Ireland CV Format

Most Irish recruiters expect the familiar two-page structure:

1. 1.Contact details — name, town or county, mobile, email, LinkedIn.
2. 2.Personal profile — three or four lines: who you are professionally, your strongest evidence and the role you want.
3. 3.Key skills — six to ten, drawn from the advert.
4. 4.Employment history — most recent first, month and year, achievements rather than duties.
5. 5.Education and training — qualifications with institution and year. For Irish-educated applicants early in their career, the Leaving Certificate can be included; overseas applicants give their highest qualification and its recognition if assessed.
6. 6.Additional information — languages, certifications, volunteering, interests if relevant.
7. 7.References — “available on request”.

Two pages is standard; one page for students, part-time and first jobs. Use a single column and save as PDF unless Word is requested.

Ireland's Employment Equality Acts prohibit discrimination on nine grounds: gender, civil status, family status, sexual orientation, religion, age, disability, race and membership of the Traveller community. Irish employers therefore do not want information on a CV that touches those grounds.

Leave off: photo, date of birth or age, marital or family status, religion, and nationality unless it is relevant to your right to work (it often is — see below).

Never include your PPS number (Personal Public Service Number). It is needed for payroll after you are hired, not before, and a CV circulates widely.

Europass is accepted in Ireland, especially for applicants from elsewhere in the EU, but it is not required and most private employers prefer a concise custom CV.

Non-EEA applicants in Ireland are described by the “stamp” on their immigration permission, and employers read it as shorthand for whether they can hire you without a permit. Use the line that is true:

• EU citizen — no permit required (also EEA, UK and Swiss citizens)
• Stamp 4 — permission to work without an employment permit
• Stamp 1G — Third Level Graduate Programme, permission to work full time until August 2027
• Stamp 2 — student; up to 20 hours a week in term and 40 hours in holiday periods
• Stamp 1 — Critical Skills Employment Permit holder (current employer)
• Requires a Critical Skills or General Employment Permit

Employment permits are issued by the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment; the Critical Skills Employment Permit covers occupations on the critical skills list, the General Employment Permit covers most others, and both have salary and eligibility rules that change — check enterprise.gov.ie. Irish Immigration Service Delivery publishes what each stamp allows.

Healthcare is one of the most common routes into Irish employment for overseas applicants, and the CV has to show registration before anything else.

Nurses and midwives must be registered with the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Ireland (NMBI) to practise. Internationally educated nurses go through NMBI's recognition process, which may require an adaptation or an aptitude test before registration. Put your status on the first line — NMBI: General Nurse Division, registered or NMBI decision letter received; adaptation placement booked for 2026-11 — then each clinical role with ward type, bed numbers, patient ratio and specialties.

Health care assistants (HCAs) applying to the HSE and many private nursing homes are usually asked for a QQI Level 5 qualification in health service skills or an equivalent; list the award and modules, plus manual handling, infection control and Garda vetting status.

The HSE is the largest healthcare employer and recruits through its own careers site. The registered nurse resume example shows how to write clinical bullets.

If you are applying from outside Ireland, state whether you need an employment permit and when you could start, and target occupations on the critical skills list where you qualify. International students on Stamp 2 should list availability inside the term-time and holiday limits, and lead with any Irish part-time work. Graduates of Irish higher-education programmes may be eligible for Stamp 1G under the Third Level Graduate Programme — say so with the end date. The international students guide compares post-study routes across countries; the UK CV format guide covers the closely related British conventions.

IrishJobs.ie and Jobs.ie carry a large share of advertised roles, alongside LinkedIn and Indeed. The civil and public service recruit through publicjobs.ie, often with competency-based application forms rather than CVs. Recruitment agencies are common in technology, finance and pharma.

Multinationals with European headquarters in Dublin and Cork run global applicant tracking systems — Workday, SAP SuccessFactors, Oracle Taleo and Workable among them — so a single-column, text-based CV matters. Check yours with the free ATS resume checker.