How to convert an Indonesian CV for Australia

What to take off an Indonesian CV

None of the conventions below are mistakes. They are correct in Indonesia and they are what an Indonesian 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 and place of birth, religion, marital status
• KTP identity number
• Height, weight and blood type where included
• Full home address

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

Indonesian universities award an IPK — a grade point average out of 4.00 — which converts cleanly for the US and Canada and needs a stated equivalence for the UK, Ireland and Australia. Cum laude is used in Indonesia and is worth spelling out with the IPK beside it.

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

Indonesian degrees are assessed by UK ENIC for the UK and by WES or a comparable evaluator for North America. Professional licensing does not transfer; where you hold an Indonesian professional certification, name the issuing body and what it covers rather than assuming the acronym travels.

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

Gojek, Tokopedia, Pertamina and the largest banks carry some international recognition; most employers do not. Describe the company in six words in brackets after the name, with headcount or revenue where you can.

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

Many Indonesians have a single legal name with no surname, and Western application forms almost always demand both. The practical solution recruiters accept is to repeat the single name in both fields or to use the family name where one exists, then keep that identical across every document — the CV, the application, the visa paperwork and the eventual contract.

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, so proficiency is genuinely uncertain to a foreign recruiter and cannot be left implicit. State your IELTS or TOEFL score directly on the CV. If you have worked in English day to day, say that too — 'worked in English with the Singapore and Sydney teams' is stronger evidence than a test score alone.

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 Indonesian candidates bring, and they belong at the top of the document rather than buried:

• Experience in one of the world's largest and fastest-growing consumer markets, which is directly relevant to any employer with Southeast Asian ambitions
• Regional technology sector experience that scaled quickly, meaning growth-stage exposure most Western candidates lack
• Multilingual working — Bahasa Indonesia plus regional languages plus English — which is a stated asset in international teams

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