Preparing a Europass CV: A Guide with Key Tips

What is a Europass CV?

With freedom of movement throughout the European Union, it’s become increasingly easy for people to work abroad. This brings plenty of opportunities and advantages. It allows employees to find work and a location that suits them, while widening the talent pool of candidates for employers. However, it also brings some challenges. These include differing CV conventions and problems translating foreign qualifications into local equivalents.

The EU created Europass as a way of overcoming the challenges of applying for jobs across Europe. It aims to facilitate transparency and accessibility across the European job market, by offering a unified format and structure for creating a CV in Europe. Europass offers an online CV creator to help you communicate your skills and experience to employers in other European countries.

Available in 31 languages, the format aims to overcome any regional preferences or conventions, presenting your skills and qualifications uniformly, to help employers assess applications fairly and accurately. If you’re a jobseeker looking for roles in a different European country, the Europass CV could be useful. Whether you’re a student, a recent graduate or an experienced professional, the service offers tools that can assist with your applications. You can find the Europass CV template on the dedicated Europass website. 

Other products for jobseekers from Europass

The CV is just one of the products and tools Europass offers employees and employers. Besides the CV template, there is the Europass Profile, mobility document, certificate supplement and diploma supplement. Together with the CV, these form the European Skills Passport. In addition, the service provides the European Qualifications Framework for comparing qualifications between countries, and the European Digital Credentials service, for tracking and organising learning and training.

Europass Profile

The Europass Profile is an online tool for people to manage their career development. It can help people to record their career progress, qualifications, skills and experience in one place. This could include previous jobs, education, training courses, volunteer work, language skills and digital skills. Recording all this information in your profile can help you to understand your strengths, as well as areas for development. It can also establish the basis for creating your CV, allowing you to choose which skills and experience to list in each application.

“Europass offers an online CV creator to help you communicate your skills and experience to employers in other European countries.”

Europass Mobility

If you’ve studied or completed a work placement in Europe in the past, the Europass Mobility tool can help you to record your experience and showcase it. The tool helps you tap into the value of working and studying abroad, so you can use it to your advantage when applying for jobs across the continent. The document is completed and issued by the organisation that arranged your placement abroad.

Europass Certificate Supplement

The Certificate Supplement is a way for people to showcase their vocational qualifications. Vocational qualifications can differ between countries. This service creates a document that presents your qualifications in a unified way that’s easy for employers and educational institutions to understand. The tool allows you to search for your vocational qualification and create a Certificate Supplement document to use in applications.

Europass Diploma Supplement

The Diploma Supplement is similar to the Certificate Supplement. It’s designed for anyone with a higher education qualification, such as a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree. The tool helps you to document the qualification and its level. You can also include details about the institution, the course content and your results, plus information about your national education system. All this can be useful to employers, helping them to understand your qualifications.

Europass Language Passport

The Language Passport was established as a document template for users to list their self-assessed language skills and qualifications. The latest version of Europass integrated the Language Passport into the Europass Profile, under the section titled ‘language skills’. This still enables you to self-assess your language skills using the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), and share your results with employers as required.

Structure of a Europass CV

The Europass CV follows a highly standardised CV structure, with all the sections you’d typically expect from a traditional reverse-chronological CV. The standardised structure makes it easy for applicants to include all the necessary information, while making it more straightforward for employers to review CVs from different countries. Here are the key sections included in the CV template:

Personal information

This section includes your name, your address, your contact details including social media handles and website URLs. It also includes optional fields for your date of birth, nationality and gender. Additionally, you can include a short biography or personal summary that tells employers about your background, skills and achievements.

Work experience

In the work experience section you can add all the details of your employment history. There are fields for your job title, the name of the employer, the city and country you worked in (plus address details if you wish to add them), and the dates you worked there. You can also add details of your main activities and responsibilities.

Education and training

This section provides the opportunity to create a complete list of your qualifications, including the title of your award, the institution you studied at and your dates of study. It also enables you to assign an EQF level to each qualification. EQF stands for European Qualifications Framework, and encourages you to match your qualification with your knowledge levels based on learning outcomes.

Language skills

Under language skills you can list your mother tongue and any other languages you can speak. This section asks you to assign a level of competency to your listening, reading, speaking and writing in each language, based on the CEFR language standards.

Additional skills

There are several other skills sections you can add to your Europass CV. These include digital skills, communication and interpersonal skills, management and leadership skills and organisational skills.

Other Europass CV sections

Other Europass CV sections you can include in your CV are:

• Conferences and seminars
• Creative works
• Driving licence
• Hobbies and interests
• Honours and awards
• Networks and memberships
• Projects
• Publications
• Recommendations
• Social and political activities
• Volunteering
• Other

Guide to creating a Europass CV

To create a Europass CV online, firstly head to the Europass website. From the homepage, you can select your preferred language from a button in the top-right of the screen. If you’re logging in from the UK, the website will default to creating your Europass CV in English. From the main menu on the homepage, navigate to ‘Europass tools’ and select ‘Create your Europass CV’ to get started.

On the next page you can read a brief guide to creating your CV, and follow links to the CV builder itself. You can create a CV from a Europass profile or just build a CV from scratch. Creating your Europass profile requires registering for the service. This is free and takes just a few simple steps.

Creating a Europass CV from scratch

If you choose to create a CV from scratch, there’s a simple step-by-step process to follow with text boxes to complete and drop-down menus or lookups for any fields with pre-determined, standardised information. The process starts with your contact information, and after completing and saving that section, you can add any section you like from the extensive list of fields.

After inputting all your information into the CV maker tool and, if necessary, adjusting the order of the sections, you can move on to selecting a Europass CV template. There are four clear, professional templates to pick from, as well as a colour palette selector, text size adjuster and the option to number your pages or add the Europass logo. Following this, you can download your Europass CV or save it to a CV library for future reference.

Creating a Europass CV from your profile

If you chose to create a personal profile before making your CV, you can easily import all your details into the CV from there. Because the profile is such an extensive library of your experience, qualifications and skills, you can decide exactly what to include in your CV and what to omit, and edit each section once it’s added to your CV.

This function is ideal if you’re likely to be creating multiple CVs for different types of roles, each of which requires a different focus and tone. It’s also useful if you’re applying for roles in different countries, with varying regulations on what personal information to include.

Should I use the Europass CV?

The Europass CV can be useful if you’re planning to work abroad and don’t know where to start with your CV. The service provides a portfolio of tools and resources to help you organise your skills, experience and qualifications. It also helps you to present them in a way that’s easy for employers to compare to candidates from other countries.

Europass uses a clear and simple CV format. This can be an advantage, as it allows your skills and experience to shine through, while making it easy for employers to read and understand.

However, the CV structure can also be restrictive, and its structured template can mean it’s difficult to make your CV stand out, especially compared to other Europass CVs. If you want your CV to have a personal touch or you want to create a CV with an unconventional or creative layout or structure, Europass might not be the best option for you. CVwizard can help you to make a visually appealing CV that might make a greater impact, while sticking to a standard, recognised structure. Take a look at our CV templates for inspiration, and to start building your CV.

The pros of a Europass CV

If you’re considering creating a Europass CV, take a look at some of the advantages below:

• It’s an internationally recognised document: the main attraction of Europass is that it’s recognised by countries across Europe, and allows you to create simple job applications that overcome the challenges of applying to work abroad. The fact that the service has EU backing lends it credibility.
• It creates a level playing field: the stripped-back nature of the Europass CV helps to create a level playing field among applicants. This is particularly true if many applicants use the Europass format. Your Europass CV should allow your qualifications and experience to shine through.
• It allows employers to understand your experience: the Europass service helps employers to understand your qualifications and work experience, by comparing them to regional equivalents. This demystifies the many types of qualification you can get across Europe and removes any bias employers might apply.
• It helps you navigate the uncertainty of foreign applications: applying for jobs abroad can be a daunting experience. Europass provides a strong, straightforward framework to build your European job applications around. This can be especially helpful if you’re new to the workforce or you’ve never worked abroad before.
• It’s ATS-friendly: the Europass CV is designed to perform well with applicant tracking systems (ATS) and their scanning software. It uses a clear, well-structured template with well-labelled sections that should be easy for automated systems to scan and parse.

The cons of a Europass CV

Despite its many useful features, there are some potential drawbacks to using a Europass CV. Consider these before deciding whether to create a Europass CV:

• The template is very basic: the Europass CV template is very basic. This can be restrictive, particularly if you have varied experience and an interesting set of skills, hobbies and interests. The limited sections of the CV template and layout can stifle your chances of success.
• It doesn’t allow for much personal input: if you want your CV to be a reflection of your personality, interests and passions, the Europass CV probably isn’t for you. The template doesn’t leave any room for commentary or personal insights. It also lacks a section for a personal statement or CV objective, where you can explain a little about yourself and why you want the job.
• It’s not widely used in the UK: if you’re focusing solely on European job opportunities, Europass might be a viable option. However, if you’re also applying for jobs in the UK, you may find Europass isn’t the best choice. The format is rarely used for UK job applications, and your application could get lost among more creative and personal CVs.
• It can make all CVs look the same: if you want to make your CV stand out from the crowd, Europass isn’t for you. All Europass CVs have a highly structured layout and it can be difficult to get your application noticed. Likewise, Europass CVs can also be less engaging for employers, meaning your CV risks failing to maximise your chances of making an impact.
• It’s difficult to adapt and optimise: the structured nature of a Europass CV can make it tricky to edit your document down to a concise single side of A4. Many employers favour a CV that’s brief and to-the-point. This can be difficult with a Europass CV template, without compromising the content of the document.

Key Takeaways for Preparing a Europass CV

The Europass CV is useful for anyone seeking employment in Europe. If you’re confused about what to include in your CV, or how your qualifications and experience will stack up against candidates from other countries, Europass can offer solutions. There are, though, some limitations to Europass, and you may find it difficult to stand out in a competitive field of applicants. CVwizard offers CV templates with a clear structure and beautiful design features, that make a positive impression with employers. Sign up today to access CVwizard’s tools and resources, to create a winning CV for your dream European job.