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The importance of having a Europass
Nowadays, for jobseekers it’s essential to know what Europass is about. Created in 2004 to unify the job search in Europe and make it easier, it consists of five documents, but let’s concentrate on the most fundamental, the Europass CV, similar and yet different from what we’re used to seeing in a resume. At the bottom you’ll find templates from the official Europass website and here’s a step by step explanation on how to complete it.
In the first part, we have Personal Information. Typical data such as name, address, telephone and fax numbers, email address, nationality, date of birth and gender. Wonder why gender? As it’s a CV that can be sent to any country in Europe, there’s a possibility that a candidate’s name is not known in the country to which it’s sent and / or is ambiguous and the person reading the CV can’t distinguish whether it belongs to a man or a woman.
The field Desired employment / Occupational field, despite containing only one piece of information is very important because it’s the candidate’s main objective, the position to which he or she aspires to.
Under Work Experience, there are important details that are often missing from a Curriculum Vitae. Dates, position held and responsibilities are almost always included, but in many cases, young people looking for a job omit the name and contact information of their previous boss or company. Including these in the Europass can avoid lying and the famous “resume fraud“, more common each day.
In Education and Training we find other often omitted details, such as Main Subjects / Occupational skills covered. Finally, we have the Level in national or international Classification, which helps the person reading the resume to know exactly to what European levels the candidate’s studies are equivalent to.
The same applies to Personal skills and competences, where language knowledge (mother tongue and foreign languages) should be described using the levels of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEF).
The rest of the fields, concerning the candidate’s own competencies, are key when choosing the right person for the job, so they are also very important.
Under Additional Information, there’s a possibility to add data that could not be included previously and the applicant deems relevant.
By Romy
