.
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The six questions people ask most, answered in a line each.
What it's called in Germany: Lebenslauf (CV)
1–2 pages, two is normal
One page for a graduate, two once you have a few years behind you. Germany does not reward the one-page squeeze the way the US does — a readable two-page table beats a cramped single page.
Customary — a professional Bewerbungsfoto
Since the AGG (2006) no employer may require one, and some international firms now ask you to leave it out; in practice most German CVs still carry a studio photo at the top right.
Match the job ad
German ad → German Lebenslauf. English ad, or an international team at a tech company, → English is fine. Never mix the two inside one document.
MM/YYYY – MM/YYYY
Written as 03/2021 – 08/2023 in the left column, newest first. Month-and-year precision is expected; a bare year reads as if you are hiding a gap.
One merged PDF, A4
Cover letter, Lebenslauf and certificates merged into a single PDF named like Bewerbung_Nachname_Position.pdf — usually under 5 MB for older HR portals.
Not listed — you attach Arbeitszeugnisse
Germany replaced the reference call with the written employer reference letter. Naming referees instead of attaching certificates looks like you have none.
Resumito's country engine turns each of these on or off automatically when you pick Germany as your target.
Profile photo
We prompt you for it and include it on the resume.
Date of birth
We prompt you for it and include it on the resume.
Nationality
You can add it, but it's not needed.
Marital status
You can add it, but it's not needed.
Military service status
We keep this field out of your Germany resume.
Place of birth
You can add it, but it's not needed.
References
Left off the resumeHobbies & interests
OptionalTop to bottom, the order a Germany employer expects to read.
Persönliche Daten — personal details
Name, address, phone, email, date and place of birth, optionally nationality and marital status. Photo sits alongside this block.
Berufserfahrung — work experience
Reverse-chronological. Employer, city, job title, then two to four bullets of actual responsibilities.
Ausbildung — education
Degree, university, city, and your final grade — German recruiters read grades, so convert yours to the German 1.0–4.0 scale.
Kenntnisse — skills, languages, IT
Languages by CEFR level (B2, C1), not by adjectives like "fluent". Software and technical skills grouped, not a wall of keywords.
Weiterbildung / Zertifikate — training
Courses and certifications with dates. Germany takes formal qualifications seriously; this section is read, not skimmed.
Interessen — interests (optional)
Two or three specific interests, if they say something. "Reading, travelling, music" says nothing.
Ort, Datum, Unterschrift — place, date, signature
The traditional closing line. Increasingly optional, still common, and it costs nothing to include.
German anti-discrimination law (the AGG, in force since 2006) means no employer may demand a photo, and a handful of large employers have moved to anonymised applications. That is the legal answer. The practical answer is that the great majority of Lebenslauf templates in circulation, and the great majority of CVs on a German recruiter's desk, still have a photo in the top right corner — so leaving it off makes your document look foreign rather than principled.
If you include one, it has to be a Bewerbungsfoto: taken by a photographer against a plain background, business clothing, a neutral friendly expression, roughly 3.5 × 4.5 cm, cropped to head and shoulders. A cropped holiday photo or a phone selfie is worse than no photo at all. Two situations where you should genuinely omit it: the job ad explicitly asks for an application without a photo, or you are applying to the German office of a US or UK company that runs a global no-photo policy.
This is where applicants from outside Germany most often lose. A German application is a Bewerbungsmappe — a file. It contains the Anschreiben (a one-page cover letter arguing why this company and this role), the Lebenslauf, and then Zeugnisse: scanned degree certificates, and Arbeitszeugnisse, the written reference letters that German employers are legally obliged to give departing staff. A complete file often runs six to ten pages.
Iranian employers rarely issue anything like an Arbeitszeugnis, so you will usually have a gap here. Fill it deliberately: ask each former manager for a signed letter on company letterhead stating your role, dates, duties and performance, and get it translated by a sworn translator. Attaching three such letters puts you back on equal footing with a local candidate, and it is the single highest-value hour you can spend on a German application.
A German HR reader knows what a Diplom-Ingenieur or a Bachelor from RWTH means and has no idea what a Sharif or Tehran University degree ranks as. Two moves fix that. First, check your university and programme in anabin, the official database of foreign qualifications, and write the equivalence directly on the CV — for example "B.Sc. Software Engineering, equivalent per anabin: H+ institution". Second, convert your grade: a 17/20 or a 3.6/4 GPA means nothing, while "final grade 1.7 (German scale)" is read instantly.
If you are aiming at the EU Blue Card route, say so in one neutral line near your contact details rather than in the cover letter — something like "EU Blue Card eligible (recognised degree, relocation ready)". Hiring managers filter hard on whether sponsoring you is complicated. Answering the question before they ask it removes the main reason a promising CV gets set aside.
German professional writing is sober. "Passionate, results-driven innovator with a proven track record" reads to a German recruiter roughly the way an infomercial reads to you. Replace every adjective with a fact: not "significantly improved deployment speed" but "cut deployment time from 40 to 9 minutes by moving CI to GitLab runners". The Lebenslauf's table layout helps here — there is physically no room for a paragraph of self-praise.
The same sobriety applies to gaps. Germany reads a CV as a continuous timeline and an unexplained six-month hole invites suspicion, while a labelled one does not. Write the gap in as its own row — parental leave, relocation, language course, job search, illness — with dates. A stated gap is a fact; a hidden gap is a question mark.
The errors that sink the largest number of otherwise strong resumes.
Sending a US-style one-page resume
No photo, no birth date, no dates in the left column, no signature — it reads as a document for a different country, and it usually is. Rebuild it as a table before you send it to a German employer.
Claiming "fluent German" instead of a CEFR level
Germany runs on A1–C2. "Fluent" is unverifiable and will be tested in the first phone call. Write B2 or C1 and name the certificate (Goethe, telc, TestDaF) if you have one.
Skipping the Anschreiben
The cover letter is not optional padding in Germany; for most non-tech roles an application without one is incomplete and gets filed as such. One page, addressed to a named person where possible.
Sending loose attachments
Five separate files named scan1.jpg through scan5.jpg is a familiar annoyance in German HR inboxes. Merge everything into one ordered PDF: cover letter, CV, then certificates.
Leaving the grade off your degree
Unusual elsewhere, expected here — especially for graduates and career starters. An education entry with no final grade is read as a grade you would rather not show.
Germany is the most reachable of the big destinations from Iran, because the EU Blue Card turns a recognised degree plus a salary offer above the annual threshold into a legal route, and because the Opportunity Card (Chancenkarte) lets qualified people come to look for work. Your CV should make the legal path obvious rather than leave it as a mystery: name your degree's anabin equivalence, state your German level honestly, and add one line about your notice period and earliest possible start.
Two Iran-specific fields need translating rather than copying. Military service means nothing on a German CV — a completed service card is not a credential here — so drop it and use the space for the skills you built during those years if they were technical. Mandatory internships and university projects, on the other hand, are worth keeping: German recruiters read Praktika as real experience, especially for someone under thirty.
One practical detail that costs applications: put a reachable international phone number and an email that is not blocked for German senders, and give a Latin-script transliteration of your name that matches your passport exactly. If your passport says Mohammadreza and your CV says M. Reza, every downstream document — visa, contract, Anmeldung — inherits the mismatch.
One to two pages for the Lebenslauf itself. Students and fresh graduates fit on one; anyone with three or more years of experience normally uses two. The attached certificates are not counted in that limit — a complete German application file of six to ten pages is entirely normal.
You never have to — the AGG forbids employers from requiring it. But it remains the norm, so unless the ad says otherwise, include a professional application photo. If you would rather not, no employer may hold it against you on paper.
Follow the language of the job ad. Tech, research and international companies in Berlin, Munich and Hamburg hire in English routinely. For Mittelstand companies, public-sector roles and anything customer-facing, a German-language Lebenslauf is effectively required.
It is a written reference letter that German employers must issue when you leave. Foreign applicants usually have none, so ask each former manager for a signed letter on letterhead covering your role, dates and performance, and attach a sworn translation. Two or three of these close most of the credibility gap.
It is customary and still expected on most German CVs, alongside place of birth. Like the photo, it cannot be demanded of you. Nationality and marital status are genuinely optional and increasingly left off.
German grades run 1.0 (best) to 4.0 (pass), and the modified Bavarian formula is the conversion universally accepted by universities. Write the converted number with the original alongside — "1.6 (17.2/20, Iranian scale)" — so nobody suspects rounding in your favour.
Traditionally yes: city, date and a scanned signature at the bottom. Many companies no longer care, and no one will reject you for omitting it, but including it signals that you know the local convention.
It's not the same template. Resumito's country engine (8 data points per country) toggles which personal fields and sections appear based on your target country — Germany gets its own rules, shown above.
Yes — you can build and download your first Germany-formatted resume on the free plan, no credit card required.
Yes, you can change your target country any time from the resume editor and Resumito re-applies the field rules instantly.
Pick Germany as your target country and Resumito turns each of these fields on or off for you — nothing to memorise.
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