For internships, volunteering, and Working Holiday jobs, we often need your resumé/Curriculum Vitae. In case of volunteer work and internships, it is mainly for the purpose of giving the organization an understanding of your capabilities and interests. For remunerated jobs, it is to convince your potential employer to choose you.
10 Tips for a better resumé/CV:
Tabular Form
No one has the time to read extensive text. Make concise and short points that one can digest easily. Still make your points detailed enough though so that it is clear to the reader what you want to communicate. Remember that the idea is to give an immediate impression of who you are. Only include content pointing to the activity you are applying for. Your work experience and education should be listed chronologically from the newest to the oldest, as is common in the English-speaking countries.
Translations
The resumé/CV should be in a language that is used in the country you are applying for and/or by the people you want to work with. You can use AI for translation and/or proofreading, but if you do so, please mention it and realistically specifying your language skills.
Translate names of schools and companies
Please translate names of schools, institutions, etc.! While usually it is said that names of schools, institutions, or companies are not translated, no one in India, China, or South America will understand names of schools, institutions, or companies such as "Gymnasieskole," "Uitgeversconcern," "Jugendhilfe Essen," "Wirtschaftsblatt Verlagsgesellschaft GmbH," etc. or country-specific abbreviations such as "ESO" or "LEP." Please translate such terms to the language in which you write the resumé/CV. You can then provide the original name of the institution in brackets.
Make a meaningful CV
It is difficult to place candidates whose resumé/CV is "empty" and besides a few personal details and schooling, no further information is included. Even if you are only 16 or 18 years old and you have no work experience yet, try to add things that are related to the activity that you want to participate in. E.g., if you want to do an internship in childcare, you can mention that you have been taking care of younger siblings.
Age and Photograph should be included
In the Western world, it is often said that you should 1. not provide information such as sex and date of birth, or add a picture, so that there is no discrimination. However, for placements in countries of Africa or Asia, such rules do not apply. The absence of such information in the resumé/CV might result in rejection. A photo should generally be provided, which should be a "conservative" application picture of you wearing rather formal clothes and frontally looking into the camera, rather than a holiday or leisure time snapshot. There are particularly strict rules for Japan that we will let you know if you want to join our programs in Japan.
Be careful with culturally controversial work experiences
Many common student jobs in the Western world are seen in other parts of the world as jobs taken up by members of lower social class and do not correspond to the "status" of people who study at a university. The mention of such jobs can confuse people who look at your CV. Particularly in the Arab countries, India, and Africa, women "working in a bar" is equated with "prostitution" by many people. So you should avoid mentioning such "bar" jobs (especially if you are applying for a "role model" job, like a teacher in a school). If you apply for a hotel internship, experience working at a bar, however, might be useful to mention. If you are unsure, please feel free to ask us.
Hobbies and interests only if they are thematically relevant
Please do not add hobbies and interests unless they are thematically relevant to the the activity that you apply for. If you, for example, have been playing amateur theatre for several years and you are applying for a job at a youth center or a school, it is very relevant since you could play theater with the children. Hobbies like "watching TV," "listening to music," "meeting friends" or "partying" are best avoided, not only because they are irrelevant but unprofessional.
Use a reputable email address
By the time you are looking to enter an internship or volunteering project and "into professional life," you may want to consider whether email addresses like "
Proper Formatting
Today, computer literacy is required for almost all jobs. You should be able to apply reasonable formatting (headings, paragraphs, list items, etc.) in your resume. Similarly, you should, if an image is embedded into or part of your resume/CV, insert it compressed to a reasonable size and as a jpg, so that the final document doesn't reach file sizes of 30 MB or more. In many countries, internet connections are still slow, and you pay for the download volume per megabyte; therefore, one cannot expect people to download large attachments. The file format for your resume should only be PDF or, even better, documents should be in the cloud (e.g. Google Docs). These are formats that anyone can open and read worldwide. Do not send your CV/resumé in formats that need specific software that not everyone has like .pages (Apple), Word, Open Office etc.
Familiarize yourself with the country you are applying to, before drafting a motivation letter
If you are prefixing your resume with a motivation letter, avoid blunders in it like "I've always wanted to go to South Africa" (if you are applying for an internship in Tanzania) or "Africa is a country that has interested me for a long time" (Africa is not a country but a continent). Such errors show that you have spent little time thinking about your plan to travel abroad.
These 10 points are only an indication, based on our observations. You do not have to worry a great deal or think that creating your resume is an insurmountable obstacle that you cannot overcome. We are happy to answer any questions about how to draft your resumé/CV. We also check all resumé/CVs before we forward them to employers or internship placements.
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