cultural differences in CV format!?

hey everyone!

i am going to be applying for jobs in Italy very soon and i am wondering if anyone has any tips for Italian CV standards. my job field is the hospitality industry...so i will be applying at hotels, restaurants, bars, etc. as of right now, i only speak a little italian, so once i get the first-draft put together i will have a couple italian friends proof read it for spelling/grammar/translation errors....but in order to get started with this i need to know what is expected in terms of formatting....can anyone help!?

grazie!

I think there must be a web site for something like this. I know that there will be differences. For example, in Germany it is required to provide a photo.

Ask your italian friends to help you google some sample cv formats before you write your own. There can be quite striking differences from country to country.
For instance, I remember when I was in the US no one ever put their age on the cv. But here it's standard to post your date of birth right after your adress. (But i don't know how Italy handles this)
So I think you'll have the best results if you get some examples of the web (a lot of job sites will have sample CVs, or if not them then employees organizations or maybe the unemployment agencies). And just go through the examples with a pen and ask them to explain the layout and content. Even if the CVs are in Italian, you should still get some useful tips this way.

I have come across this many times. On thing is the format - how many pages, picture or not (believe it or not here in Indonesia people invariably put their height and weight) - in Norway you say whehter or not you are married and have kids, whereas in the UK thats something your employer is not allowed to ask - but there is also the question of how you sell yourself.

Dont know where you are from but be aware that what is in the states seen as selling yourself may in a european context be seen as having a really big head! I had an american friend who was applying for jobs in the states and in europe at the same time, she had two radically different CVs with the same basic info.

Definitely worth doing some reasearch.

quote:

Dont know where you are from but be aware that what is in the states seen as selling yourself may in a european context be seen as having a really big head!

I've seen the other extreme too: a Nigerian friend who was so incredibly polite in his CV in old-school Oxford English that he was almost begging the "dear sirs" to kindly give him a chance to apply. It would have been a hit in Lagos, but not in Austria. I don't want to think how he would have come across in the US.

By the way, people here will often put marital status too.