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How to write a CV for the Netherlands, in English
What Dutch employers expect on a CV, what to leave off, and the conventions that differ from a US resume.
By Ygor Henrique4 min read
What Dutch employers expect on a CV, what to leave off, and the conventions that differ from a US resume.
A Dutch CV is not an American resume translated into Dutch. The differences are small in number and large in effect, and most of them run in the direction of "the Netherlands is more relaxed about this than you expect".
Here is what actually changes.
The one-page rule is American. In the Netherlands, two pages is normal for anyone past their first few years of work, and squeezing fifteen years onto one page reads as though you left things out.
Three pages is long unless you are in academia, where a full publication list is expected and nobody counts.
This is the question everyone asks first.
A photo on a CV is common and accepted in the Netherlands. It is not required, and leaving it off is never held against you.
Leave it off when you are applying to an international employer, a company with a formal anti-bias process, or any US-headquartered organisation, where a photo can actually cause the file to be discarded for legal reasons. If you include one, make it a plain, well-lit head-and-shoulders photo. Not a holiday crop.
The old Dutch CV convention included date of birth, place of birth, nationality and marital status. That convention is fading, and a good part of it is now a liability rather than a courtesy.
Include your name, city (not your full street address), phone number, email and a LinkedIn URL if you keep it current.
Leave off marital status, religion, and your ID or BSN number. Nobody needs them at application stage, and any employer who asks early is telling you something.
Date of birth and nationality are a judgement call. Some Dutch employers still expect them and some hiring processes strip them deliberately. If you have the right to work, say so plainly ("EU citizen" or "Dutch work permit holder") rather than giving a nationality, because the right to work is the thing they actually need to know.
Dutch CVs are conventional and that is a good thing. In order:
The profile matters more here than in the US, where the summary is often skipped. Dutch hiring managers read it, and a vague one is a wasted opening.
List your languages with a real level, and use the European framework everyone here recognises: A1 to C2, or plain words like "native", "fluent", "professional working proficiency", "basic".
"Dutch: A2" is genuinely useful information and it is not a weakness. "Dutch: conversational" when you cannot follow a meeting is a problem that surfaces in week one.
If the role is English-language and you are learning Dutch, saying so is a positive signal about staying.
Dutch professional culture is direct, and CVs follow. Say what you did. Say what changed. Skip the adjective stack.
"Responsible for driving transformational change across the organisation" reads as noise here more than it does in some markets. "Led the migration of the billing platform, four months, no interruption to invoicing" reads as competence.
This is the one cultural difference that changes the most words on the page, and it is the easiest to apply.
The cover letter, called a motivatiebrief, is still expected for a large share of Dutch applications, more than in the US tech market. One page, addressed to a person if you can find one.
It answers two questions: why this company, and why you. If it could be sent to any employer with the name swapped, it is not doing anything.
Europass is the official EU CV format, and 7.2 million CVs were downloaded from it in 2026. It is genuinely useful for regulated professions and for some public sector and academic applications, where the standard format is expected.
For a normal job application in the Netherlands, it works against you. The layout is rigid, it produces long documents, and Dutch recruiters see a great many of them. If you have a Europass CV, treat it as your content and rewrite the presentation.
Everything about writing well. Concrete outcomes beat responsibilities. Numbers beat adjectives. The parser still needs a clean single-column layout, and the person still needs a reason to keep reading past the second bullet.
Rzume writes to the conventions of the market you pick, including this one. The first review is free and needs no account.
Check your CV against the Dutch conventions, or read what the free tier includes.