All guidesBy SuitedCV TeamUpdated
Hebrew or English? Choosing your CV language in Israel
Israeli job seekers hit this question early and usually answer it once, badly, then live with the consequences. The right answer depends on who reads the CV first, and for a lot of candidates it is genuinely both — which is a maintenance problem more than a language one.
Start with who reads it first
The language question is really a question about the first reader, and the first reader is usually a recruiter rather than the hiring manager.
- Israeli tech companies and multinationals. English is the working language of the engineering organisation, job posts are frequently in English, and an English CV is expected. Sending Hebrew here is not wrong, but it can read as less international.
- Local and traditional employers. Retail, healthcare, education, government, municipalities, most non-tech SMBs — Hebrew, plainly. An English CV to a Hebrew-speaking HR department creates work for the reader.
- Public sector and tenders. Hebrew, and often to a prescribed structure.
- Roles abroad, or Israeli companies hiring for overseas teams. English, written for that market's conventions rather than Israeli ones.
Why most people need both
A typical Israeli job hunt is not confined to one of the categories above. You apply to a multinational on Monday and a local company on Wednesday. Keeping one language means either sending the wrong one sometimes, or rewriting from scratch each time.
The usual outcome is two documents that drift. You update a job title in the English version and forget the Hebrew one, and three weeks later the Hebrew CV still lists a role you left. This is the actual cost of the two-language problem, and it has nothing to do with translation quality.
Translation is not the hard part — idiom is
Machine-translating an English CV into Hebrew produces text that is grammatically fine and professionally wrong. Israeli job-market vocabulary has its own conventions: how military service is described, how seniority is phrased, which English technical terms stay in English inside a Hebrew sentence.
Right-to-left layout is a second, separate problem. A Hebrew CV is not an English CV right-aligned. Dates, bullet alignment, mixed Latin technical terms inside Hebrew sentences and even the reading order of a two-column header all have to be handled properly, or the document looks subtly broken to a native reader.
Keeping both without maintaining both
In SuitedCV, the master CV holds both languages, and a version inherits from its own language's side. Translating a CV creates a linked twin rather than a copy, so the two stay associated instead of drifting into separate documents.
Hebrew renders as genuine right-to-left in both the editor and the exported PDF, with fonts embedded, so the Hebrew file is as ATS-safe as the English one.
Common questions
If a job post is in English but the company is Israeli, which do I send?
English. The posting language is the strongest available signal about who screens it. If you have both ready, English for the application and Hebrew in reserve for the interview stage is a reasonable default.
Should my name and job titles stay in English inside a Hebrew CV?
Technical terms and product names usually stay in Latin script — nobody writes “ריאקט” in a developer CV. Job titles are more often translated. The test is what a recruiter in that field would write themselves.
Does a Hebrew CV pass ATS?
Yes, provided it is a text-based PDF with embedded Hebrew fonts and a single reading order. Hebrew is not the problem; a Hebrew CV exported as an image is.
Do I need to mention military service?
In the Israeli market it is normal to include it, especially where the role or unit is relevant to the job. For CVs aimed at markets outside Israel it is usually condensed to a line or omitted.