Move Abroad

99: How to write the perfect resume & cover letter for a job in Europe

• Jordan Giberson

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So, you're moving abroad and need to update your resume and cover letter to get a job in Europe? If that's you, you're in the right place. In this episode, I break down exactly how to create a strong cover letter (called a CV in Europe) and cover letter that stands out to European employers.

You’ll learn:

  • The key differences between U.S. resumes and European CVs.
  • What employers in Europe actually look for in applications.
  • How to write a compelling cover letter that connects your skills and motivation.
  • Must-do strategies to make your application stronger.
  • The biggest mistakes to avoid if you want to get hired.

By the end of this episode, you’ll know how to adapt so European recruiters take you seriously. If working abroad is on your list, this is your step-by-step guide to getting noticed in you're resume and cover letter so you can land interviews.

👉Take the free quiz: Which European city should you move to? 🤔

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Website: jordangiberson.com
Instagram: @jordan.giberson

Any country that you are applying to jobs in, they want to know what you've accomplished. They want to know specific numbers if you're able to give it, and any measurable results. I feel like a lot of people think, well, I don't have any specific measurable results, but you probably have way more than you think Hey, my name is Jordan Giberson. I'm a Texas girl living and thriving in London. The best thing I've ever done? Moving abroad, hands down. And I'm passionate about helping others do the same. Are you curious about finding a job abroad? You're in the right place, friend. I'll teach you the tried and true secrets of how to make moving abroad a reality for you and how to live a fulfilling life once you get there. We'll cover topics like choosing the best visa for you, how to get a job offer in another country, how to get over your fear of moving abroad, and how to live a life you love once you get there, this is The Move Abroad Podcast. Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Move Abroad podcast. Today we're going to be talking about how to write the perfect resume and cover letter for a job in Europe. So if you've ever dreamed about landing a job abroad in Europe. One of the biggest hurdles and one of the biggest things that you need to do before you start applying for jobs and start getting interviews is to tailor your resume and cover letter for the European job market. And just to clean up your resume and cover letter in general, we have to do this anytime we're looking for a new job. Just make sure that everything is in tip top shape. Today I'll be walking you through exactly how to update your resume, write a strong cover letter, and approach your applications that you'll get noticed by European employers. And then I'll talk about some things to make sure that you accomplish whenever you're doing this, and then some things to avoid as well, just to make sure that you will succeed in your applications abroad. So let's go ahead and dive on into the episode. So the resume, or in Europe they like to call it the CV. That's first thing. Whenever you are in Europe, whenever you're talking about any European employers use the word CV instead of resume. That's a common word that they use across most of Europe. So they will know exactly what you're talking about whenever you say CV, but resume is a very American word. So I'd recommend using the word CV in your terminology. And then in terms of length, the US resumes are a lot of times one page. I feel like people pressure you to just make sure it's one page because of people's shorts, attention span. But in Europe, two pages is completely normal, especially if you have 5, 10, 15 years of work experience. It's very normal to have your experience on multiple pages. In terms of the format, chronological is preferred so some countries will expect that you have a photo on your cv, which is a resume, but it really depends on the country. So just do a little bit of research on your specific country and what the format looks like. I would recommend researching quickly if there is a template or if there are examples of cvs in specific countries, because like I said, some countries will expect that you have a photo. Some countries expect that you follow a very specific format. I remember in Italy we were looking at applications for Italians, and they all had the exact same resume format, but it really just depends on the country. So I would do a little bit of research just to, to ask Google or chat GPT to say, is there a specific format that Germany uses? Do, does Germany use a photo? What are some specific elements I need to make sure to include in my resume for Germany? And things like that, because there might even be a specific template that everyone is using. Another thing to make sure to include on your resume will be including your nationality and languages. This matters so much more abroad than in the US. So if you're applying to Spain, even if you don't have super strong Spanish skills, as long as you have a little bit of Spanish skills, that'd be something that would be noteworthy to make sure that you include in your resume. So be honest about your language abilities, but I would be sure to include that on your resume. And then in terms of style, just clean, professional, simple, flashy graphics are not really normal unless you're applying in the creative fields. So I'd say overall, they're not gonna be major changes to your CV. Again, that's what we call a resume. I'm going to call it CV throughout this episode so that you get used to it. Yeah, there's not gonna be any huge changes to your CV necessarily, but there's just a few things to make sure that you keep in mind. So we'll go through that as we go through today's episode. So what do European employers really look for? They're looking for clarity and directness. Europeans are going to value straightforward language. You don't have to use any fluffy words in your cv. I would recommend using numbers and measurable results. I feel like that's just in general, that's across the board. Any country that you are applying to jobs in, they want to know what you've accomplished. They want to know specific numbers if you're able to give it, and any measurable results. I feel like a lot of people think, well, I don't have any specific measurable results, but you probably have way more than you think It could be something like. I managed five projects at once, or I doubled the number of blogs that were created in a month period of time. I'm just making something up off the top of my head so somebody who's creating blogs might think that they don't have any measurable results, but you could just say, I was working with five team members, or I did X number of blogs in a specific period of time. Or if you can find things like, I increase the number of views on a blog in a month long period of time or something like that. Then that's showing measurable results and showing the quality of your work. So anytime you can show numbers, you should be doing that. And that's really just general CV updates in general, anytime you're applying to a new job. So achievements over fluff. I would also make sure to add an international angle. This is just anything that you can think of that makes you feel more international. If you can highlight any global projects that you worked on and to make sure you note which countries that included, or continents or whatever, like whatever the region was, if you can include any cross-cultural work. So did you work with people from other countries? Were you working with a contractor that was in the country that you're moving to or, that you're working with People that are of different nationalities mentioning any of that work will be really valuable so that the employer knows that you can work with people who aren't just from the same city as you. And then just mentioning your adaptability. Even the small experiences matter. If you have gone on a study abroad, if you've done any international work with any international companies, or if you can get specific to, say you worked on a project across Europe or you were working. With clients or patients that were from a specific country. Anything that can highlight your global and international experience will be really valuable because it will help them realize like, oh, they have experience in this, and it will help them feel like you can fit into the role better. Another one is education to be thinking about. So your degrees and certifications are important to make sure that you list them clearly with the country listed of where you did each. And then one thing to consider is in the education systems, they're, they're different across the world, right? So in the US we might say that someone had a 4.0 GPA or a 3.5 GPA. If you mention that to somebody abroad, they'll be like, what does that even mean? Because they have a different. Measuring system for grades. You might have already taken your grades off of your CV and your LinkedIn and everything, which is perfectly fine. But if that's something that you include, you'll want to make sure that you put in the lingo that they would put on their cv. So for example, if you had a 4.0 GPA, then just Google what is. What would a 4.0 GPA be called in the United Kingdom? If I were listening it out on a cv? Like just ask Chat GPT and it'll tell you because the wording and the lingo might be totally different. So that helps to give the employer a bit more context as to what that number actually means. Language is another thing that will really matter, even if you're not totally fluent and be honest about your level, whether it's basic, conversational or fluent, for example. But I would definitely make sure to include any language abilities that you have, even if you think that you're not very fluent in a certain language. It will be very, very helpful just to list it on your resume. Another thing to make sure to list is your visa status. So, if you have the ability to sponsor yourself for a job. For instance, let's say that your dad was Spanish and you can get a Spanish passport for instance. Then make sure to mention that in your CV and your cover letter, you want it to be really, really clear that that company does not need to sponsor you. So I would make that really clear. If you can sponsor yourself, I would make that bold. I may put it at the top. I would make sure to put it in your cover letter. I think that that's really important to include if you have the ability, if you do not have the ability to sponsor yourself. This is just my personal opinion, but I actually would not include that in your CV or your cover letter. I would wait until you're in conversations with the hiring manager or. The, HR department and let them bring it up. I actually, this is just, again, this is my opinion. I would not bring that up until they ask you about it, because you want to get as far along in the interview process as you can before you start talking about those things, because your goals for them to fall in love with you. You want the hiring manager to love you, to fight for you to say, I want this one. I really like her. I really like him. So you wanna make sure that hiring manager really wants you and then worry about the paperwork stuff later. Like wait until the end of the process. Because if you bring that up at the very beginning and it's not mentioned and they don't think to ask it. If they ask it, then be honest. Like just be totally honest and be confident and say like, oh, like it's really simple process. I know what the process looks like and I also would know what the process is and to., Just give them a bit of confidence and comfort if,, especially if it's a smaller company. Some companies don't really know what the visa process looks like and they will have to sponsor your visa, so I wouldn't bring that up until later on in the process. But for your CV and your cover letter, I would just mention it. If you do have the ability to sponsor yourself, you can get your own passport or whatever that looks like or your own visa. But if you know the company has to sponsor you, I wouldn't bring it up until later in the application process. And again, if they ask you in the application, then be honest. But if they don't ask you that, then I would just leave that until the end. That's just again, my personal opinion. I have noticed someone recently that was applying and they mentioned it in the very beginning and I was like, oh, I probably wouldn't have done that. But the company didn't care and they kept interviewing him and they were really interested in him and they ended up hiring him. So, you know, it doesn't really matter necessarily. I think it depends, but I just think that's a bit safer to wait because you want them to fall in love with you and really want you, and then after knowing that you need a visa, they'll be willing to fight for you. So now let's shift gears a little bit and talk about the cover letter. The cover letter is really just your chance to connect the dots for the hiring manager, for them to get to know you a little bit to highlight some of the work that you've done on top of your cv. I think that some hiring managers do look at the cover letter. Some will look at your CV in 10 seconds and decide that you're a fit or you're not a fit, and they won't even bother looking at your cover letter. But I remember when I was applying for a job a couple years ago, I did have some hiring managers mention specific things that I had talked about in my cover letter. So maybe if a company is looking your cv, they look at that first. They understand your work experience and if they're interested in you and interested in potentially interviewing you, then they'll look at your cover letter and understand a bit more about you and specific projects that you've done. So I think some things to include in the cover letter would be why this role ends company, just showing your research, showing that you are genuinely interested in the company. This is my personal opinion. I think that if you are more at the beginning stages of your career, talking about why specifically that role in company is not as important, I think that you can probably keep it a little bit more general where it feels specific. So in my cover letter, I would say. I'm really interested in the role of partner marketing manager. If you're, if you know you're gonna be applying to the same role or just say, I know I'm really interested in this role because of x, Y, z reason, but it can be pretty broad because a lot of times entry level jobs are going to be a little bit more broad and there are going to be many more jobs that are available. So I would argue it might not be worth your time to tailor every single cover letter if you're going to be applying to. You know, 50 jobs in a month or something like that. That's going to be a lot of work to really tailor your cv. But if you're later on in your career and you have really specific experience and you're looking for a really specific niche job and there are not as many jobs available, then definitely tailor this part. You have the time to do that, and if you have all the time in the world, go for it. You can custom. Each individual cover letter, but for me, I made it sound specific enough about my experience, but I didn't give anything really, really specific about that job and that company unless I was really, really, really interested in the role. So I, again, I think that it matters more later on in your career to be specific about this. And I also think it matters. On how many jobs are available in general. So if you can apply, apply, apply, then I wouldn't make it as big of a deal to spend time doing this. But again, if you have the time, this is just kind of my opinion on that and just my experience and what I've seen happen before with other people. So why this role and company, whether you're gonna keep it generic or not up to you. Why this country? I think this is really important. Employers want to know why you're applying there. They want to know that you're serious. They want to know that this is not gonna be a. Five month thing, and then you want to move back home. They want to know you're serious. They wanna know you're in it for the long haul. Companies don't want to invest in employees for only a few months, especially if they're going to be sponsoring your visa and training you and all that. So they want to know why this country and why you're really serious about it. I would make sure to highlight that in your cover letter. I think that's important. And then your value add, you'll want to pull out two to three or more specific experiences and stories that match the job. Use specific examples. This is an opportunity to add more depth and context to your cv. This is an opportunity to tell about specific stories or maybe to highlight specific bullet points that are in your cv, but you worry that they might miss because you know it's really important. So I would just think of really specific examples or stories or like the things that you're most proud of in your CV or your. Career that you really want to highlight. So talk about your value add, and then you might wanna also mention the cultural fit. Highlight that you're really adaptable. Highlight those international experiences or the language learning. I would just make sure to highlight that you are a really good fit because you're going to fit into the culture of the company. You're going to fit into the culture of the country. You really want to be there in the country. You want to be in the company. Here's why it makes. Sense, these are your key experiences that match that. I, I think that a cover letter is just an opportunity to connect with the reader, to connect with the hiring manager, to, add a bit more context and depth to the cv, which is a bit more bullet point, right? CV is very bullet point, like, this is what I accomplished, X, y, z, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. But I think that the cover letter can be a bit more personal and perhaps show a little bit more personality to show you're serious about the job, et cetera, et cetera. A few quick little tips for the cover letter whenever you're writing it is just to give one page max, make sure it's professional with a direct tone. You can definitely use cha GBT or some other AI resource to help to structure your cover letter. There's. So many cover letter templates that are online, but just make sure that you are adapting it so that it does not sound like chat. GPT wrote it and you just copied and pasted it. You'll definitely wanna add a bit personality in there and to make sure that they know that you didn't just use chat GPT. I'd say that if it's possible, you can add the name of the person, like the name of the hiring manager if you know their name. Or if you don't know, I don't think it's worth your time of spending hours trying to figure out who might be reading the letter, but you can just add it to whom it may concern. If you can be more specific than I think that's helpful and then just close confidently. I think that it's great to close a cover letter with a call to action. That's very marketing-y of me. But I think that it's great to close with, like I look forward to hearing back from you or when would be best to have our first interview together. I look forward to the opportunity to have an interview. Let me know when the best time is, like just closing it out. That's really positive and like I really wanna move forward and., Giving some sort of call to action I think is really helpful for the reader. So we've had a quick overview of resume or CV style and what to include there and what to do. We've also talked about what European employers look for, and we've talked about the cover letter and what to look for there. Now we're going to be talking about the application as a whole a step by step on how to update your cv, and we'll also talk about the must-dos and mistakes to avoid. So now let's just talk about the application as a whole. There are. Many companies use online portals and ATS systems, so they just use keywords that they have in the job description. So it would be worth your time to go through the job description and make sure that you do have those keywords in your cv. Another thing is to think about LinkedIn. This is really critical in Europe as it is across the world, really, where a lot of recruiters heavily rely on it. You'll want to make sure that your LinkedIn and your CV match each other, that there are no discrepancies in the information. So make sure that you do keep your LinkedIn profile updated., Also another thing to think about on your application as a whole is the attachments. You'll want to make sure that for your cv, you save it as a PDF and make sure that you keep your file names, professional languages, and then follow ups. I would recommend to send a thank you email to whoever you did an interview with. I think a lot of people forget to do this and don't do this, and I think that it helps you stand out as an applicant. You can also follow up again one to two weeks after an interview just to show initiative. And now let's just chat through a few must dos and mistakes to avoid. So here are some 100% must dos for your CV and cover letter if you want to get a job in Europe. So one of the first ones is to make sure that you're tailoring every cover letter and CV to the role and country. Make sure that if you're applying to multiple countries that you do specify that, that that is changed in your cv, in your cover letter. Make sure that you do have those keywords in your cv. Whenever you send over your application, hopefully you are applying to similar jobs. Like let's say that you are applying to a partner marketing manager role. Well, you'll probably have similar key words that are going to be in every job description, so just make sure that you have those in your cv. You'll also want to make sure that you're including languages and being honest about your fluency. Another thing is be upfront about visa and work status. If you have a visa already, I would recommend keeping that quiet if that's something that you don't have until you're a little bit further down in the application process and where they already know you and like you Proofreading, make sure that you look into these spelling and grammar errors. Definitely take this seriously, and I would recommend that you send it to somebody that you know, because you've probably read it a million times and it'll be easy for your eyes to skip over errors. I would recommend sending it to someone else who has not seen it yet so that they can catch those errors. I would also recommend pairing every CV with a cover letter unless they tell you not to. I do think that it just helps you give a bit more information as to who you are and specific projects that you've worked on, and it just helps to add some color to your cv. Another really great thing to think about, and I think that this is actually key. So if you've tuned out a little bit, then tune back in for this specific point. So that is to reach out to the hiring manager and or somebody on the team. I think that it's really helpful to do both if you want to, or maybe you choose one or the other. But I think that reaching out to somebody on the team can be really valuable. And I've heard of many people having success with this because you can get somebody on your side to fight for you on the inside, and they might be able to get a referral bonus as well, which will help to motivate them to push for you to get the job. So I do think that that's something that a lot of people don't do whenever they're applying to jobs is reaching out to the hiring manager or reaching out to somebody on the team, sending those thank you emails after your interviews and following up as well after a week or two weeks. I think a lot of people don't do that, and I think that it does set you apart as being really serious about the role and just shows your excitement for the job as well. And then some mistakes to avoid. I would recommend not using US only terms like GPA, Dean's List, SAT scores, things like that as they use a different system in other countries. I would also make sure that if you do add your phone number, you make sure to add the country code. I think this is a really small detail, but I think it just shows attention to detail and it makes you seem a little bit more worldly because whenever you just add. Your area code and the number. That's not something that typically people do in countries. Typically, if you are applying to a job in a another country, you need to add plus one. That's the country code for the US or in the UK it's plus four four, and then you add your number. So it just is showing the extra step of showing like, I am an international person, I know what I'm doing. I think that it's just a minor thing, but I do, I notice it whenever Americans don't do it, and. Some people have this idea that Americans are in their own world, in their own heads and don't pay attention to the rest of the world. So we don't really wanna highlight that or reinforce that or make anybody think that. So those small details, I think do help. Make sure you don't use the same generic cover letter. I do think that even if you keep the same cover letter and you just replace like put the name of the company in the cover letter, it will make them think that you have spent the time to write a cover letter directly to them. So whenever I was putting together a cover letter, I had. A really similar cover letter for the jobs that I was applying to. But I would add the company's name in the cover letter in, I think like three places. So I would make it like, okay, I wanted them to think that it was tailored to them, so we've talked about understanding the European resume style, which they call a cv. What's European employers look for? The cover letter, the application as a whole. And we talked about some must-dos and mistakes to avoid. And then let's just chat through some final tips, and I'll close this out. One of my biggest final tip is to look up local CV templates to make sure that your format match I would highly recommend looking up local CV templates to make sure that your formats matches expectations. I think that it's just helpful to see how the country normally outlines things. There are so many templates online and so many recommendations for CVS and many other things that have to do with application process. But I would recommend looking up local CV templates just again, to make sure that it matches expectations. Like do you have a photo on your CV or not? Just as an example. Another thing is to make sure that you are leveraging LinkedIn Referrals are super powerful. See if there's anybody in your networks that you can connect with. Make sure that you're putting open to jobs on your LinkedIn. Make sure that you are reaching out to hiring managers if you're able to. I think that LinkedIn is a really powerful tool and a lot of people all over the world use LinkedIn. It's not just in the us so make sure that you are leveraging that tool. I also would just recommend to be patient. The hiring process in Europe might take longer than in the us but hiring processes in general just take a while and you just have to be aware that you might not get the first job that you apply for, but that's everywhere. You have to fight for the jobs that you want. You have to put yourself out there, put in effort, even if you are just looking for a job in the city that you're in, or if you're moving to another state, you might have to apply to several jobs before you get interviews. So don't be discouraged if it does. Take several applications before you get interviewed. And most importantly, just show that you are adaptable. You are serious about moving abroad and you're really interested and show that you're genuinely motivated to work abroad, that you really wanna work for that company and why you're going to be the best fit for that role. So I hope that this was helpful whenever you're thinking about writing the perfect resume and cover letter for getting that job in Europe. So that is it for me for today's episode. Thank you again so much for listening to this podcast. I really appreciate it, and I will catch you here again next week, same time, same place. I'll catch you then.