Belgium CV format: one country, three languages, one rule#

Belgium's defining CV constraint is linguistic, not typographic. Applications run in Dutch in Flanders, French in Wallonia, German in the East Cantons — and in Brussels, Dutch, French or English can all be right. Sending a French CV to a Flemish employer is a worse mistake than any formatting slip, which makes the first rule of the Belgian CV simple: match the language of the vacancy, always. The document itself is one of the more restrained in our resume format by country guide — no photo unless requested, no date of birth, one to two A4 pages.

The one rule: the vacancy's language decides#

For an English speaker, the language map is the whole game:

• Flanders — the vacancy is in Dutch, the CV is in Dutch.
• Wallonia — the vacancy is in French, the CV is in French.
• East Cantons — German-language vacancies get a German CV.
• Brussels — bilingual by status and international in practice; Dutch, French or English can each be right, and the posting tells you which.

English has a real place here. Brussels hosts EU institutions, NGOs and international headquarters where English is the daily working language, and vacancies posted in English can be answered in English. But that is a property of the employer, not of the country: a Flemish SME or a Walloon public body expects the local language, and an English CV there reads as not having done the homework. If your Dutch or French is a work in progress, say so honestly in the languages section rather than papering over it — in a market this multilingual, declared levels are checked early.

One practical consequence for cross-border and expat applicants: keep one master career profile and generate a version per language, rather than maintaining three divergent documents. The content is identical; the language and section headings switch.

The rules in brief#

• Language: the vacancy's language decides — Nederlands, Français or Deutsch; English in international Brussels.
• Photo: only if the vacancy asks.
• Date of birth, age: omit.
• Length: 1–2 pages.
• Page size: A4.
• Dates: day-first — 03/2021 – 06/2024 on the CV.
• File: Jordan_Avery_CV_BE_FR.pdf or _BE_NL.pdf, matching the language you wrote in.

Photo and personal data#

The Belgian document is restrained by default: no photo unless the vacancy explicitly requests one, no date of birth, no marital status, no nationality. That puts Belgium closer to the UK than to its German-speaking neighbours, and it makes the Belgian CV easy to derive from a data-minimized master document. City and country are enough for location — useful to state clearly if you are applying cross-border from Lille, Maastricht or Aachen, since commuting feasibility is a real screening question in Belgian border regions. If work authorisation is the underlying concern, answer it in one line instead of listing a nationality.

Structure and section headings#

The skeleton is the standard reverse-chronological one: contact details, a short profile, work experience, education, skills, languages. Because the market is multilingual, the languages section carries more weight than in most countries — list every language you work in, with honest levels. The headings, in the three application languages:

Length, page, dates and the file name#

One to two A4 pages. Belgium prints on A4, like every European market in the guide; a US Letter export reformats margins and page breaks and signals a document prepared elsewhere.

Dates, day-first. Belgian numeric order is day-first — 14/03/2026. On the CV, the safe form is month-year numerics such as 03/2021 – 06/2024, or spelled-out months in the language of the document. Never import US month-first numbers: 03/04/2025 means March 4 to an American reader and April 3 to a Belgian one. For a current role, translate the word too — aujourd'hui on a French CV, heden on a Dutch one, heute on a German one.

File name. Match it to the language you wrote in: Jordan_Avery_CV_BE_NL.pdf for a Dutch CV, _BE_FR.pdf for a French one. ASCII characters and underscores; a file name is the first thing a recruiter's system reads.

Cover letter and application package#

A short, tailored cover letter is a normal part of Belgian applications — in the language of the vacancy, like everything else. It does not need to be long; it needs to name the company, the role and the two or three reasons the match works. Certificates and diplomas are not attached up front; bring them when the process asks. If letter-writing in a third language is the bottleneck, our cover letter structure guide gives you the frame to fill.

ATS notes for the Belgian market#

Belgian employers and interim agencies screen at volume, and the machine-readability baseline applies unchanged:

• One text column, standard headings from the table above, normal reading order.
• Name, phone, email, city and links in the document body, not only in a header or footer.
• Selectable text; no scanned pages, no skill-rating graphics, no tables as layout.
• A text-based PDF unless the portal asks for DOCX.
• One date convention throughout.

Parsers handle Dutch, French and German accents without trouble; keep accents out of the file name only. The full mechanics are in our ATS optimization guide.

Belgian quirks worth knowing#

• Language is screening criterion number one. Before anyone reads your experience, the document's language has already said whether you understood the market. Match the vacancy.
• Brussels is its own market. International institutions and headquarters make English a first-class application language there — but only there, and only where the posting says so.
• Cross-border applications are normal. Belgium's job market overlaps France, Germany and Luxembourg; if that is your situation, our Luxembourg CV guide covers the neighbouring trilingual market.
• Nothing is legally mandated. No template is required for private-sector applications; the vacancy and the employer's instructions always override the default.

Sources#

• EURES — Living and working conditions: Belgium