What goes in a German Bewerbung, document by document

A German application is a set rather than a single file. What the set contains is published by the national employment agency, and so is what each part is for.

ConxfolioPublished 2026-09-12

— three documents, and a fourth that is optional.

Applying into Germany from a country where a résumé and an optional covering letter are the whole of it, the first surprise is that the application is a set of documents with names, and that several of them are not written by you at all.

The set

The Bundesagentur für Arbeit lists the components of a Bewerbung as the Anschreiben, the Lebenslauf and the Zeugnisse, with a Deckblatt as an optional addition (arbeitsagentur.de). Two of those you write, one you collect, and the fourth you can skip.

The Anschreiben

The letter. The guidance describes its job directly: the text should convince the company, and "sollte daher passgenau auf die Stelle zugeschnitten sein", it should therefore be cut precisely to the position. It has to show why you are applying for that specific role and what competence and experience you bring.

That is the same argument a covering letter makes anywhere, with slightly more weight on the reasoning. The structure, the evidence paragraphs and the discipline of claiming only what you can support are unchanged, and the letter guide applies without modification. Where the emphasis shifts, the motivation letter page covers the difference.

The cover letter builder here writes in English, and it works the same way for a German posting as for any other: the posting selects the evidence, each proof paragraph carries the line of your résumé it came from, and requirements your evidence cannot support are listed rather than claimed. For an application that must be written in German, use it to settle which evidence belongs in the letter, then write the German yourself.

The Lebenslauf

The record, and the most convention-bound of the three. The Bundesagentur asks for name, address, telephone number, email address and date and place of birth; a tabular, reverse-chronological structure; a maximum of two A4 pages; and location, date and a signature at the end (arbeitsagentur.de). The Lebenslauf page goes through each of those with the source.

The Zeugnisse

Certificates and references. Qualifications, and written references from previous employers, which in Germany are a document type with their own conventions rather than a name and a telephone number. You do not write these; you collect them, scan them and attach them.

This is the part with no equivalent in British or American practice, where references are usually a line saying they are available on request. Coming from that tradition, the thing to know is that the documents are expected to be in the application rather than produced later.

The Deckblatt

A cover page, listed as optional. It typically carries your name, the role you are applying for, and where one is used, the photograph. An application without a Deckblatt is complete, and the choice is a matter of the employer and the sector rather than of correctness.

The photograph

Not required. The page states that a Bewerbungsfoto is "keine Pflicht mehr, jedoch in vielen Branchen weiterhin üblich", no longer an obligation but still customary in many sectors, and the Lebenslauf page says of it that "Dies ist kein Muss mehr". That is a statement about custom rather than about law, and it is the honest answer: you are not required to include one and many applications still do.

The legal background worth knowing is the Allgemeines Gleichbehandlungsgesetz, whose §1 names the grounds on which discrimination is to be prevented: race or ethnic origin, sex, religion or belief, disability, age and sexual identity (gesetze-im-internet.de). Several of those are things a photograph makes visible, which is the reason the requirement was dropped. The photo page sets the German position beside the British and American ones.

Assembling it

One PDF, in the order the employer asks for, or separate files where the portal wants them. Name the files so a person can tell what they are, which is the same discipline file names and formats covers for a single document. And tailor each application rather than sending the same set repeatedly, which the guidance asks for in as many words.

Where the set is sent

Increasingly through a portal, which changes the packaging rather than the contents. A portal that accepts one file wants the set in the order the posting names, usually the Anschreiben first; one with separate upload fields wants each document by itself, named so a person can tell what it is.

Where the application is by email, one PDF is the courteous form, with a short covering message in the body that does not repeat the Anschreiben. Scanned Zeugnisse should be legible at the size they will be read, which in practice means checking the scan rather than trusting the scanner, and keeping the file small enough to arrive.

A scan has one property worth knowing about: it carries no text layer, so anything that reads the file as text finds nothing in it. That is fine for a certificate, which a person looks at, and it is a real problem when the scanned document is the Lebenslauf itself. Scanned and image PDFs covers what happens then.