Should your CV be in Dutch? Here’s how to decide.

Not every Dutch employer expects a Dutch CV. International corporates, most tech companies, and any vacancy that explicitly lists English as the working language are usually fine with an English CV, and forcing a Dutch version there adds risk without adding anything. The question is who’s reading it, not politeness.

Let the vacancy answer the question

Before agonising over it, look at the evidence in front of you. The language of the posting is the single most reliable signal you have.

• Vacancy written in English — apply in English. Sending Dutch here can even read as a misunderstanding of the team you would be joining.
• Vacancy written in Dutch — that is your answer. Applying in English is possible, but you are asking the reader to make an allowance for you on the first impression.
• Vacancy in Dutch, but the company is visibly international — check the careers page and the team’s LinkedIn. If half the team posts in English, an English CV with a short Dutch cover note is a reasonable middle path.
• Role is client-facing in a Dutch-speaking market — the language is part of the job, and your CV is the first evidence either way.

Dutch SMEs, public sector roles, and anything client-facing on a Dutch-speaking team are a different story from the international corporates. There, a Dutch CV is often the unspoken expectation, and skipping it can read as a mismatch before anyone’s assessed your experience.

The honest B2 test

If you’re genuinely comfortable writing in Dutch, B2 or higher, write it yourself and have someone fluent review it. If you’re not there yet, a machine-translated CV is often worse than an honest English one: a native reader catches stiff, word-for-word phrasing in seconds, and it undercuts the very language skills you’re trying to show.

A useful test before you commit: could you handle a fifteen-minute phone screen in Dutch, unprepared? If the honest answer is no, a flawless Dutch CV sets up a conversation you cannot carry, and that gap is more damaging than applying in English would have been.

Register: “u” and “je”

Everyday Dutch is casual, first names and “je” within a sentence of meeting someone, but a CV and its cover letter stay in the formal “u,” consistently. Switching between the two, even by accident, reads as a translation done in a hurry.

Phrases that don’t survive the trip

“Responsible for” and “results-driven” already sound a little inflated in English; translated literally into Dutch, a language that leans understated in business writing, they land even further off.

• “Results-driven professional” → translated word for word this reads as filler. Drop it and state the result instead.
• “Responsible for a team of 10” → “Gaf leiding aan een team van 10” — a verb, not a status.
• “Spearheaded”, “championed”, “owned the vision for” → there is no natural Dutch equivalent that does not sound slightly absurd. Say what you started, led, or built.
• “Dear Sir/Madam” → “Geachte heer/mevrouw” is correct, but a name is better. Dutch hiring teams are small and usually findable.

Say what you changed, in plain terms. The same advice that applies in English applies here too, only the tolerance for inflation is lower.

The middle path

If you are somewhere between the two, you do not have to choose all or nothing. An English CV with a short, carefully checked Dutch cover note shows the effort and the direction of travel without pretending to fluency you do not have. Adding a single honest line — Nederlands: B1, actief aan het leren — does more for you than a full Dutch CV that someone else wrote.

For the mechanics and formatting conventions, Expatica’s guide to Dutch CVs is a solid reference, and Make It in the North’s CV guide covers conventions specific to the Dutch market. Neither replaces a native speaker’s eye on your own draft, but both are a solid start.