• Name, address, telephone number, e-mail address
• Nationality
• Professional background
• Academic background
• Skills, further education, special qualifications

• Optional:

• Hobbies and interests
• Voluntary activities
• Photo
• Link to LinkedIn profile

Keep your CV short and to the point: one to three pages maximum, and all relevant information should be quickly found.

How to organize the information?

• The most relevant information should be at the top (personal details such as name and address), and less important information should be kept further down.
• This is followed by a list of professional and academic backgrounds organized chronologically starting with the most recent.
• Skills and knowledge, hobbies and interests, and volunteer activities are better placed further down.

What are the important layout considerations?

• Consistent (font, font sizes, colors).
• The font size should be easy to read. Please keep in mind that the choice of font size can improve the structure and clarity of your CV.

What to include under academic background?

• Only courses of study, training qualifications, and the highest level of school education are relevant here; elementary school is irrelevant.
• Please include the grades of the respective degrees.

What to include under professional background?

• Title of the position, company, location of the company, and the timeframe.
• Bullet points for each job outlining the core tasks you performed. This gives us a better insight into your activities and allows us to match this with the requirements of the advertised position.
• In general, the following can be said about all of your positions in your work history: Try to elaborate only on those positions that are relevant to the advertised position!

• Incorrect data
• Unexplained gaps
• Too many details
• Being unstructured
• Occupations of parents and siblings
• Reasons for change of employer
• Spelling errors
• Discrepancies with references (grades, length of employment, etc.)
• Application documents in Word format

• Describe skills and qualifications
• Avoid spelling and grammatical errors
• Be authentic

Answer the question: which of your skills and qualifications are relevant to your future employer? In your cover letter, use very specific examples to show how and why you will be of use to the new department.

Avoid formal errors. Make sure you spell the contact person correctly. Spelling and grammatical errors should also be avoided. 

True: you have to fit the job. But the new position must also fit you. It won't work anyway if you have to constantly pretend to yourself and your new employer in the future - so it's better not to even start in the application. Stand by your own distinctive personality.