How to write a CV in New Zealand

NZ conventions, quickly

A New Zealand CV is shorter and plainer than many people expect, and it leaves out things other countries ask for. Tahatū, the government's career service, puts the core of it simply: keep it to two pages if you can, use a plain font such as Calibri 11, bullet points, short sentences, bold headings and plenty of white space, and don't use images.

Why leave the personal details off? Employment New Zealand reminds employers that hiring decisions must not discriminate on grounds such as sex, marital or family status, age, religious or ethical belief, or any other ground the Human Rights Act 1993 prohibits. A photo, a birth date or a marital status hands the reader exactly the information the law says shouldn't count, before they've read a word of your work. New Zealand employers don't expect them, so leaving them off costs nothing.

Spell it the New Zealand way. Organise, programme, licence (the noun), centre. A CV in American spelling reads as a template the writer didn't finish.

The structure that works

Most New Zealand CVs that get interviews follow the same order, because it is the order a busy reader wants the answers in.

The skills line

Six to ten skills is plenty, in the words the ad uses: the tools, systems, licences and methods it names. Leave out soft skills such as "team player" here, because a list can't prove them; your achievements can. Licences and tickets that matter in New Zealand, such as a full driver licence, a forklift licence, Site Safe or a current first aid certificate, belong here or in a short "Licences and certificates" line, because they often decide a screening question.

Older roles can shrink. Anything more than ten or fifteen years back, or unrelated to where you're going, can be a single line each under "Earlier roles", which keeps the page count down without leaving a hole in your history.

The profile: three lines that earn the rest

The profile sits under your name and is the paragraph most likely to be read in full. It has three jobs: say what you do, prove it once, and say what you want next. Three or four short lines; no adjectives you can't back up.

Write it last. Once the experience section is done, the profile is just your best three facts, and rewriting it to match each ad takes two minutes.

Achievements beat duties, every time

"Responsible for monthly reporting" tells them what your job description said. "Cut month-end reporting from five days to two by automating the data pulls" tells them what happens when they hire you. The formula: verb, thing, number. What did you do, to what, and what changed because of it?

If you can't remember your numbers, that's normal. Work them out from what you do know: how many customers, invoices, students, sites, patients or tickets a week; how big the team, the budget or the region; how long something took before and after you. A sensible estimate, clearly an estimate ("about 40 a day"), is fine; an invented one is not, because New Zealand is small and referees get phoned.

Where to find your numbers

Then start a wins journal, one line a week on what you did and what it changed, so the next CV writes itself. Once you're in work, Your Career in jobtracker.co.nz keeps one for you on a paid plan.

Verbs that carry weight: led, built, cut, grew, won, launched, fixed, trained, negotiated, redesigned, delivered, reduced. Verbs that carry none: assisted with, was involved in, helped, participated in, was responsible for.

Beat the software, then the human

Many New Zealand employers and recruitment agencies take applications through an applicant tracking system. Some systems can decline an application automatically, most often on a screening question such as the right to work, but the shortlist is made by people, using the system's search, filters and ratings. A recruiter searching for "payroll" or "accounts payable" finds the CVs that contain those words, so a skill you describe differently may never come up. How NZ employers actually use these systems has the detail.

Formatting the software can read

• One column, top to bottom. Two-column layouts, tables and text boxes can come out jumbled when a system pulls the text into its own fields.
• Plain headings: "Work experience", "Education", "Skills". A clever heading can't be matched to the field it belongs in.
• Nothing important in the page header or footer, including your name and contact details, because some systems skip them.
• No skills shown as pictures: star ratings, progress bars and logos carry no words for a search to find.
• Consistent dates: "March 2021 to June 2026", the same way every time.
• A real PDF or Word file, not a scan or a photo of a page, so the text can be selected and searched.

Then the human

Matching the ad's words helps a recruiter's search find you. It doesn't get you the interview. The person reading decides that, usually in a few seconds, from your profile, your most recent role and whether the achievements look like the job they need done. Stuffing in every keyword reads badly to that person. Use the ad's words where they are true of you, and leave the rest.

Tailor every application

Tahatū's advice is to update your CV for each application using information and keywords from the job ad. It doesn't mean rewriting it each time. It means ten minutes, the same way every time.

Keep one complete master CV with everything, and cut a tailored version for each application. Log which version went to which employer. When the phone rings three weeks later, you want to know exactly what they're looking at.

Whichever way you tailor, the rule is the same: never add a skill you can't talk about for five minutes. Tailoring is choosing which true things to show first, in the reader's words. It isn't inventing.

Referees: on request or listed?

Tahatū says "Referees available on request" is fine unless the job ad asks for referees, in which case include them. Have two or three ready, and if you have work experience, make one a current or former manager or supervisor.

• Ask first, every time. A referee who's been warned gives a better reference than one caught off guard on a busy afternoon.
• Don't print phone numbers on a CV you're sending to strangers. If an ad asks for referees, give names, roles and how they know you, with contact details where the form asks for them.
• Know the rule. Employment New Zealand notes that under the Privacy Act 2020 an employer can't collect information about you from people other than the referees you name without your consent.
• Spread the load. Track who you've given out and how often, because referee fatigue is real in a long hunt.

References and referees in New Zealand has the briefing script and what referees can and can't be asked.

Gaps and career breaks

A gap is only a problem when it's a mystery. One plain line closes the question before the reader asks it, and the reader moves on to your work.

• Name it, briefly: "2024 to 2025: full-time care for a family member", "2025: made redundant when the site closed; completed a project management certificate", "2023: travel and seasonal work".
• Show what you kept up. Tahatū suggests a skills-focused CV can highlight what you learned on a break, such as planning, budgeting or caregiving, and that big gaps are best explained in the cover letter.
• Health stays private. "A health matter, now resolved" is enough; you don't owe anyone a diagnosis on a CV.
• Redundancy isn't a stain. It's a decision about a role, not about you, and every hiring manager knows someone it has happened to. How to explain being made redundant in an interview has the words.

More in Returning to work after a break and How to explain a gap in your CV.

Graduates and first CVs

With little paid work behind you, the CV's job is to show you can be trusted with responsibility. That evidence exists; it's just in different places.

• Education moves up, straight after the profile: the qualification, the institution, the year, and the two or three papers or projects closest to the role.
• Part-time and holiday jobs count. Hospitality, retail and seasonal work show reliability, customer contact and working under pressure. Write them as achievements like any other job.
• Projects, clubs and volunteering go in their own section, with the same verb, thing, number: "Organised a 300-person charity quiz that raised $4,200".
• One page is fine here. A first CV that fills one strong page beats two padded ones.
• Skip "excellent communication skills". Every graduate CV says it; show it with something you ran, wrote or presented.

Student Job Search lists part-time and holiday work for students, and Getting your first job in NZ after study and Graduate programmes in New Zealand cover the rest.

Career changers

A career changer's CV has to answer the question the reader is already asking: why would someone from that world be good at this job?

• Lead with the bridge. The profile's first line names the new role and your strongest transferable proof: "Secondary teacher moving into learning design, with eight years of building courses for 150 students a year."
• Translate, don't list. Take the ad's top requirements and find where you've done each one under a different name. A nurse has done triage, risk assessment and handovers; a hospitality manager has done rostering, stock control and budgets.
• Put relevant training near the top if it's recent, with the projects you completed in it.
• Trim the old industry's jargon. Words only your old field uses make the reader work, and readers in a hurry don't.

Changing careers in New Zealand covers retraining and the first move.

Migrants and overseas experience

New Zealand readers scan for local signal. Give it to them on page one, so they don't have to guess.

• State your work rights plainly, in the header or the profile: "Open work visa, valid to March 2028" or "New Zealand resident". Employment New Zealand says employers must check your right to work before employing you, so they'll want to know early, and an unclear answer can stop an application at the first screening question.
• Explain overseas employers in a line: what they do and how big they are, such as "national retail bank, 40,000 staff, 600 branches". A reader here won't know the name.
• Translate job titles to the title a New Zealand ad would use for the same work, with the original in brackets if it helps.
• Show where your qualification sits. NZQA's International Qualification Assessment compares an overseas qualification to the New Zealand Qualifications and Credentials Framework, levels 1 to 10, for work and immigration purposes. A bachelor's degree here sits at level 7 and a master's at level 9, so "Bachelor of Engineering (assessed by NZQA at level 7)" answers the question before it's asked.
• Use a New Zealand mobile number, and New Zealand spelling.
• Find one local referee if you can: a volunteer role, a short contract or a course tutor all count.

Getting a job in NZ as a migrant goes further, including how to find that first New Zealand role.

Contracts, temping and short roles

A run of short roles looks scattered unless the CV groups it. Put temp assignments under the agency that placed you ("Temporary placements through an agency, 2024 to 2025"), then list the two or three most relevant assignments beneath it with an achievement each. Label fixed-term and contract roles as what they were, "(12 month fixed term)" or "(contract)", so a short stay reads as a finished job rather than an early exit. If you ran your own business or contracted to several clients, one entry with the clients as bullets reads better than five separate jobs.

Using AI without sounding like it

AI tools are good at tidying a sentence and poor at knowing what you did. The risks are a CV that sounds like everyone else's and, worse, one that claims things you can't back up in an interview. Use AI to shorten, reorder and suggest the ad's own words; never let it add a result, a number or a tool you didn't give it. Read every line aloud and ask whether you could talk about it for five minutes. Using AI to write job applications without sounding like a robot has a routine that works.

Your CV and your LinkedIn profile

Recruiters in New Zealand often check LinkedIn after reading a CV, and some search it before they ever see one. The two should agree: the same job titles, the same dates, the same employers. A headline that names the role you want ("Payroll Officer | Payroll and HR systems | Christchurch") does more than a generic "Open to work". The profile can carry what the CV has no room for, such as longer project descriptions, recommendations and a photo, which is normal there even though it isn't on a CV. Turn on the setting that tells recruiters you're open to roles, and keep the CV the shorter, sharper document.

Build it in the CV Builder

The free CV Builder sets all of this out for you. Fill in the form and the CV builds itself as you type, in the layout New Zealand employers expect, then download it as a PDF. There's no account, and nothing about it is kept. If you already have a CV, upload the PDF or Word file and it fills the form, and you check each field before anything goes in. It is one of three free job hunting tools that need no account.

With a free jobtracker.co.nz account you can keep your CV file, run the free keyword check against every job you save, and record which version went with each application.

Cover letters: short, specific, human

One page that names the company and the role, answers the two or three requirements the ad leads with, each with one piece of proof from your CV, and closes courteously. A letter that could be sent to any employer is read as exactly that. If your CV has a gap or a change of direction, the letter is where to explain it in two sentences. The full structure, with public-sector letters and openings that work, is in Writing a cover letter in New Zealand.

The quiet mistakes that cost interviews

• A filename like CV_final_v7_ACTUAL.docx. Send a PDF named Firstname Lastname CV.pdf.
• An email address from 2004 that seemed funny in 2004.
• Unexplained gaps. One line ("2024: family care" or "2025: made redundant in the Westport closures, retrained in project management") beats a suspicious silence.
• Claiming tools you'd fail a five-minute conversation about. New Zealand is a small market; people check.
• Sending the version tailored for one employer to another. This is a tracking failure, not a writing failure, and it's fatal.
• A profile that could describe anyone: "hard-working team player seeking a challenging role". Name the role and your proof instead.
• Typos in the employer's name, the one word they're certain to notice.
• A CV that's never been read aloud. Reading it out loud finds the clumsy sentences your eye skips.

The final check