Guide
CVs in Egypt and the Gulf
A4, a reachable phone, and often a photo. Arabic or English depends on the employer — not on the website.
Hiring in Cairo, Alexandria, Kuwait City, Riyadh or Dubai is not the same as hiring in London. The file is still a CV. The expectations around paper, photo, language and contact details are not.
Paper and length
Use A4. Letter paper looks like a US export and prints badly. One page is respectable; two is fine for a longer career. Keep margins readable.
Photo
A photo is often expected in Egypt and the Gulf, especially in retail, hospitality, administration and many office roles. It is a head-and-shoulders picture, not a studio poster. You can still skip it — some international firms and online forms do not want one.
CV4Free will not put a photo on every look. Meridian and Essential stay typographic. Graduate, Executive and Modern can show a photo. Add yours in the builder if the market expects it.
Language
Write in the language of the posting.
- Government, local SMEs, and many Arabic-first offices: Arabic. See the Arabic operations sample and the Kuwait office sample.
- Multinationals, banks, and some mall retailers: English. See the Cairo retail sample and the Kuwait finance sample.
Do not write a paragraph in Arabic and the job titles in English unless that is how the company itself writes. Pick one.
Contact details
City is enough — Cairo, Giza, Kuwait City. Add a phone with the country code (`+20`, `+965`, `+966`, `+971`). An email you actually open. LinkedIn if you have a real profile; skip it if you do not.
Leave off: national ID, full street address, religion, marital status, and your parents’ names. Older advice still asks for those. Most serious employers do not need them on the CV.
Dates and numbers
Write years the employer will recognise. Western numerals are fine in an Arabic CV and common in Gulf offices. Spell out results you can defend — a missed-slot rate, a close in six days — rather than “many successes”.
Make yours
Free. No account. A new CV on this device — not the sample.
This is a sample CV for a fictional person. It is not your CV. Starting from it creates a new copy in My CVs — you still need to replace the details.