ZZP in the Netherlands, freelancer in Germany: setting up your CV rules
How to set up location, registration and document language rules for clients in two countries, so each application reads right without editing by hand.
If you take freelance projects in both the Netherlands and Germany, you answer two sets of expectations. Not laws, which are a matter for an accountant, but conventions about how an application looks. In Careers they are settings, so you decide once and every CV follows.
This post is about those settings, not about tax or legal status, which you should check with a professional.
Three things that change by country#
- The location on the CV. Where you are based, or where the client expects you to be. A freelancer based in one country sometimes lists a base in another for clients there. That is your decision and must be true. If it is not true for you, do not set it.
- How you describe your status. In the Netherlands a freelancer is often described as a ZZP and mentions registration with the Chamber of Commerce (KvK). In Germany the word is Freelancer, or Freiberufler in a legal sense. You choose the wording that is accurate for you.
- The language of the documents. German clients usually expect German documents. Dutch clients usually accept English, and many postings say so.
The rules in the profile#
Each rule has a country and three fields: location, registration and document language. A client in Germany then gets, for example, your German-language CV and letter with the status wording you set for Germany. A client in the Netherlands gets English documents with your Dutch wording.
Documents in German need your German#
Careers does not machine-translate a letter. For a German CV it uses the German versions of your lines that you wrote in the profile. Lines you have not translated stay in the base language, and the page tells you how many. That is a prompt to write the ones that matter.
Dutch postings#
A posting written in Dutch is shown if it never asks for Dutch, with a tag. If you apply, the documents are in English, with one clear line saying you write in English. Dutch is only written for a profile that lists it above basic level.
Dates and details#
Small things make a CV read as local: English dates read "Jan – Mar 2025", German ones "01/2025 – 03/2025", and a range uses no-break spaces so it never splits across lines. Careers does these for you.
A word of caution#
None of this replaces understanding your own situation. If you are unsure how to describe your status, ask the person who does your books, then put the wording in the rule. Careers will use it faithfully, and the truth check will not let a CV claim a registration your profile does not state.