How to convert a Vietnamese CV for Australia

What to take off a Vietnamese CV

None of the conventions below are mistakes. They are correct in Vietnam and they are what a Vietnamese recruiter expects to see. The problem is that in Australia they are either unlawful for an employer to consider or simply illegible — and an illegible resume gets set aside without anyone deciding against you.

• Photograph
• Date of birth, gender, marital status
• Place of birth and household registration
• Identity card number
• Health status and height

The photograph is the one to take seriously. Australian employers routinely discard CVs carrying a photo to protect themselves against discrimination claims — the rejection is procedural and you will never be told it happened.

What Australian recruiters expect instead

Resume and CV are used interchangeably in Australia and nobody will judge you for either. The genuine difference is length: Australian documents run longer than US ones and nobody minds.

• Referees listed directly on the resume with name, title and contact — far more common in Australia than in the UK or US
• Explicit visa status and work rights, which Australian recruiters ask about bluntly and early
• A 'key skills' block up top
• For government roles, separate responses to the listed selection criteria — a distinct document, and applications without it are discarded

Making your grades legible

Vietnamese universities grade out of 10, with classifications from Excellent down through Good and Fair. A 7.5/10 is a solid result and reads as poor to anyone assuming a percentage. Always state the scale and the classification: 'GPA 7.8/10 — Good, equivalent to a UK 2:1'.

This matters more than it sounds. A recruiter spending eight seconds on your resume will not stop to research a foreign grading scale — they will form an impression from the number in front of them and move on. Stating the raw result and its equivalence in the same line costs you six words and removes the guess entirely.

Getting your qualifications recognised

Degrees are assessed by UK ENIC for the UK and WES for North America. Vietnamese institutions are less familiar to foreign recruiters than regional peers, so a comparability statement quoted directly on the CV removes a real source of hesitation.

Start this before you start applying, not after you get an offer. Recognition and attestation run in months, and a candidate who cannot evidence their qualification when asked loses the offer to someone who can.

Making your employers legible

VinGroup, Viettel, FPT and the large banks carry limited recognition; most employers have none. Use a bracketed descriptor with sector and headcount after every employer name.

The failure mode is invisible: an Australian recruiter who cannot size your employer does not investigate, they assume it was small, and your resume quietly loses to a candidate whose last job was at a company they had heard of. Six words in brackets after the employer name is the entire fix.

Your name on the application

Vietnamese names run family name, middle name, given name, and Vietnamese people are normally addressed by the *given* name — the last element. Western recruiters, reading left to right, will address you by your family name and think they are being friendly. Putting your given name first on the CV, or marking it clearly, prevents an entire process of being called the wrong thing.

Consistency is the actual requirement. Your resume, your LinkedIn, your application forms and your right-to-work documents must all carry the same name in the same order, because a mismatch surfaces at exactly the worst moment — the pre-employment check after you have already resigned from your current job.

Proving your English

English is not an official language and proficiency varies widely, so a foreign recruiter treats it as an open question until you close it. Put an IELTS or TOEFL score on the CV, and add any documented English-language working alongside it.

Whatever your actual level, put the evidence where it can be seen. Recruiters are pattern-matching under time pressure and will resolve an unanswered question in the direction that costs them least, which is not you.

Work authorisation in Australia

Australian recruiters ask about visa status in the first minute of the first call, without hedging, and expect a direct answer. Vagueness here is fatal because it reads as concealment rather than uncertainty.

Rules change with every budget cycle. Check the current position at immi.homeaffairs.gov.au rather than relying on any guide, including this one.

What to lead with

Converting a resume is mostly subtraction, which can leave people feeling they have been asked to erase where they came from. They have not. These are genuine advantages Vietnamese candidates bring, and they belong at the top of the document rather than buried:

• Fast-growing manufacturing and technology sectors with genuine export-market exposure
• Strong mathematics and engineering education
• Established outsourced software delivery for Japanese, US and European clients, which is direct evidence of working across cultures and timezones

Quoted in Australian dollars, and often stated as a package including superannuation — always clarify whether a figure is base or 'package', because the difference is material. Adverts show ranges more often than in the UK.

Frequently asked questions