Why You Should Avoid Europass
Nigerian HR professionals generally dislike the Europass CV format because it wastes massive amounts of space, creates unnecessarily long documents, and is difficult for many local Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) to parse correctly due to its table-heavy left column.
I don’t know who went to Nigerian universities and convinced an entire generation of graduates that the Europass format is the standard. It is not.
The Spacing Problem
Europass puts the headers in a massive left-hand column and squishes your actual experience into the right side. It turns a 1-page CV into 3 pages of mostly blank white space.
When I am reviewing 500 applications for a Management Trainee role at Dangote, I want to see your skills immediately. I don’t want to scroll past acres of empty space.
It’s Not ATS Friendly
Furthermore, the Europass format uses underlying tables for that layout. As I’ve mentioned in other posts, ATS robots hate tables. They will chew up your text and spit out gibberish.
Unless you are applying for a specific academic role in Europe that explicitly demands the Europass format, drop it. Use a standard, full-width, single-column text format.