Creating a curriculum vitae: general notes and special considerations for writing in Spanish.

Objectives:

A curriculum vitae should have the following objectives: To show in the clearest, most precise and most attractive way possible the qualifications passed, certificates we hold, professional experience and other details which will arouse sufficient interest in an employer's mind that he/she will feel motivated to interview the candidate with a view to a possible offer of employment.

Whether you are writing a CV in English or Spanish the objectives remain the same. Having said that, Spaniards have a tendency to write very long CV's including every scrap of information about their careers and qualifications, which tend to make them seem laborious and tedious to read. Admittedly, sometimes this is necessary; Spaniards looking for work in the Public Sector are usually judged on "credits" they receive from courses attended, published articles etc. so everything goes into the CV to obtain as many points as possible.

Within the context of what this website offers, I am assuming most of you will be looking for in the Private Sector: language academies, private schools, temporary and summer jobs abroad etc. This being the case, your CV should be concise and fairly brief, divulging only essential information required for the job being applied for.

First considerations:

Before embarking on creating your CV in Spanish, there is something important I should mention first. If you are looking for work abroad and relying on doing so via the Internet, you may not want to spend time typing out a nice-looking CV just yet. With the exception of smaller companies (small private academies etc.), most companies will insist you fill out their pre-formatted CV's online; a time-consuming process if you hope to contact several companies. The best you can do to save time is to pre-prepare some paragraphs in Spanish to scoop up and paste into the boxes provided in the form. Therefore, rather than a nice CV format, writing correct and suitable phrases would seem what is required in this situation. The links below take you to some genuine (but with details changed, of course) Spanish CV's so you can look for suitable phrases and expressions for your own CV.

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