My most important, yet uninspiring, CV

The CV I am drafting ahead of my citizenship application appointment in October is definitely not intended to land me an out-of-this-world job. It might barely be good enough to set me apart from the crowd in terms of showcasing my skills other than how not to write a CV applying for a job. And while CVs usually should be embellished to within a whisker of containing a lie, in this case it is not.

One slight advantage of following my wife in naturalising, is that the format to follow that is accepted by MA35 in relation to my application is no longer apparently a secret. Which is useful, because Uncle Google is not necessarily your friend – it returns a lot of hits for Einbürgerung in Germany and little about Austria. The Auslaender Forum also seems to struggle to provide answers.

The main difference is that ultimately it is a timeline of where you lived (in terms of in Austria or not), worked and were educated (also in part to perhaps cross-check language skills claimed to have been acquired). If anything it serves as a checklist for allowing MA35 to cross-check your time spent in Austria, and that it ties in with your supporting documentation (or the other way round). A career is reduced to job title, company, address and “to” and “from” for each position held. Stays abroad in foreign countries only become interesting if you were there long enough to need to have a criminal record check done (6 months or so). Volunteering is worth including in terms of whether your application hints on your degree of integration.

The itinerant globetrotter who finally settles down in Austria after many years circumnavigating the globe via all sorts of exciting ports of call might struggle if they have provide the necessary documentation from employers long since taken over, get criminal record statements from countries where record-keeping might not be up to Austrian standards. And of course in exotic climes with exotic languages the bills for the sworn translations might rack up quite considerably.

I never thought a life starting its fifth decade could be reduced to a well-spaced single side of paper. The Lebenslauf seems more of a sprint than a run.

2 Replies to “My most important, yet uninspiring, CV”

  1. I lived for a time in South Africa and worked for the ÖED in Zimbabwe. It’s getting a criminal record check from these two countries that makes me pause when thinking about applying for Austrian citizenship…..

    1. I knew someone with a similar issue who was able to get round the lack of records only because a contact at a government ministry was able to confirm the non-existence of a comparable document. Another had problems regarding sworn translations into German from “exotic” languages – and had to pay twice first into English and then from English into German… Not ideal!

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