Hello everyone,
I am a Software Engineer holding a Master’s degree in Computer Applications. I moved to Germany 18 months and started working for a software consultancy company here in Stuttgart. Unfortunately due to the slowdown in projects in the automotive sector, I got laid off and since then I’ve been on the job market searching for new meaningful opportunities. But as the title says, I have had no success since then. I sent over 400 applications with only 2 interviews which didn’t translate into anything. I have the eduction, skills and experience required for all the jobs I’m applying to but I only get the “unfortunately, after careful consideration” emails which is very frustrating because I am confident I could be a strong fit for most of these roles. I have bills to pay, a visa status to maintain because I am on EU Blue Card and I feel like I’m running out of time. I have updated and tailored my resume and cover letter for each job application I sent but still nothing. Sometimes this situation makes me feel like I’m unemployable even though I have built wonderful projects through out my career and worked for various tech companies. I speak English and French fluently and currently at German B2 level.
Could y’all please review the current version of my resume and highlight what, if anything is wrong with it and things I can improve ?
I also need some advice or suggestions on how I can maximise my chances of getting hired soon.
Thank you for reading.
by Clean_Contact_4284
45 comments
Apart from bigger companys, id apply in German
Show your language skills not with points but with A1-C2. That’s more understandable.
It’s difficult to see what you’re good at or what you specialize in. Even on which stack
– Remove the picture and summary
– Improve your German skills asap
– Way too many skills and keywords nobody is going to read
– Remove your interests
– Write the CV in German unless it’s explicitly mentioned that you can send it in English
Your CV is pretty good, but you are not the only one who got laid off. It’s layoff seasons, just Bosch alone laid off 13k tech and IT staff last week. The market is flooded. This has been going on for months, the tech market is down the drain.
Few things you can improve: apply in German and give accurate proficiency levels for your languages. In the current market companies want to know if you have at least B2 German or else you go to the “no” pile.
Optimize further for AI. Skills: split into sections like programming languages, methodologies.. Agile is not a skill, it’s a management framework. Facilitation (of Scrum ceremonies) would be a skill.
Make it machine readable.
Interests: if you play basketball in a Verein maybe mention it, HR loves people who play team sports. If you apply to more conservative older orgs don’t mention video games, boomers hate games.
Put German B2 instead of “advanced”. I saw 3/5 and assumed B1-B2, which is much lower than B2 in the day to day life.
I’d also reorganize your skills into stuff like
Languages: …
Frameworks:…
And make sure that the frameworks are sorted by the language!
In my CV I have the programming language next to the work and project. I think that makes it easier for the HR person to tick their boxes
When I was job searching, what helped me was:
* Switch to an ATS readable format. A plain, single column document works best
* Copy-paste the job description and your experience into an LLM of your choice and prompt it to reword your experience to match the keywords in the job description
Improved my chances a lot.
Your actual German language proficiency level is missing.
Besides that, everything lower than B2 (better C1) is currently a dealbreaker for many companies.
Write your application in German, even corporates usually prefer German language.
First things first: Never Post ans Personal Information on reddit
Some tipps:
– cut the complete right part, these chatgpt summaries and how did you style the skills and language is looking to playful, unless you need to fill Space leave your interests- your are looking for a job and not friends
– generally shorten the bullet points, no need for complete sentences. Make it as short as possible, dont use flowerly words or bullshitting descriptions like enhanced xy by 30% by agile xy etc., be clear
– language put in the classifiers (native, B1.. etc.)
– your skills I would put in the end
– are you sure about all the skills being on a professional level? With 3 YoE are still considered a junior and thats a lot skills for a junior. Cut here what maybe a weakpoint in a job interview
Else good luck, it is no easy time for SW Developers – May consider also to be flexible and apply in all german regions
Fullstack developer is too wide. Edit your resume based on the job posting. A recruiter is looking for specific skills. Your resume should show that you have that skill. Your skills show a lot of them without any info on how much you know.
Apply in Luxembourg
Put actual CEFR language levels. The dots mean nothing. If you don’t have a certificate for your language skills, get one.
Job market is though at thd moment, but one thing that someone already mentioned is the format of your CV, you need to adjust it, make it simpler and ATS friendlier, otherwise it won’t even pass the automatic filters.
Try to reach out to the recruiters / hiring managers directly on LinkedIn.
In addition to what others said, you are French native, apply there too.
Too much info which no one wants to read. Make it 2 pager and readable
To be honest in 3 years from junior to lead software engineer while switching jobs 3 times raises a few red flags for me. Additionally mentioning the customer name is something quite uncommon. As others mentioned your german skills are too low and you are competing with hell of a lot new graduates and people who have been laid off as well. If you can add a few companioning certifications to show that you were not only watching tv and asking an llm to send out a new resume every two hours
I have 1 month of Internship experience as a Cyber Security Analyst but I landed 6 interviews in 50 applications.
1. Write a cover letter for each job catered to that position , Quality > Quantity (specially for jobs that you think that fit you)
2. Speak about your willingness to improve your German. (Meanwhile watch your favourite Anime in German , and memorize the vocabulary set of 300-400 words in your industry)
3. If the Job description is in German then your CV and your cover letter must be in German. (Harness the power of LLMs)
Other Ideas : Apply for jobs abroad and get a freelance tax ID to keep the ball rolling.
: look into other Job titles, if you have other interests you can go to Agentur Für Arbeit and get a Bildungsgutschein (voucher for a course) and learn a new skill , fully funded by them.
All the best
Firstly, the job market for IT currently is bad but there’s a lot to things to fix here as well, my friend.
1) Make your CV in German. And use an ATS friendly format. I would do it in a nice presentable way but in like Word or something and not too much graphics.
2) REDUCE the text. A lot of text in there. Keep it short and simple. As i understand it, you divide the information well between your CV, your cover letter and what you will share in the interview. Make your CV and cover letter more in a way that is perfect enough to atleast land interviews and the rest you can share in the interviews. Make your CV more easy and quick to read, HR has to go through sooo many CVs for one position in a day. Too much text and it will likely not even be read.
3) As everyone said earlier, focus on your German skills. I would aim for C1 in the current market and also define it accordingly in my CV. Keep in mind that you are competing with native Germans and with international applicants who might be super fluent in German already.
4) You didnt mention what jobs are you exactly applying for, does it align with your skillset. I ask this because the biggest problem is that applicants like to show that they are a master of all trades whereas companies only want relevant people who are focused on their job description. If your application doesnt look like it, it wont work out.
5) In comparison to your education in India, there are so many german university applicants who are applying parallely everywhere right now, so unfortunately sometimes that also plays a role. I am not at all saying your experience and education is not on par, all i mean is you have to find out and show how you will stand out from the other applicants in the most subtle way possible.
I wish you all the best and from someone who was in a similar situation to yours, i would really suggest you to take the above points in consideration, they are quite important indeed if you want to find a way out in this super saturated IT job market.
First of all I am wishing you a luck. I don’t think this CV is machine readable. Also, 1 page CV is a myth. I personally have negative impressions if I see a single page CV. This type of CV includes very little details about candidates. May be create different versions of CV.
You seniority is confusing for me.
You moved from junior to lead in 3 years
Junior to lead in ~3 years is sus
You went from junior web developer in 2022/2023 to lead software engineer in 2024, with only one step or project in-between? If that resume lands on my desk I’d be very skeptical if and how you gained enough technical knowledge in about two years. And gain enough experience for a technical leadership position.
Where’s your website, your blog, your GitHub, your SO? Where can I see how you code, or what you contribute to the projects you are working with.
– A few years ago, changing the format of my CV got me noticeably way more interviews. So do A/B testing with different formats (different shape)
– I heard once that two column format for CV is harder to parse. So maybe you can try 1 column format only. Focus mainly on your job experience. Make it more concise.
– Focus on Java jobs, since that’s apparently what your experience is about
Summarize and simplify brother, no job is as complicated as described is postings therefore your CV shouldnt be as well. Worked for me
Recruiter here – hiring for a Berlin start-up.
Be honest about your fluency in German. B2 is not enough to haggle with clients and have tough conversations. You may think it is – it isn’t. I’m sorry.
B1 – I love the effort, and keep going – but you are not fluent at B1. You can handle some things, but the moment it goes sideways – you don’t have the vocab or the persuasion language.
Applying in German? Oh dear god please no.
I see CVs every day in german where the Language level is A2. You present yourself in German – expect to be interviewed in German.
Why am I being cruel? I am not.
I have seen and hired great candidates who have worked their socks off to be able to work in German as a language. I care not whether they’re from India, Syria, Peru or China – or anywhere else. If you can do the job – brilliant.
But please – don’t try to persuade me that b1 is business fluent. It isn’t. You know this.
Oh – and one last tip. When you submit a CV in German but list your fluency as A1 or A2 – for a role that requires fluent German – you will be rejected.
I’m currently recruiting. Nothing wrong with your CV, market is just crazy competitive. Just keep applying
I think it’s a good CV and your main issue is the language and some minor technicalities.
This may be controversial in this sub but my recommendation would be to not provide any language level at all unless they specifically ask you for it. I would write it as
Languages spoken: German, English, French
or
Language skills: German, English, French
Put this in the order of what language is most important to the role, not in which you are most fluent in!
This way you are not making any false claims regarding the fluency and you allow the recruiter to assess your language level in person. It will improve your chances not to be rejected before the interview stage. If you put B2 and someone else puts C1, you’re out. If you write it how a German would write their skills, you don’t other yourself from the beginning.
I am positive this is your biggest barrier on your CV and you should remove it asap (away with the sad three dots). You have already worked in Germany and with reputable clients. Let that speak for itself. The first job abroad is the hardest to get bc ppl want to see you know the local job market.
I have worked in London and Spain for years in a managerial position with high-profile clients including the Gates Foundation and Twitter (before Elon destroyed it) and have never noted down any language level on my CV.
I work in crisis management and language skills are critical. In your field it will be less so but you should enroll in a German intensive course while you still have the time. Find a tv show you watch in German and a podcast on a topic you like. It will help with your confidence in interviews too. You can also book a tutor on preply or italky and practice interview questions.
Lastly, I second what someone else said. Review job vacancies by the best companies in your field for your role/similar role and note down the wording in a notebook until you have 2 sheets complete. Keep the notebook. Mix and match the sentences, refine and tailor to where you apply.
I never spend a lot of time tailoring my CV once I begin applying bc it is too time consuming. I do the leg work in the month before and create a CV for big corporations, one for smaller, one for this industry and one for that but in a way that I just need to switch a few lines or client names.
Remove your pic as it invites bias. Germany needs to stop with the CV pics. I’d only leave video gaming if that isn’t looked down on in software development (rules may be different idk)or there are any transferable skills. Otherwise it is a lazy hobby that could be used against you. Also dont put Netflix, watching movies or anything v passive. Put something sports-related if you can or something like chess if not a lie.
I really think you can turn things around if you put your mind to it. But listen to the advice bc it is crazy to write 400 apps and not make changes.
Half the bullet points in the Fullstack one are rewritten duplicates.
Second and third bullet point in Junior Web Dev are the same.
I ain’t got helpful suggestions but want to wish you much success and hope you’ll find a good job soon.
It is too fast from jun to lead for this period. Send German version.
Don’t remove the photo. Having a photo is good.
Otherwise l be completely honest:
The summary is generic copy & paste crap.
Overall I don’t see where your focus / expertise is.
You have 3 years of experience, and only a few projects under your belt with some mixed hard skills. That’s ok and I would see you as a junior engineer, but you are claiming a “Lead” position. That makes me very suspicious.
Skills: too much stuff and completely unsorted, again I don’t see what your focus is; you could cluster it (eg Frontend, backend, infra, ..) and be more detailed where you see your home turf and leave out stuff that is less important (more is not always better)
Tagline: you are claiming technical leadership, system architecture but have neither enough years under your belt, nor are you proving it. For this I would need to see that you have been leading a team of x people for y years. Remove it or prove it IN DETAIL (but again, with only 3 years…)
(I’m experienced in interviewing candidates / filling positions)
I would remove the whole right section, including photo. Skills section is completely arbitrary, nobody is interested in your hobbies, and realistically not even the photo is important.
One sentence at the bottom is enough for languages.
Also prune your previous positions’ descriptions in relation to the job you’re applying. Not everything is needed, and even less important.
And maybe also apply in German.
I’m not in HR, but in the last 2 years I had to go through 100 or so CVs to help my HR manager hire the required talent.
And those are also things, I did when I applied the last time. Keep in mind, the market is shit and you’re now competing with Germans as well, not just foreigners.
Sorry but switching every year straight out of university is not what companies are interested in. You messed up your cv. Tune down your expectations.
I agree with many of the comments about putting B2 in and also your willingness to continue learning.
Your Summary reads very generic. I would rephrase it for each application. Write the key skills that makes you perfect for that role in there.
Expand on that in your cover letter.
The skills list i would arrange by skill level. Instead of “github” i would put in “github workflow”. If you add “git” and “agile” then i miss “CI/CD” on the list.
From the positions you have had i would guess that you have experience in working with a wide array of people with different cultural backgrounds. Depending on how international the company is, that might be worth highlighting.
You have not been very long with the companies you have listed, together with you highlighting “dynamic environments” that might seem to some managers that you are not looking for a long term full time position.
So if that is what you are looking for you might want to highlight that in your cover letter.
Do spend some time on your linkedin as well. Many companies will use recruiters that only give a handful of candidates to the company. And they are usually active on linkedin.
It also does not hurt if you link to your github if you have any open source contributions on there or even some good sparetime projects! This might also backup the “tech lead” part, since 3 years of experience is fairly low for that.
I hope this helps. Job searches are not easy, but you seem employable to me. 🙂
3 years from junior to lead? As a full stack dev? Who are you trying to impress, HR? Stop lying and talk about your actual skill level
Its a very generic cv. Drop the “lead” youre not a lead. Your experience is junior to mid level at best
Languages would better be written as A1-C2 or something like Good,Conversational or Fluent. I would remove interest unless you are applying at some big international firm like EY or smth.
Add your email somewhere along the header(if you haven’t done so already), phone number would be great too in case HR are boomers who like to call instead of emailing stuff. Otherwise looks relatively fine.
Agree with the rest, Lead is considered a senior position, or even higher in some companies.
If you consider yourself a mid-level and you are applying for a mid-level position, when recluiters sees “Lead” in the CV of a mid-level applicant, something is wrong.
I always look at time spent in previous companies, i mean youre still young but being with a company only for a few months is always a minus to me.
Besides that it looks good keep on trying, they will hire you sooner or later
Use the German format/style in your aplication.
I wanna thank you guys for continuing to send me valuable feedbacks and insights about my cv. I’m definitely reading and taking each and everyone of them into consideration
in smaller to medium-sized companies, they need a near native level in German. when I was looking for a job few years ago all I could find were software developer jobs.
you look African but your CV say that you are from India. is that your real photo?
edit: I just read my post again before sending it and I found it kind of rude now, because it comes with lots of criticism. When you read, please be aware that it was not meant to be rude at all, but is intended to help you.
—
I think this leaves the reader a bit with a suspicious feeling. On the one had you are telling, you improved project delivery speed by 30% by “collaborating in agile environment” and “conducting clean code practices”, in a bit more than a year, as a junior, and at the same time you don’t even adhere to same level abstraction in your own CV. Also, to everybody with a bit more experience in the field, this doesn’t sound honest. We all know about clean code, we all know about agile practices, and we also know how this transitions look like. Your contribution didn’t speed up project delivery by 30%. Maybe you contributed, yes, but it somehow says something about the people who implemented the organizational change but not about you. What it tells about you is, that you are using their success and frame it as yours own.
And then we see you as a lead engineering consultant, highlighting your increased code coverage as one of your key outcomes? The way you put it, tells a lot about how much you still need to learn about leadership. That sounds a lot like a junior to mid-engineer overestimating his own capabilities. Also, seem to switch between companies pretty quickly. Let’s say I’d take the risk besides the doubts coming from what I described above, I feel somehow, I have to expect that after you are in the position to perform finally, you might leave again to a different company.
I wish you had a station in your career, where you were in practice for some years and could maybe even show progress in some career steps within the company. I think that would have changed the impression, too.
Also, your post implies a lot, that you try to get “the best CV” and this is what you came up to be “your perfect document”. Or maybe you want to tune it in a way with the community, to create a very good one you can re-use. This is already a suboptimal idea. Check the company that you want to apply to. Make sure you can identify with the company and their goals and apply, when you feel it would actually make you happy. This is not about the recruitment process, this is about you. If you have such a company, check how you can fit in there. What does the company need, and how can you help them? Adjust your CV accordingly to show them how your experience contributes to the company’s goals. Make sure to do this on different levels: the company’s vision, the company’s current situation and then the team you are applying to (and of course aligned to the open position’s description you are applying to).
edit 2: some people here are advising you to remove your “skills” overview. While it should be reduced to the most important ones, be aware that you can also link a full list. If recruiters are interested in you, they will check the list and see how much it overlaps with the position they are hiring for.
An honest perspective of somebody who is spending a lot of time on reviewing CVs, 😉 Hope it helps you. Good luck and keep your head up. You will find your way!
Lovely Professional University doesnt exactly sound legit to be fair
Ok. A few things. Why “consultant”? Were you consulting or doing the actual work? Forget job titles, describe the role you were doing.
The word “contributing” stands out (negatively) in the first paragraph. You also say “participated in” forget down. Most of the paragraphs are pretty good but you have to start off talking about what you were responsible for, and what you did. If they think you’re waffling it puts them off.
Skills. I get you are full stack and don’t want to narrow your options but..
1) Delete any listed skills that you think are just plain essential. Like Git.
2) List your dev skills/languages first.Then the operational stuff second (like Agile, JIRA). Reorder the skills for each job application and put their requirements at/near the top.
3) Include at least one or two things that are niche – shows you have depth
These changes might make you seem a bit arrogant, which is not a bad thing.
The Indian university stuff is a bit of a red flag. I suggest you focus on the hours you spent doing online learning and on what you learned. Some online universities are not well regarded and including an online Indian university here might turn some employers off. At least call it LPU University and not it’s full name…
Finally to help employers to choose you, mention any experience you have in leading and mentoring other devs, and explain delivered work on commercial terms. Quicker load times are great but did you get better retention as a result? This just shows you know the lingo and can work with business teams on what matters to them.
Oh and yeah, apply in German 🙂
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