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Why The Europass CV Is Bad For Your Job Search
Europass was established in 2005 by the European Commission and aimed to standardize the CV format across Europe. The intention was to enable recruiters working in different languages and cultures to clearly assess potential employees from across Europe, and to enable increased mobility as a result. However, Europass is an outdated format and can kill your chances of employment. Let’s take a look at how a Europass CV is holding you back.
The Template
A Europass CV is generated by submitting your information into a template wizard. This information is then formatted and arranged for you, providing you with a standardized CV. Although this process of standardization saves you time, it robs you of any flexibility in the way you choose to format your CV.
Not only does Europass remove the opportunity to stand out as a candidate with a sharp and uniquely formatted CV, but the Europass template is ultimately a clumsy structure. Depending on how much information you submit, subsections can become split across two pages, meaning that employers aren’t taking information in. On a traditional CV you would consolidate your education at the top of the page, however, with Europass, this information can be divided by a page break. Avoiding Europass allows you to take control of your CV.
Poorly Structured and Twisted Priorities
To fit the Europass template, you are forced to fill information into your CV according to Europass’s priorities. And yet, these priorities rarely match what recruiters are looking for. Recruiters are notoriously ruthless when speed-reading CVs and even the slightest imbalance between education and experience could see your CV cast into the shred pile.
For example, Europass requires you to meticulously list your job history - including irrelevant part-time jobs. As these increasingly take up space on your Europass CV, valuable experience and essential educational certificates are overwhelmed. No recruiter needs to hear about your years of bar work. Europass has mistaken priorities for the professional world.
Lack of Job Descriptions and Relevant Information
“The most important element in your CV is how you detail your past experience, and you can achieve this through your job descriptions,” says Shauna Schwarz, career blogger at Academized. “By tailoring the language you use to describe your working history, you can express to recruiters in precise terms that you’re perfect for the role you’re applying for.”
Yet a Europass CV lacks the structure to facilitate this. When you use a Europass CV you lose the ability to engineer your job descriptions to the current role, meaning recruiters have no strong sense of you as a valuable candidate. In a competitive job market, this can put you at the bottom of the pile.
A Waste of Space
A good CV will make efficient use of space, as recruiters want to see the information provided in a compact fashion. A Europass CV fails spectacularly on this front, as an enormous amount of space is put to poor use or even no use at all.
First, the Europass logo takes pride of place at the top of the CV, along with a bold header declaring that the reader is looking at a “Curriculum Vitae''. For anyone with a design background, Europass’s logo with its mixture of fonts and garish colours will be put off immediately so for roles in graphics and UX it should be especially avoided. What’s more, is that a CV should announce itself by careful formatting and relevant information standing out - to be titled as such is superfluous.
A Picture-Perfect Mistake
One further requirement on a Europass CV is that the user submits a photograph for the CV. Although photographs on resumes are hotly debated, they are ultimately never necessary. “Including a picture with your CV can come across as vain or simply foolish, and although it may not hold you back with some recruiters, others will make snap judgements about your CV that are hard to shake,” says Velma Curci, HR at Big Assignments and Eliteassignmenthelp. “On a professional CV there’s no room for a passport photo - you have too much experience to detail.
A passport photo on your CV can ultimately come across as unprofessional and hold you back with recruiters. Remove the picture and utilize that space to tell recruiters about your wealth of experience, problem-solving savvy and boost your employability.
Pass on Europass
Europass was built with the best of intentions, to increase employability and worker mobility across Europe. In order to make a CV that was immediately readable to employers working in different cultures, Europass sacrificed flexibility for a fixed structure. Ultimately, this was a mistake, and now a Europass CV can only hold you back in the job market. Its poor design and misplaced priorities will put off recruiters rather than attract them. For the best chance of a job in Europe, tailor your CV to the role - pass on Europass.
About the Author:
Katherine Rundell is a career writer at Essay Help and Best Essay Services Reviews and a blogger at Boomessays. She settled in Prague after travelling through Europe and continues to explore all four corners of the continent.
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