Ausbildung CV: A German Lebenslauf Template for International Applicants

Open the vacancy you want to apply for and put your school records next to it. You are about to build the Lebenslauf, the one-page table of your education, experience and skills that the Federal Employment Agency calls the centrepiece of a German application.

It is not a written biography, and it is not a resume that opens with a personal profile paragraph. The agency’s CV guidance describes a tabular, dated summary, most recent entry first, on one to a maximum of two A4 pages. Nearly every line is a date on the left and a short fact on the right.

This guide gives you that table in German, explains each line in English, and shows what to write when your school and work records come from outside Germany.

What the rules actually are

Three points come from federal guidance, so treat them as the default for any Ausbildung application in Germany.

• Length: one A4 page, two at the very most. The Federal Employment Agency gives one to a maximum of two A4 pages, and Make it in Germany says a CV should not be longer than two pages and is ideally one. English-language advice suggesting three pages does not match either source.
• Order: most recent entry first inside each block, then backwards in time.
• One CV per vacancy. The Federal Employment Agency tells applicants not to use the same CV for several applications, and to treat any template as a skeleton only. That includes this one.

A photo is optional, and so is a signature. Both come with conditions, covered further down.

The six blocks, in order

A German Ausbildung CV has the same six parts almost every time. The German names below are the ones the Federal Employment Agency uses in its own model CV (PDF, German).

1. Angaben zur Person, your personal details
2. Praktische Erfahrung, practical experience
3. Schulbildung, school education
4. Persönliche Fähigkeiten und Kompetenzen, skills
5. Hobbys, interests, which are optional
6. Place, date and signature

Take the template one block at a time. Square brackets mark what you replace with your own true details. Nothing in brackets stays in the finished document.

1. Your personal details

Start the page with the heading Lebenslauf, then this block.

Angaben zur Person

Name	[Vorname Nachname]
Anschrift	[Straße und Hausnummer] [Postleitzahl und Ort], [Land]
Telefon	[Ländervorwahl und Nummer, z. B. +49 151 12345678]
E-Mail	[Ihre E-Mail-Adresse]
Geburtstag und -ort	[TT.MM.JJJJ] in [Ort], [Land]
Staatsangehörigkeit	[Ihre Staatsangehörigkeit], freiwillig

The Federal Employment Agency lists name, address, telephone number, email address, and date and place of birth as the details that belong here. Your parents’ occupations do not.

Family details and nationality are voluntary, and you only need to state a religion if the employer asks. Many international applicants add their nationality anyway, because it explains why a visa question comes up later. That is your decision, not a requirement.

Two practical points when you apply from abroad. Write your phone number with the country code, so nobody has to edit it before calling you. Build your email address from your name, and check its spam folder while you wait for answers.

Write dates in the German day-month-year order, TT.MM.JJJJ. So 3 February 2008 becomes 03.02.2008.

2. Practical experience

Praktische Erfahrung

seit 09/2025	[Tätigkeit], [Name des Betriebs], [Ort, Land] Aufgaben: [Aufgabe 1], [Aufgabe 2], [Aufgabe 3]
03/2025 – 06/2025	Praktikum, [Name des Betriebs], [Ort, Land] Aufgaben: Beratung von Kundinnen und Kunden, Einsortieren von Waren, Prüfen der Preisschilder
07/2024 – 08/2024	Nebenjob, [Name des Betriebs], [Ort, Land] Aufgaben: Vorbereitung des Verkaufsstands, Kassieren, Aufräumen nach Ladenschluss

Praktikum is an internship or work placement, Nebenjob a part-time job alongside school, Aufgaben the tasks you did, and seit means “since”, for work you are still doing.

Month and year are enough for the dates. For each entry the Federal Employment Agency asks for the employer, your position, and three to five short bullet points describing what you actually did.

If you have no paid work history, this block is still yours to fill. The same guidance tells beginners to list internships, part-time jobs or voluntary work. A market stall, a family shop, a school project with a real result, a role in a community organisation: all of it counts, as long as you can describe the tasks and would recognise them in an interview.

Write the tasks as short noun phrases, the way German CVs do. Beratung von Kundinnen und Kunden means advising customers, and Prüfen der Preisschilder means checking the price labels. Keep every phrase to something you could explain aloud, because an interviewer may ask you to.

3. School education

This is the block where an international application most often goes wrong, so it gets the most space here.

Schulbildung

Schulabschluss	[Originalbezeichnung des Abschlusses], [Monat/Jahr]
08/2020 – 06/2025	[Name der Schule], [Ort], [Land] Schwerpunkte: [Fach 1], [Fach 2]
08/2014 – 06/2020	[Name der vorherigen Schule], [Ort], [Land]

Schulabschluss is your school-leaving qualification, and Schwerpunkte are the main subjects.

Write the qualification under its original name, followed by the country. Do not translate it into a German qualification such as Realschulabschluss or Abitur. Those names carry a specific legal meaning in Germany, and only a state recognition body can say that yours is equivalent. An equivalence you have not been granted is a false statement in an application document, and it is easy to check.

You can still help the reader understand what your certificate covered. One extra line does it:

Abschluss nach 12 Schuljahren; Schwerpunkte: Mathematik und Biologie. Anerkennung in Deutschland noch nicht beantragt.

That means: qualification after 12 years of schooling, main subjects mathematics and biology, recognition in Germany not yet applied for. Replace the numbers and subjects with your own, and keep the recognition sentence only if it is true for you.

When you actually need recognition

Recognition is the official comparison of a foreign certificate with a German one. Whether you need it depends on the type of training, and Make it in Germany’s requirements page sets out the difference.

For dual vocational training in a company, the usual Ausbildung route, where you learn at the employer and at a vocational school, German law does not require a specific school-leaving qualification, and therefore no recognition either. Each company sets its own criteria, and many ask for an intermediate qualification in practice. If a company requires a particular qualification, recognition may then be needed.

For school-based vocational training, you must have completed general school education and have that qualification officially recognised. Which qualification you need depends on the occupation.

The same page adds that the certificate recognition bodies of the 16 federal states handle this, and that you generally need a registered German address or a confirmed training place before one will accept your application. For most people applying from abroad, then, the honest CV line is the original name of the certificate and no recognition claim at all.

When you do need to find the responsible office, the anabin database (German) of the Central Office for Foreign Education lists recognition and advisory bodies by federal state.

4. Skills

Persönliche Fähigkeiten und Kompetenzen

Sprachkenntnisse	[Ihre Erstsprache]: Muttersprache Deutsch: [Niveau, z. B. B1] ([Name der Prüfung], [Monat/Jahr]) Englisch: [Niveau]
Computerkenntnisse	[z. B. Word, Excel, Kassensystem]
Führerschein	[Klasse und Land, sonst Zeile weglassen]
Persönliche Stärken	[Stärke 1], [Stärke 2], [Stärke 3]

Sprachkenntnisse means language skills, Muttersprache native language, and Führerschein driving licence. Leave out any row that does not apply to you, because an empty label looks worse than no label.

The Federal Employment Agency asks for the qualifications that matter for this employer and this vacancy, which is why the language row belongs at the top for most international applicants. Name the level with its CEFR letter, A1 to C2, then the exam and the month you passed it in brackets. With no certificate yet, write the level you could defend in a German conversation and nothing more. Make it in Germany warns against pretending to have language skills, because the interview reveals the real level. What B1 does and does not cover for an Ausbildung is set out in the guide to B1 and Ausbildung.

For Persönliche Stärken, pick two or three you can support with an example from the experience block above. Zuverlässigkeit (reliability), Teamfähigkeit (working well in a team) and Sorgfalt (carefulness) are common choices. A strength with no example behind it is a sentence you will have to defend later.

5. Interests

Hobbys und Ehrenamt

Hobbys	[Hobby 1], [Hobby 2]
Ehrenamt	[Tätigkeit], [Organisation], [Zeitraum]

Ehrenamt is a voluntary, unpaid role. The Federal Employment Agency advises listing voluntary work and club memberships in any case, and hobbies where they genuinely fit the vacancy. Make it in Germany also treats personal interests as welcome rather than expected. If your page is already full, this is the block to drop.

6. Place, date and signature

Finish with your town, the date and your signature:

[Ort], [TT. Monat JJJJ]

[Unterschrift]

The date is written out in this line, for example 3. Februar 2026. Use the same date as on your cover letter, as the federal model CV advises.

Signing is not strictly necessary, the Federal Employment Agency says, but it can be an advantage, because it shows the version is current and the details are correct. For an email or portal application, the agency’s application guidance tells you to insert a scanned signature into the document. Photograph your signature on white paper if you have no scanner.

Do you need a photo?

Much English-language advice still says a German CV needs one. That is out of date.

The Federal Employment Agency states that an application photo is no longer compulsory, and adds that it is still common in many sectors. Its Ausbildung guidance repeats that it is not a must any more, and that an online application may ask you to upload the photo separately. Its guidance for adult jobseekers goes further: some employers now expect anonymised CVs, without a photo and without details that would allow conclusions about your gender or origin.

Behind that change sits the Allgemeines Gleichbehandlungsgesetz (AGG), the General Equal Treatment Act. It exists to prevent or remove disadvantage on grounds of race or ethnic origin, gender, religion or belief, disability, age, and sexual identity. Applicants are covered, not only people already employed, and the Antidiskriminierungsstelle des Bundes, the federal anti-discrimination agency, confirms that the protection runs through the application process. The law does not ban photos. It is why the expectation weakened, and why some employers took the photo out of their process.

In practice:

• The vacancy asks for a photo: include one.
• The vacancy says nothing: either choice is normal. If you include one, the federal model puts it in the upper part of the CV, or on a cover sheet if you use one.
• The vacancy asks for an anonymised CV: leave the photo out, and the voluntary personal details with it.

If you do send a photo, the Federal Employment Agency recommends a professional one from a photo studio, rather than a passport photo, a holiday picture, a full-length shot or a selfie.

Gaps, and what to do with them

Any period longer than two months in which you were not at school, at work or on a placement should appear in the CV with a short note about what you did. A language course, family care, travel, waiting for a visa decision, unpaid work: name it in a few words on its own dated line.

This matters more for international applicants than for German school leavers, because visa timing and school timetables rarely line up neatly. An unexplained empty year is a question you cannot answer from a distance. One dated line answers it before it is asked.

Before you send it

The CV is one document in a set. The Federal Employment Agency’s guide to application documents says an application normally contains a cover letter, the CV and certificates, and that applicants usually enclose their last two school reports. Send scans or copies, and keep every original yourself.

Check these before you attach anything:

1. Does each entry match a fact you can evidence and explain aloud?
2. Is the whole document on one page, or two at the very most?
3. Are the dates in German order, and the same in the CV and the cover letter?
4. Have you removed every square bracket from the template?
5. Has a German speaker read it once for spelling and word endings?

For email, the agency advises converting each document to PDF and merging them into one file. Application portals normally want the files uploaded one by one. The vacancy’s own instruction beats both.

If you would rather fill in a form than build a table, the EU’s free Europass CV builder produces a CV in 31 languages, and Make it in Germany points applicants to it. Keep the block order above when you fill it in, because a German employer reading an Ausbildung application expects it.

What to do next

Take the vacancy you opened at the start and read its requirements line by line. For each one, find the line in your CV that answers it. The vacancy requirement matcher does this with you, one requirement at a time. Where you find nothing, either add a truthful entry or accept that this is a question for the interview.

Then rehearse those answers out loud. The Ausbildung interview guide turns the same experiences into short spoken German answers, and the Ausbildung preparation self-check shows which step to verify next. If you are still working out where the application sits in the wider route, the full Ausbildung guide puts it in order, and the Federal Employment Agency’s Ausbildung application process page covers what happens after you send it.

One last check before the file leaves your computer. Read your CV as the employer would, with a stack of others on the desk. If a line does not help them decide, it is taking space a better line could use.