The Photo Question Is Geography, Not Preference
There is no global rule here, and advice that gives you one is advice written for a single market. Send a photo-free CV to a Munich employer and you look slightly under-dressed. Send the same CV with a photo to a London recruiter and it may come back with a request to resend. Both reactions are normal in their own market.
So the only useful version of this page is a map.
| Market | Photo on a CV | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|
| Germany, Austria, Switzerland | Conventional | The Bewerbungsfoto is a whole professional category. Legally optional — see below — but widely included |
| France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Greece | Common | Unremarkable either way; a well-made photo is a small plus, a bad one is a real minus |
| Belgium, Netherlands, Nordics | Optional | Increasingly skipped, especially in tech and at larger employers running structured hiring |
| Japan, South Korea, China | Expected, often mandatory | In Japan the rirekisho photo is specified down to dimensions — 4cm × 3cm, taken within the last three months, plain white or light-blue background |
| Middle East, much of Latin America, parts of Africa and South Asia | Common | Often paired with nationality and date of birth in a personal-details block |
| UK and Ireland | Avoid | Recruiters are trained to screen without it; some agencies strip photos before sending you to a client |
| US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand | Avoid | Anti-discrimination exposure means many employers won’t retain a CV carrying a photo at all |
Germany: Conventional, But Not Required
Germany is worth pulling out, because it’s the market people most often get wrong in both directions. Since the General Equal Treatment Act (AGG) came into force in 2006, an employer cannot demand a photo and cannot treat an application as incomplete for lacking one. A Lebenslauf with no picture is a complete application, full stop.
In practice the convention has outlived the legal requirement it never had. German recruiters routinely see both, and a growing number of employers — public-sector bodies especially — now run anonymised screening that removes the photo, name and age before anyone reads the file.
What that means for you: include one if you have a good one, leave it off if you don’t, and don’t let anybody tell you the omission will cost you the application. It legally can’t.
What the Photo Itself Has to Do
A CV photo is not a portrait, a profile picture or a personality statement. It’s an identification image with a professional register, and the markets that expect one tend to be specific about it.
A CV photo that works in any market that wants one
- Head and shoulders, centred, eyes level with the lens
- Plain background — white, light grey or soft blue; no doorways, bookshelves or bedrooms
- Even, frontal light with no hard shadow across one side of the face
- Business dress matching the market you’re applying into, not the one you live in
- Recent: within the last year, and within three months for Japanese applications
- Portrait crop around 3:4, exported at 300 dpi if the CV may be printed
- Under about 500 KB, so the finished PDF still clears portal upload limits
Consistency helps more than polish. If your LinkedIn picture and your CV picture are visibly the same person photographed on the same day, a recruiter cross-checking you finds what they expect.
Name the two versions differently
Keep the photo and no-photo versions of your CV under distinct file names — Lastname-CV-DE.pdf and Lastname-CV-UK.pdf rather than two files both called CV.pdf. The single most common accident in a multi-market job search is attaching the wrong one, and it’s invisible to you until it isn’t.
The One Situation Where a Photo Clearly Costs You
If you are applying across several markets with one document, the photo version is the riskier default. A CV with a photo is mildly unexpected in London and genuinely unwelcome in Toronto; a CV without one is merely slightly plain in Madrid. The asymmetry points one way.
The same logic applies to an international recruitment agency. Agencies reformat candidate CVs before presenting them to clients, and a photo is often the first thing stripped — which means you’ve spent layout space on something the end reader will never see. Our Word CV templates cover that reformatting workflow in more detail.
Anonymised Screening Is Quietly Changing the Answer
A trend worth factoring in: a growing number of European employers — public bodies first, large private employers increasingly — run anonymised first-round screening. Name, age, address and photo are stripped before a human sees anything, and the shortlist is built from experience and qualifications alone.
Where that’s in place, your photo is simply deleted on the way in. It costs you nothing and gains you nothing. The practical implication isn’t “never include one” — it’s that the photo should never be carrying weight the rest of the CV doesn’t. If your document relies on the picture to feel complete, it will feel incomplete to a meaningful share of the people reading it.
A good test: delete the image and look at the page. If the layout collapses into something obviously missing a piece, the design is leaning on the photo. All six templates here close up cleanly for exactly that reason.
Getting the Photo Taken, and What It Should Cost
In markets where a CV photo is conventional, there’s usually a local professional norm attached to it. German Bewerbungsfotos are a genuine studio category with a recognisable look — even lighting, neutral background, a particular register of expression. A recruiter in Hamburg can tell a studio photo from a cropped holiday snap instantly, and the gap between them is more visible than the gap between a good studio photo and a great one.
That said, the baseline is achievable without a studio:
- A window and a blank wall. Stand a couple of metres from a plain wall, face a window, have someone else take the photo at eye level on a modern phone. No flash, no portrait-mode blur.
- Shoot more than you think. Twenty frames, pick one. Expression is the variable that matters and it’s the one you can’t direct from inside your own face.
- Crop deliberately. Head and upper shoulders, with a little space above the head — not a tight crop that clips your hair, and not so wide you become small in the frame.
- Don’t retouch. Correct the exposure, leave the face alone. A visibly smoothed photo reads worse than an ordinary one.
If you’re applying into Germany, Austria or Japan specifically, and the role matters, a studio sitting is cheap relative to what it’s for and lands you squarely inside the local convention. Anywhere else, a careful phone photo is genuinely fine.
Choosing Among the Six
These six have a real photo block designed into the layout, not an image dropped on top of a text header. Oxford is the most formal of the set — a large serif name beside a portrait, which suits senior, academic and client-facing applications across Europe. Lima and Sienna keep the image small next to a labelled detail column, close to the restrained German Lebenslauf convention. Berlin is the most compact and works well for graduate and placement applications. Denali and Kyoto build the photo into a full-height colour panel — strong for creative, media and marketing roles, and too much for a public-sector or legal application.
All six also read correctly with the image removed, so you can run a photo and a no-photo version of the same CV without redesigning anything.
Wensa’s templates are designed by our founder and product design team — Artur Lopato has 9+ years of experience designing digital products. Every Wensa template is shaped around what hiring managers and recruiters actually look for when scanning a CV in seconds — which is why the photo sits in a fixed block beside your details rather than over the text a parser needs to read.
If you’re applying into the United States rather than out of it, the calculation reverses and the research behind it is worth reading — see our resume templates with photo.
FAQ — CV Templates With a Photo
Which countries expect a photo on a CV?
Germany, Austria and Switzerland by convention; France, Spain, Italy and Portugal commonly; Japan, South Korea and China as a near-requirement; much of the Middle East, Latin America and South Asia routinely. The UK, Ireland, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand all expect no photo.
Is a photo legally required on a German CV?
No. Under the General Equal Treatment Act of 2006, a German employer cannot require a photo or treat an application as incomplete without one. The convention persists, but it has no legal force behind it, and anonymised screening that removes the photo is increasingly common.
What size should a CV photo be?
A portrait crop near 3:4 works everywhere. Japan is the exception with a specified 4cm × 3cm image taken within the last three months. Export at 300 dpi if the CV might be printed, and keep the file under roughly 500 KB so the PDF stays within upload limits.
Should I use a photo if I’m applying to several countries at once?
Default to no photo for a single multi-market document. A photo-free CV is mildly plain in markets that expect one; a CV with a photo is actively unwelcome in several that don’t. If a specific market matters enough, make a second version rather than compromising on one file.
What if the employer uses anonymised screening?
Your photo is removed before anyone reads the CV, so it neither helps nor hurts. The real lesson is that your CV has to work without the image — if deleting the photo leaves an obvious hole in the layout, the design is leaning on it too heavily.
Do I need a professional photographer for a CV photo?
Not usually. A phone, a window, a plain wall and someone else taking it at eye level gets you to a perfectly good result. The exception is Germany, Austria and Japan, where the studio Bewerbungsfoto look is a recognisable local standard and a sitting is inexpensive relative to what it’s for.
Should I retouch a CV photo?
Correct the exposure and nothing else. Visible smoothing or reshaping reads worse than an ordinary unedited photo, and a reader who notices it has been given a reason to doubt the rest of the document.
Can I use my LinkedIn photo on my CV?
Yes, and ideally you should — a recruiter cross-checking you should find the same person photographed in a recognisably similar way. What doesn’t work is the reverse: a casual LinkedIn photo pulled onto a formal CV where the register visibly doesn’t match the document around it.
Can a photo stop my CV from parsing correctly?
It can if the image sits over text or inside a page header. These templates avoid both by keeping the photo in a fixed block. Test the actual file before a high-stakes application rather than assuming.
Do recruitment agencies keep the photo?
Often not. Agencies reformat CVs into their own house template before sending them to a client, and the photo is commonly one of the first things dropped. If you’re applying mainly through agencies, the photo is doing less work than you think.
