CV format: one or two columns, photo or not, PDF or Word, by country

What holds in every country

Before getting into what changes, it helps to pin down what does not change anywhere. A recruiter gives a CV a very short first look, and in that look they want three things: what your job is, where you have worked recently and whether what you did resembles what the advert asks for. TheLadders eye-tracking study measured that first look at about seven seconds and found that the best-rated CVs had a simple layout with clearly marked sections and job titles.

That gives you the rules that work everywhere. Experience goes in reverse order, newest first. Section headings use ordinary names (Experience, Education, Languages, Skills) so that any person and any system recognises them. Contact details sit in the body of the document, not in the page header or inside icons. And every role reads the same way: job title, employer, town and dates, with the achievements underneath.

One column or two: the channel decides, not the design

There is no single answer to «one column or two?» because the same CV makes different journeys. When you upload it to a job board or to a large employer's careers site, the first thing that happens is that software pulls out the text to fill in a candidate record. With one column, the text comes out in the order you wrote it. With two, some parsers mix the sidebar into your experience and your record ends up with lines crossed over.

When you email it to a person, or take a printed copy to a careers fair, a human reads it top to bottom, and a well-built sidebar guides the eye. In TheLadders study, the lowest-rated CVs combined multiple columns with long sentences and little white space: the problem was not the column itself but the clutter.

This is the rule we work to at Cernoria, and it is the same one the app uses to tell you how much risk each template carries with an ATS.

Photo, age and marital status: what goes in, country by country

This is the biggest difference between markets, and the rule for getting it right is simple: the country of the job decides, not yours. If you live in Leeds and apply to a company in Munich, your CV follows German expectations; if a candidate from Madrid applies in London, theirs follows British ones.

We built this table only from what the law, public employment services and official guidance say in each country. Where a source says nothing about a point, the table does not make it up.

If you add a photo, make it count

Where photos are usual, a poor photo costs more than no photo. Argentina's official guide asks for passport size and a formal tone; elempleo in Colombia recommends a scanned 3x4 photo on a blue or white background and warns against cropped photos and selfies. Between them, those two pieces of advice sum up what works wherever photos are used.

There is a technical detail almost nobody checks: a photo is not read as text. An ATS extracts nothing from it, so never put your name, job title or contact details inside an image. And in two-column templates the photo usually sits in the sidebar, which is exactly the part some parsers scramble. If the CV is going to a job board, the version without a photo and in one column is the safest.

• Plain, light background, head and shoulders, looking at the camera.
• Clothes like those you would wear to an interview for that job.
• A recent photo: the interviewer should recognise you.
• No holiday snaps, crops from a group photo or filters.
• If the job is in the UK or the US, no photo.

How many pages: content decides

The «one page, no matter what» rule gets repeated a lot, usually without context. The official guidance we reviewed puts the ceiling at two: the University of Dundee's guidance for UK CVs speaks of one or two full pages, and EURES for Spain and France, Germany's Federal Employment Agency and Argentina's official guide. Elempleo in Colombia allows up to three pages depending on experience, and EURES for Portugal says one or two.

The only study with figures on length we found is a simulation by ResumeGo, a CV writing company, with 482 hiring professionals. They picked more two-page CVs than one-page ones. But read it carefully: the two-page versions held more content (700 to 850 words against 350 to 500). What it shows is not that two pages are better, but that cutting achievements to squeeze onto one page has a cost.

PDF or Word

PDF, unless you are asked for something else. A PDF looks the same on any computer and any phone, and if you export it from your word processor the text is real and can be selected: that is what an ATS needs. Germany's Federal Employment Agency puts it bluntly: PDF, not DOCX or images, and everything in a single file of up to 5 MB.

Word makes sense in one case: when an agency asks for it so they can edit it or remove your details before sending it to their client. What never works is a scanned PDF or a photo of a printed CV. There is no text there, only an image, and the system receives a blank page.

The file name and sending it

The file is the first thing the recipient sees, and it ends up saved in a folder alongside many others. «CV.pdf» or «Document1 final final.pdf» get lost; a name with your name and the role finds itself.

1. 1
   Use your name and the role

   Firstname-Surname-CV-Role.pdf, without accents or spaces: «Laura-Example-CV-Purchasing-Analyst.pdf». Hyphens stop some systems mangling the characters.

2. 2
   One file

   If you are asked for a CV and a cover letter and the channel only takes one attachment, combine them into one PDF. Check it stays under 5 MB.

3. 3
   Fill in the form even if it repeats the CV

   If the careers site has fields for experience, fill them in with the same dates and job titles as your CV. Many searches run on those fields, not on the file.

4. 4
   A subject line people can search

   In an email, the subject line carries the job title and the reference if there is one: «Application: Purchasing Analyst (ref. 2231)». That way it turns up when they search for it.

5. 5
   Open it before you send it

   On your phone, the way most people will see it. If anything is cut off or shifts, fix it before, not after.

Europass: when to use it and when not

Europass is the European Union's common CV model: you build it from a profile on its portal and can keep more than one version. For Spain, EURES presents it as an alternative to traditional layouts, useful when you apply in another European country, and for Italy it notes that you can fill in the European template.

Our view: Europass makes sense when the application asks for it, for European programmes, academic posts or public administration roles in an EU country. For a private employer, a clean one-column CV says the same in less space. The European model tends to run to more pages and gives every section equal weight, when what matters is that the reader sees first what the advert asks for.

An example: one CV for three destinations

An invented person to see the decisions in practice. Laura Example is a purchasing analyst in Leeds with six years' experience, and this week she sends her CV to three different places.

Format mistakes that cost interviews

• One CV for everything. The two-column version with a photo that works by email can arrive scrambled on a job board, and the plain one-column version can feel flat at a fair. Keep both ready.
• Putting details inside images or icons. A phone number inside a phone icon is invisible to an ATS.
• Tables to line up dates. They look tidy on screen and fall apart when the text is extracted. Use tabs or put the dates on the same line as the job title.
• Shrinking the font to fit one page. Below 10 point it cannot be read on a phone. If it does not fit, it is two pages.
• Following your own country's habits for a job somewhere else. A photo on a CV for London, or a date of birth on one for New York, tells the reader you do not know the market.
• Sending Word when nobody asked for it. It opens differently on every computer and sometimes shows comments or tracked changes.