How to write a CV in Norway

How to write a CV in the right order

A Norwegian CV usually follows a fixed order, and that works in your favour. The reader knows where to look and finds the most important things quickly. Work experience and education are listed in reverse chronological order, with the most recent first.

If you are a recent graduate or have little experience, you can put education above work experience. Whatever your situation, the summary at the top matters more than most people think, so have a look at our guide to writing a CV summary when you get there.

• Name and contact details: phone, email, the town you live in and ideally a link to your LinkedIn profile.
• Summary: three to five sentences about who you are and what you can do.
• Work experience: job title, employer, location and dates, with two to five bullet points per job.
• Education: degree, institution and year. Include relevant courses or projects if you are early in your career.
• Courses and certificates: for example a forklift certificate, a professional authorisation or a trade certificate.
• Skills and languages: tools, systems and your level in each language, including Norwegian.
• Volunteering and positions of trust, if relevant.
• References: name, role and phone number, or “available on request”.

What to include, and what to leave out

A good CV contains what the employer needs to assess you, and nothing more. Many Norwegian CVs still include a photo, date of birth and full address, but none of these is required.

Photos are common in Norway but optional. If you include one, choose a neutral, well lit portrait rather than a holiday snap. You do not need to give your date of birth or age, and employers should not take age into account anyway. You can also replace your full street address with just the town, such as “Bergen” or “Stavanger”.

• Include: a driving licence if the job requires one, certificates, authorisations and relevant IT systems.
• Include: your right to work in Norway if it might otherwise be unclear, for example “Permanent residence permit” if you are not an EU/EEA citizen.
• Leave out: marital status, number of children, religion, national identity number and health information.
• Leave out: hobbies that say nothing about you at work. “Reading and fitness” adds little, while “coach a youth football team two evenings a week” shows responsibility.

Write results, not just duties

The most common weakness in a CV is bullet points that only describe what the job involved. A recruiter already has a rough idea of what a shop assistant or an accountant does. What they want to know is how you did it, and what improved because you were there.

Start each bullet with a strong verb in the past tense, such as led, built, improved, reduced, sold, trained or introduced. Then say what you did and finish with the result. If you do not have figures, show the scope: how many, how often, for whom or how much responsibility. Make sure everything is accurate. A number you cannot explain in an interview does more harm than good.

• Weak: “Responsible for customer service.” Better: “Handled 30 to 40 enquiries a day by phone and chat, and resolved most of them without passing them on.”
• Weak: “Worked with social media.” Better: “Planned and published content for three shops on Instagram and Facebook, and doubled the number of followers within a year.”
• Weak: “In charge of the stockroom.” Better: “Introduced a new stocktaking routine that cut the monthly count from two days to one.”
• Weak: “Training new staff.” Better: “Trained eight new employees in the till system and routines, and wrote a checklist the department still uses.”

Tailor your CV to each job

A good CV is not one document you send to everyone. It is a starting point you adjust for each application. Read the ad carefully, and note which requirements come first and which words the employer uses to describe the tasks.

Then move the most relevant experience higher up, and use the same words as the ad where they match what you have actually done. If the ad asks for “project management experience”, that phrase should appear in your CV if you have that experience, not just “coordinated tasks”. This helps both the person reading and the applicant tracking system. Read more in our guide to an ATS-friendly CV.

It does not have to take long. Often it is enough to rewrite the summary, reorder a few bullet points and remove what is not relevant to this particular job. Write the CV in the language of the ad: Norwegian for a Norwegian ad if you work in Norwegian, English for an English ad.

CV template and layout: keep it simple

Many people hunt for a fancy CV template, but the simplest layout usually works best. One column, clear headings, plenty of white space and an easy to read font such as Calibri, Arial or Inter in size 10 to 12 make the CV easy to skim. Use colour sparingly and let the content carry the document.

For most people one to two pages is enough. With a short career, one page is fine. See how long a CV should be for more advice on length.

Send your CV as a PDF unless the ad asks for something else, so it looks the same on every screen. Create the PDF from Word or Google Docs so the text can be selected and read by systems. Give the file a clear name, such as “Kari-Nordmann-CV.pdf”, not “CV_final_v3.pdf”.

Common CV mistakes

Most mistakes are easy to fix once you know what to look for. Read your CV out loud, or ask someone else to read it, before you send it.

• Typos and inconsistent formatting, such as dates written in different styles.
• An informal email address. Your first and last name works best.
• Long paragraphs instead of short bullet points.
• Qualities with no evidence, like “structured, solution oriented and a team player”. Show it with an example instead.
• Too much space for jobs from long ago and too little for recent years.
• Unexplained periods without work. Our guide to gaps in your CV shows how to present them honestly.
• Exaggeration. Anything in your CV can come up in the interview, and the employer may call your references.

Get help writing your CV

Once you have a thorough CV with everything you have done, the next step is tailoring it to each job. In Selja you can paste a job ad and get a professional, ATS-friendly CV and cover letter tailored to the job in under a minute. It uses only your own details, so you will not end up with made up results.

Want to know where you stand first? With CV score you get an honest assessment of your whole CV, the way a recruiter reads it, with concrete points to improve. Your first assessment is free.