What makes an Irish CV different
Ireland sits between two conventions and borrows from neither completely. It is closer to the UK than to the US, but there are Irish specifics that catch people out, particularly anyone moving here from continental Europe or from North America.
Four differences matter more than the rest.
- It is a CV, not a resume. If your document is headed "Resume", or you refer to it that way in your cover letter, you have signalled before the first line that you are working from American advice.
- Two pages is normal and expected. The one-page rule is an American convention. Squeezing fifteen years of experience onto one page here reads as though you have not much to say.
- No photo. Plenty of European CVs carry one. Irish employers are wary of anything that could expose them to a discrimination claim, and most will not want it on file.
- No personal details beyond how to contact you. Date of birth, marital status, nationality and PPS number all belong nowhere near a CV here.
Use Irish and British spellings throughout. "Organised" rather than "organized", "specialise" rather than "specialize", "programme" for a scheme and "program" only for software. Set your document language to English (Ireland) so the spellchecker stops fighting you.
The structure, section by section
Reverse chronological order, most recent first, in every section. It is what recruiters here scan for and it is the layout that automated screening software parses most reliably.
Your name as the document heading, at a slightly larger size. Under it, on one or two lines: phone number, email address, LinkedIn URL, and your town and county.
Three or four lines at the top saying who you are professionally, what you are good at, and what you are looking for. This is the part most people write badly, because they fill it with adjectives about themselves.
A short block of six to ten skills, drawn from the wording of the job advert. Keep it to things you could be questioned on in an interview.
For each role: job title, employer, location, and dates as month and year. Then three to six bullets underneath.
Qualification, institution, and year of completion. Include your Leaving Certificate if you are early in your career, and drop it once you have a degree and a few years behind you.
Professional memberships, certifications, languages, volunteering, or publications. Only include what supports the application.
"References available on request" is standard and enough. Irish employers typically ask for two, usually including your most recent manager.
Where most CVs lose the reader
Listing your duties only repeats what the job description already said. The reader wants to know what you did with the job.
If you cannot find a number, use a scale or a comparison instead. How many people, how big a budget, how often, or how it compared to before.
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Get My Free ReviewWhat to leave off
This list is as important as the structure. Every item here appears regularly on CVs sent to Irish employers and every one of them costs you something.
- A photograph. Covered above. Leave it off.
- Date of birth or age. Employers here do not want it recorded.
- Marital status, nationality, gender, religion. None of it belongs on a CV.
- Your PPS number. That comes after you are hired, never before.
- Your full home address. Town and county is plenty.
- Reasons for leaving previous jobs. That is an interview conversation.
- Salary history or expectations. Unless the advert specifically asks.
- Referees' contact details. Their data, not yours to publish.
- "Curriculum Vitae" as the heading. The reader knows what they are holding. Put your name there.
Length, file format and file name
Length. Two pages for most people. One page is fine for a graduate or someone with two or three years of experience. Three pages is defensible in academia, medicine, or a long technical career with a publication list, and looks self-indulgent everywhere else.
Format. Send what the advert asks for. Where nothing is specified, a PDF keeps your layout intact. Some recruitment agencies will ask for a Word file so they can add their own header before passing it on, so it is worth keeping both versions to hand.
File name. Name it after yourself, not after your folder system. Mary Kelly CV.pdf is findable in a shared inbox six weeks later. cv_final_v3_NEW.pdf is not, and it tells the reader something about how you organise your work.
If you need permission to work in Ireland
If you already hold an immigration permission that lets you work, put one plain line near your contact details saying so. Something like "Stamp 4, no employer sponsorship required" or "EU citizen, full right to work in Ireland".
Employers screen for this early and many will pass over a CV rather than spend time finding out. Stating it up front removes a reason to reject you. If you do need sponsorship, leave it off the CV and raise it once there is interest. It is far easier to explain once somebody already wants to hire you.
Mistakes that show up again and again
- The same CV sent everywhere. At minimum, rewrite the profile and reorder the key skills for each application.
- A design-led layout. Columns, sidebars, text boxes and icons look good on screen and frequently come out as nonsense once screening software has parsed them.
- Unexplained gaps. A gap is fine. An unexplained one invites the worst assumption. One short line covering travel, caring, study or redundancy closes it.
- Job titles nobody outside your last company understands. If your title was "Customer Happiness Ninja", put the real function beside it.
- Inconsistent date formats. Pick one and use it everywhere. Mixed formats confuse both the reader and the parser.
- Typos in the first three lines. Read it aloud, then have someone else read it. Your eye repairs your own mistakes automatically.
The 10 point CV checklist
Ten things Irish recruiters check before shortlisting, as a checklist you can work through against your own CV. Takes about five minutes. Free.
Or have it written for you
If you would rather not spend your evenings on this, I write CVs to the format above and send them back as a PDF and an editable Word file.