New Zealand CV format: the shape Kiwi employers expect

Most New Zealand CVs that get read follow a consistent order. Departing from it is fine when you have a reason, such as a recent graduate leading with education, but it should be a deliberate choice rather than an accident.

A New Zealand header is minimal. Your full name, a mobile number with the country code if you are applying from abroad, a professional email address, your town or city, and your LinkedIn URL if you keep one current. A full street address is not expected; 'Wellington' or 'Auckland, open to relocation' is enough. If you live outside New Zealand, give your real location honestly and say what you plan to do, such as 'Colombo, Sri Lanka. Relocating to Christchurch, early 2027.'

What stays out is the personal detail block that some other markets expect: photo, date of birth, gender, marital status, religion, and national ID or passport numbers. None of it helps a New Zealand employer decide anything, and its presence is one of the clearest signs that a CV was written for a different market first and adjusted only lightly for New Zealand.

Work rights is the one personal detail worth stating if it helps you. A line such as 'New Zealand resident, full work rights' or 'Currently on a Work to Residence visa' under your contact details answers a question the employer has to work out eventually, and answering it early tends to work in your favour rather than against you.

Each role opens with a consistent line: job title, employer, location and dates. New Zealand convention is month and year, written as words, such as 'June 2021 to present'. Numeric dates like 06/2021 are harder to scan, and year-only dates can read as evasive.

Under each role, a short line of context helps a New Zealand reader who has never heard of your previous employer: what the organisation does, roughly how large it is, and your scope within it. A hiring manager in Hamilton has no reference point for a mid-size bank in Colombo or an IT services firm in Bengaluru, and one sentence fixes that.

The bullets themselves should read as outcomes, stated plainly. New Zealand's tone is direct and, by reputation, wary of a candidate who appears to oversell, sometimes called tall poppy syndrome locally: a discomfort with claims that outrun the evidence behind them. 'Cut monthly reconciliation time from five days to two across three sites' does more for you here than 'a dynamic finance leader with a proven track record'. Recent roles usually carry four to six bullets; roles from a decade or more ago shrink to one or two lines.

List your qualification, the awarding institution and the dates, with your result stated as awarded in its own system, such as a CGPA out of 10 or a classification. Guessing a New Zealand equivalent yourself can look like an overclaim; if an employer needs a formal comparison, that is what the New Zealand Qualifications Authority's International Qualification Assessment service exists for. NZQA compares an overseas qualification against the New Zealand Qualifications and Credentials Framework and issues a result an employer can rely on, and it is worth mentioning on your CV only if you have already obtained one, rather than promising to get one.

For regulated professions, registration matters more than the degree comparison on its own. Nurses need registration with the Nursing Council of New Zealand, and engineers can look at Engineering New Zealand's international registers for recognition routes. State where you are in that process honestly, since employers in these fields ask about it directly.

School results belong only in a graduate's CV, and even then as a brief line rather than a subject-by-subject list. Once you have a degree and some work experience, remove school qualifications entirely.

This is the section that most surprises people arriving from the UK or the US, where referee details do not appear on the CV at all. New Zealand's own government careers guidance lists referees as one of the standard components of a CV, alongside contact details, a personal statement, key skills, work history and education, and many New Zealand employers expect to see them, or at least a clear line about how to get them.

The safest approach is two referees: someone who managed you directly and, where possible, someone else who can speak to your work from a different angle, such as a senior colleague or client contact. For each, give their name, role, organisation, phone number and email. If you would rather not put names on a document that circulates before you have told your current employer you are looking, write 'Referees available on request' instead, which is also accepted. Either way, always ask permission first and tell your referees which role you are applying for, so they are not caught off guard by a call.

Use a single clean column with standard headings such as 'Work experience' and 'Education', a readable font around 10 to 11 point, and consistent spacing. Send Word or a text-based PDF unless the advert asks for a specific format; a text-based PDF keeps your layout intact, and Word can be easier for a recruiter to adjust or extract text from.

Seek and Trade Me Jobs are the two platforms most New Zealand employers and recruiters actually use, and both work better with a simple, standard layout than with a heavily designed template built around graphics or columns. A CV built for a fancier template can lose formatting entirely once it is uploaded to a job board.

Spelling is a fast tell. New Zealand uses British spelling: organised, programme, analysed, licence as a noun, and colour, not the American equivalents. Product names and official job titles stay as officially written, even where they use American spelling. Currency, where it appears, is best left in the original with a line of context rather than converted at a rate that will change by the time anyone reads it.