Your CV, the Australian way
Updated 29 October 2026
Why your Irish CV won't land
Your Irish CV isn't bad, it's just answering questions Melbourne schools aren't asking. A school reading your file wants to know three things in the first ten seconds: can this person legally teach here, can I check them out quickly, and will they cope with my classrooms. An Irish CV usually buries all three.
So the Australian version isn't a redesign, it's a reorder. Here's the shape.
The rules
- Two pages. No more. Schools shortlist in minutes, not hours.
- Registration up top. Your VIT status and registration number (or "VIT application lodged, [month]") go directly under your name, with your work-rights status next to it. This is the first thing checked and the last thing you want them hunting for.
- Referees up top too, with phone numbers. Two recent referees who've seen you teach, with mobile numbers and email. Australian schools ring referees, they don't just email, so warn your referees and give them a heads-up about the time difference.
- No photo, no date of birth, no marital status. Australian CVs leave these off, and schools don't want them on file.
- Contact details that work from Australia. Your number in international format (+353...), and say you're on WhatsApp.
Translate the Irish bits
A Melbourne school won't know what Junior Infants are. Translate as you go, keeping the Irish term in brackets if you like:
- Junior and Senior Infants roughly map to Foundation (Prep) and Year 1. Victorian primary runs Foundation to Year 6, secondary Years 7 to 12.
- Post-primary is "secondary" here. The Leaving Certificate is closest to VCE, the Victorian Certificate of Education.
- Spell out Irish programmes and acronyms (SET, DEIS, Droichead) in one plain phrase, for example "special education teaching role across six class groups".
What to actually write
Under each role, two or three bullet points that show the classroom, not the duty statement. "Taught 28 students across the full ability range, including five with additional needs" beats "responsible for delivering the curriculum". Numbers, year levels, subjects, anything you led. Melbourne schools also care about extras Irish schools undersell: coaching a team, running a musical, camps and excursions. Put them in.
If you're applying to Victorian government schools directly, job ads often ask for written responses to key selection criteria as well. That's a separate document, not your CV, and we help our registered teachers with it when a specific role comes up.
The builder
We built a free CV builder in exactly this format. Fill in your details, watch the CV take shape beside you, and save it as a PDF. It runs in your browser, so nothing you type is uploaded anywhere, and it won't let you add a photo or a date of birth because the format simply doesn't have room for mistakes like that.
And if you'd rather we just did it: register, send us whatever CV you have, and we'll get it into shape with you before a school ever sees it. That's part of the service, and it costs you nothing.