You’ve probably heard about Europass, a service for creating CVs. Since the relocateme.eu was launched, we get a lot of tech resumes every day, and many of them are of Europass standard. In spite of the fact that 30 European countries are currently participating in the Europass Initiative, a Europass CV doesn’t give any benefits to applicants for tech roles.
Europass was established by the European Union to assist European citizens in making their skills and qualifications clearly and easily understood throughout Europe with a portfolio of five documents, one of which is a CV.
However, 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 the Europass CV makes them one step closer to landing a job in any European country.
The primary questions, which have value for recruiters are:
- What companies your tech candidate has worked for;
- When and how long;
- What he/she was doing for each company
- Which technologies/tools were applied.
In this regard, a Europass CV is utterly worthless. Let’s look deeper and find out why.
First off, its template is rather generic and faceless. Consequently, many good developers have been overpassed only because their expertise wasn’t shown in a proper (clear and comparable) way.
Companies, like “Spotify”, receive thousands of resumes regularly. And one doesn’t have to do sums to see how much time on average is spent on screening each of them. I guess, it takes 7–10 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 ‘strike’ their 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 ‘content’ of your CV and whether you’re a good match for the team and its product.
Let me stress the following — a Europass CV is not obligatory to get hired by European tech companies. Thus, there’s no need to use it. It may be helpful as a simple CV builder, but the internet is now teeming with such things and some of them can be a good alternative to the well-known Europass.
So, why is the Europass CV template NOT the best choice if you want to get a tech job in Europe?
- The Europass logo in the header takes a decent amount of space on your resume.
- Every single word counts in your resume, so there is no strict need to headline it ‘Curriculum Vitae’. You can simply add ‘CV’ or ‘Resume’ to the title of your document (preferably PDF) and save a bit more space.
- 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.
- I cannot fail to mention that there’s neither icon for GitHub, Stack Overflow and other almost must-haves for software engineers nor Dribble/Behance for designers.
- ‘Jobs applied for’ section is not required as well. I’d suggest adding ‘Which company I’m applying for and why’.
- The work experience section could be a little bit better too.
It doesn’t allow you to add enough information about your company and the project you’re 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 ‘high-traffic’ website). There is no space to mention your main technology stack.
- There’s no need to mention Business or Information Technology (IT) sector as it’s obvious for software developers.
- The ‘Personal skills’ 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.
- You don’t have to put your mother tongue, either. The most progressive tech companies are currently checking 2 languages — your English and how good you’re dealing with required programming languages.
- Communication, organization, managerial, and digital competence can be structured in 1–2 sentences. That’s more than enough. And this is also not mandatory to mention at all. You’ll never find ‘bad’ skills in any resume, and the required ones such as a team-player, open-minded, fast-learner will be carefully checked during the interviews.
So, it’s clear now that the Europass CV is unnecessary to use. Think well before creating your CV. It will hardly increase your chances to get a great tech job in Europe. The best way to be sure about your CV’s success – is to rely on recruiters. They are always ready to consult you in any of employment questions, as well as they know the best what the employer looking for and what qualities have value.
