You’re new to the Australian market

Just arrived, or coming home after years abroad. The conventions here are specific.

Your experience is not in question. What is in question is whether an Australian reader can place it. A document built for London, Singapore, Dubai or New York carries assumptions that do not travel — about length, about what belongs at the top, and about how much you are expected to claim for yourself.

Returning Australians hit the same wall from the other side. Ten years away is long enough for the local conventions to have moved without you.


What is actually different here

Small differences, but they are the ones a local reader notices immediately.

Length and format

Australian executive resumes run three to seven pages — longer than the one-page American convention and structured differently from the European CV. No photograph, no date of birth, no marital status. Including them marks the document as foreign before a word is read.

Scale needs translating

A business that is large in Australia may be mid-sized where you were. The reverse is also true, and both cost you. Give the numbers in local terms — revenue, headcount, market position — rather than assuming the reader knows the company or the market you came from.

Confidence, calibrated

Australian readers are unforgiving about self-promotion that outruns evidence, and equally unforgiving about undersell. The register sits between the American and the British, and getting it wrong is the most common reason a strong international candidate reads badly here.

This is what the local format looks like

Australian executive resumes we have written. Click any one to read it in full.

General counsel resume sample
Medical sales executive resume sample
HR executive resume sample

Written here, by writers who are from here

Send us your current CV and we will tell you free how it reads to an Australian recruiter.


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Three things worth knowing early


  • Say something about your right to work

    If you hold citizenship, permanent residency or a visa with full work rights, put one short line near the top. Recruiters screening a large field will pass over anything that looks like it might come with complications, and silence reads as a complication.

  • Local reference points do a lot of work

    Naming an Australian client, regulator, partner or market you have dealt with — even from offshore — gives the reader something familiar to anchor to. It converts an unknown quantity into a known one faster than any amount of description.

  • Your network here is smaller than you think

    A significant share of executive appointments here are never advertised. Arriving without a local network means the advertised market is your main channel at first, which makes the document itself carry more weight than it would at home.

What this leads to

New to the market here, this is the timeline you can plan around.


5 daysFirst draft, after your branding sessionDelivery
2 weeksFinalised, polished documents in your handsDelivery
6 weeksMost clients report being in a new role, from receiving their documentsClient reported
Under 3%Clients who have invoked the rework guarantee or asked for a refundFive years, measured

Clients self-report salary increases ranging from $12,000 to $160,000 a year. They also tell us interview invitations pick up noticeably — we have not measured that comprehensively, so we will not put a number on it. The guarantee figure covers five years of engagements and is counted directly; the rest is what clients report back to us.

Get the whole set right at once

Resume, cover letter and LinkedIn, all speaking to an Australian audience.


Your LinkedIn profile matters more here than it did wherever you have come from, because it is often the only thing a local contact can check. If the resume says Australia and the profile still says elsewhere, the inconsistency is what gets noticed.


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