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.

Dutch SMEs, public sector roles, and anything client-facing on a Dutch-speaking team are a different story. There, a Dutch CV is often the unspoken expectation, and skipping it can read as a mismatch before anyone's assessed your experience. If the vacancy itself is written in Dutch, that's usually your answer.

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.

Watch the register too. 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.

Skip the direct translations 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. Say what you changed, in plain terms, the same advice that applies in English applies here too.

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.