Writing a CV in Arabic

An Arabic CV is not an English CV with the labels swapped. The sentences have to work in Arabic: job titles people actually use, bullets a supervisor would recognise, a summary that does not sound like a machine.

When to write in Arabic

Write in Arabic when the posting is in Arabic, when the office language is Arabic, or when a family business and a government desk will print the file and pass it around. Write in English when they asked for English. The Arabic CV samples exist so you can see a finished page — not so you can submit Layla’s career as your own.

Headings and direction

The page should run right to left. Headings belong in Arabic: ملخص، الخبرة العملية، التعليم، المهارات. Mixing an English “Work experience” bar into an Arabic body looks unfinished.

CV4Free can set the CV language to Arabic independently of the app language. That only changes the headings and the direction of the document. It does not translate the words you typed.

Names, cities, numbers

Write your name the way you write it on official paper. City names in Arabic (القاهرة، الكويت) unless the employer is international and the rest of the file is English. Phone numbers with a country code. Western numerals (2020، 14%) are normal in professional Arabic CVs and easier to scan than Eastern Arabic numerals mixed into a bilingual office.

Tone

Short verbal sentences beat stacked nouns. «خفّضت المواعيد الفائتة من 7٪ إلى 2٪» is clearer than a string of titles. Avoid empty praise («ديناميكي، محب للعمل تحت الضغط») unless you can point at a week when that was true.

Do not mix at random

One English job title in an otherwise Arabic file is a common accident. Pick a language and stay there. If you need both, make two CVs — one Arabic, one English — from My CVs. Do not stack them in one PDF.

Start from an Arabic sample to get the direction and headings, then replace every line.