Hassle BotTaking a South African CV overseas
A South African CV that works perfectly well here will often get nowhere in London, and the reason is almost never the candidate. The document answers a set of questions a British reader did not ask, and leaves out the two or three they did. Most of the fixing is mechanical.
Two pages
Three to five pages is normal in SA. In the UK people have less patience when it comes to your career history. Summarise older experience.
Two pages is the norm for an experienced professional, one page early in a career, and longer only for academic and medical CVs. Cut to the last ten to fifteen years and let everything before that compress into a line or disappear.
People ignore this one, usually on the grounds that the detail is what got them interviews at home. It was. That is the convention that differs.
Take out the personal info
Off the page entirely: ID number, photograph, date of birth, marital status, gender, race, dependants, nationality, home address, employment equity or B-BBEE status, and the POPIA consent paragraph at the bottom.
The driver’s licence goes too. “Code 08” means nothing to a British reader, and unless the job involves driving, none of that belongs.
City is enough for location, and it should carry the country — “Cape Town, South Africa”, because it might suprise you that not everyone knows Cape Town. SA is confused with South Australia and if you are going overseas - better get used to be asked if you are Australian.
It is often said that these things are illegal to ask for in the UK. That is not quite right, and the accurate version is more useful to you. The Equality Act 2010 makes age, race, sex, marital status and the rest protected characteristics, and makes discrimination in a recruitment decision unlawful. It does not, in general, ban the question. The clearest exception is section 60, which stops an employer asking about your health or disability before making an offer — and even that has carve-outs, for interview adjustments and for functions intrinsic to that role.
None of this governs what you put on your own CV. The reason to take it off is simpler. A British recruiter opening a document with a photograph, an ID number and a consent clause has registered it as foreign paperwork before reading a word.
Don’t create a super document containing your CV, ID, certificates in 1 mega PDF.
The POPIA paragraph is the clearest tell of the lot. The UK runs on GDPR and it can only cause confusion.
References go the same way. The South African habit of listing two or three referees with their phone numbers reads as oversharing, and “references available on request” is dead weight, because it is assumed.
My personal habit is to email references 15 minutes before my first interview. Its a reminder to the interviewer that the meeting is happening, and it gives them something nice to read about me just before the call. A good reference is like a TLDR of your CV.
Cup of tea and a Jammie Dodger
As British as …
A personal profile. Three to five lines at the top, more narrative than the summary we write here: what you do, how long, in what domain, with one proof point. Generic profiles about being a dynamic team player get skipped by everyone.
Right to work. Put it near the top, not at the bottom. Don’t say “Work Permit” - use the exact phrasing of the document:
British citizen, Irish passport, settled status, Skilled Worker visa, UK Ancestry visa. Employers are now required to complete a right-to-work check before you start, but recruiters will ask before your first interview. A recruiter who cannot tell from your CV, might not call at all. If you do need sponsorship, say so.
A LinkedIn URL. Expected, and read — so make sure the profile aligns with your CV - different titles or periods will raise suspicion.
A UK mobile number is worth adding if you can get one. If not add a (WA) indicator after your number. Make sure that your number in WhatsApp is the same and includes the international dialing code.
The qualification trap
In South Africa an Honours degree is a separate postgraduate year on top of a three-year Bachelor’s, sitting at NQF level 8. In the UK, “BSc (Hons)” is an undergraduate degree carrying an honours classification — the thing you get a 2:1 in. The two are not the same qualification, and writing “BSc (Hons)” for a South African Bachelor’s plus an Honours year quietly loses you a year.
Knowing that, the instinct is to reach the other way: postgraduate, near-master’s. Resist it. UK ENIC, the body that does official qualification comparisons, commonly compares a South African Honours degree to a British Bachelor’s degree with honours rather than to a master’s. It is assessed case by case — a four-year professional degree can land differently from a three-year BCom plus an Honours year — but master’s is not the default, and claiming it has risks.
Write what the qualification is and let the reader do the mapping:
BCom Honours — one-year postgraduate degree. University of Pretoria.
Drop the NQF level. It means nothing outside South Africa and it invites exactly the inflation described above. Matric becomes “National Senior Certificate”, and once you have a degree and a few years behind you remove it altogether.
If you need the comparison officially — because an employer or a university has asked for one, or because you want to defend the bachelor’s-with-honours reading rather than escape it — UK ENIC sells a Statement of Comparability. It takes around fifteen working days and costs under a hundred pounds, but check the current fee. It compares the type and level of the certificate. It is not the Visas and Nationality statement UKVI asks for, which is a separate and dearer product.
On grades: British early-career readers look for a 2:1, and a South African percentage or a cum laude means little to them. One clause of translation earns its place. Once you are an experienced hire, leave it off.
Professional bodies, - don’t take the mickey
Name yours, then name the nearest British body, and be exact about what actually connects them. That last part is where CVs go wrong, because the gap between “recognised” and “registered” is wide and easy to step over.
Chartered accountants have the strongest position. SAICA holds a reciprocal membership agreement with the ICAEW: a current CA(SA) in good standing can apply for ICAEW membership without sitting further exams, provided they keep their SAICA membership. UK audit signing rights are a separate application on top.
So the defensible line, before you have applied, is:
CA(SA) — eligible for ICAEW membership under the SAICA reciprocal agreement.
Not “equivalent to ACA”, which you are not until you have joined. And do not put ACCA beside it: the SAICA–ACCA position is far less clear than the internet suggests, and claiming a designation you do not hold could end badly.
The regulated professions are harder. A South African attorney is not a solicitor, and becomes one through the SQE assessments plus a character and suitability check — but a fully qualified foreign lawyer is excused the qualifying work experience entirely, and the SRA can grant exemptions from part or all of the SQE. Coming from a common-law jurisdiction is a realistic prospect. Health professionals need registration with the GMC, NMC or HCPC, each with its own assessments and language requirements. Pr.Eng gets your degree recognised as the educational base for CEng, and the registration is still a separate application. In each case, state the South African credential accurately and say where you got to in the process.
Traffic light not Robot
Articles becomes training contract. Exact in accountancy, where ICAEW now says training agreement. In law it is still what everyone says, though the SRA replaced it as a regulatory requirement with qualifying work experience under the SQE in 2021.
Bursary needs care rather than a find-and-replace. British usage reads a bursary as means-tested hardship funding and a scholarship as merit, so an award you actually won gets quietly downgraded by the local word. If it was competitive, call it a scholarship. If it was a bonded corporate award or a needs-based grant, do not — and if it carried a work-back obligation, then spell it out.
SARS becomes HMRC, meaning the tax authority as a concept, not a renamed employer. Drop “varsity”, “in the employ of”, “13th cheque”, and notice periods explained in South African labour-law terms.
Rands become an approximate sterling figure, described as approximate: “managed a budget of roughly £700,000”. Nobody expects a spot rate.
Employers and universities both need a clause of context. A British reader has no idea what your last company does or how big it was, and outside a handful of names the same is true of where you studied: “a JSE-listed health insurer, 12,000 staff” and “South Africa’s largest distance-learning university” each earn their space.
And British spelling throughout — organise, programme, labour. Though a computer program is still a program.
The point of communicating at all is to be understood and that has always taken time and effort. Moving abroad requires rewiring your thought processes - but it has benefits for the brave and diligent.