The Europass CV doesn't work for European tech companies anymore

You’ve probably all heard of the Europass. After launching the Relocate tech job board, our team gets a lot of developer resumes every day, and somehow many think the Europass CV is essential to get hired by European technology companies.

What is the Europass?

The Europass was established by the European Union to assist European citizens to make their skills and qualifications clearly and easily understood throughout Europe with a portfolio of five documents, one of which is a CV.

30 European countries are currently participating in the Europass Initiative.

Despite this, one often hears the Europass CV doesn’t give any benefits to applicants for tech roles. Moreover, 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 by using the Europass CV they’re one step closer to landing a job in different European countries.

For you, as a recruiter, the primary questions are what companies your tech candidate has worked for, when and how long, what he/she was doing for each of these companies and which technologies/tools were applied. In this regard, the Europass CV is utterly worthless. Why?

First off, its template is rather generic and faceless. Consequently, many good developers have been overpassed just because their expertise wasn’t expressed in a proper (clear and comparable) way.

Companies like Spotify receive thousands of resumes regularly. And one doesn’t have to do the sums to see how much time on average is spent on screening each one 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’ its 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 — the Europass CV is not obligatory to get hired by European companies. There’s no need to use it, thus. It may be helpful as a simple CV builder, however 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 tech jobs 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.
• The ‘Jobs applied for’ section is not required either. 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 give 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 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 isn't 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.

The Europass CV is not something you necessarily need to use and it can hardly increase your chances of getting a great tech job in Europe. In our next article, we’ll share the best practices and tips from recruiters/hiring managers of European technology companies on how to raise the bar for your resume. Stay tuned.