CV Format in India

Length and structure

Our guide on CV length says two pages for almost everybody and names no market. This guide used to say two to three pages for India, which is the same site answering one question two ways, so here is the position rather than a third answer. A third page is tolerated here in a way it is not in the UK and will not usually be held against you. That is tolerance, not benefit.

The reason to stay near two pages is unchanged by the border and is set out in the length guide instead of being repeated here: the first pass a reader gives a CV is short, and material on a third page is being skimmed past rather than read. Use the extra page if the record genuinely needs it — freshers listing projects and coursework often do not, and a padded three pages reads as padding in any market.

• Reverse chronological order is the standard for experienced candidates.
• For freshers, education comes first, followed by projects, internships and technical skills.
• A clear technical skills block is expected in engineering and IT roles.
• Keep one consistent date format throughout, with month and year rather than year alone.

Personal details: two audiences, one decision

Traditional Indian CVs often include date of birth, father's name, marital status, gender and sometimes a photograph. Many Indian employers still expect them.

What large international employers want is a weaker claim than this guide used to make, so here it is properly stated: the international convention is to leave these details off, and a CV built to that convention is the safer document when you cannot tell who is reading. We have no measurement of how many multinational employers actively object to the traditional block, or of how many anonymise applications before a hiring manager sees them, and we are not going to invent either figure. What we can say is that nothing in that block helps a shortlisting decision, and that every item in it is one a reader can form an impression from before reading a line of your experience.

A reasonable rule: for Indian public sector, traditional corporates and many family businesses, include what the advert or application form asks for and no more. For multinationals, technology companies and any international application, include only name, phone, email, city and a professional profile link.

Identity numbers: the one item to keep off entirely

Aadhaar and PAN appear on a surprising number of Indian CVs, usually carried over from a form that genuinely required one. Our position, stated as a position: keep both off the CV, and supply them on the specific form that needs them — a background check, an offer, a payroll onboarding pack — where you know who is receiving the document and why.

The reasoning is not about recruitment at all. A CV is the most widely copied document in a job search: it is emailed, forwarded between a recruiter and an employer, uploaded to portals, and saved in folders by people you will never meet. Nothing in that chain needs a national identity number, so the number earns nothing by being there while travelling further than anything else you own. We have no measurement of how often this causes harm and are not claiming one — this is a judgement about an asymmetry, not a finding.

The same logic applies to anything else on a CV that identifies a person rather than describing their work: a full residential address, a scanned signature, a family member's name, or a passport or licence number. The privacy-conscious version of each is the same move — give the part a recruiter needs, hold back the part only a bureaucracy needs.

Education and marks

Indian education is commonly reported as a percentage or CGPA, and both are understood domestically. For international applications, give the figure with its scale — "CGPA 8.4 / 10" or "First Class with Distinction (76%)" — because a bare number is not interpretable abroad.

Listing Class X and Class XII results is conventional in India and is worth including early in a career. It can be dropped once you have several years of work experience, and is generally unnecessary for international applications.

Name the university as well as the college, since the college alone is often not recognisable outside India.

Notice period and current CTC

Indian recruitment commonly asks for notice period, and it is genuinely useful to state — it affects scheduling, the answer is a fact, and you will be asked for it anyway.

Current compensation is a different kind of question and the honest answer here is that we are giving you a position, not reporting a trend. It is frequently requested in Indian recruitment. We have no measurement of whether that is becoming more or less common, so this guide no longer says it is "increasingly resisted" — it simply says what we think you should do: leave it off the CV and have the conversation instead. A figure printed on a document anchors a negotiation before you have heard what the role pays, and unlike notice period it tells a reader nothing about whether you can do the job.

If an application form requires it, fill in the form. Answering a question you were asked is a different situation from volunteering the answer on a document that will be read by people who did not ask.

Language and formatting

• Avoid the very formal register that appears on some traditional CVs. "I hereby declare that the above information is true" and a signature block are no longer expected by most employers.
• Keep a consistent date format throughout.
• Use a single column. Large employers here commonly recruit through a portal that parses your file, and we have no figure for how many — but a single column is the layout least likely to be read out of order whether or not a parser is involved, so the decision does not depend on the number. Our ATS guide explains what actually breaks.
• State languages with a level rather than "known" — the CEFR scale reads well internationally.