What Lithuanian employers actually look for in a CV
A lot of foreigners arrive in Vilnius assuming their existing German, American, or Indian CV will land them interviews. It usually doesn't, and the reasons are not the ones people expect. The mistakes are small but consistent: too long, too vague, sent in the wrong language, missing the structure recruiters here are used to scanning. None of this is hard to fix once you know what the local market actually expects.
The format that actually gets read
Lithuanian recruiters expect a CV no longer than two pages, structured chronologically, with clear sections for personal information, education, work experience, skills, and references (VisualCV: Lithuanian CV guide). Either the national format or the Europass CV works equally well, and the choice doesn't move the needle either way. What does move it is layout. Dense paragraphs get skimmed past. Bullet points, white space, and clean headings are non-negotiable. Recruiters spend somewhere around 20 seconds on a first pass and they want to find dates and titles fast.
The photo question comes up a lot. Including a professional headshot is still common in Lithuania, but it isn't required unless the job ad asks for one. If you come from a market where photos are seen as inviting bias, skip it. Nobody will downgrade you for not having one. What does get downgraded is grammar mistakes, especially in cover letters, since they read as carelessness rather than language gaps.
Language: when English works and when it doesn't
A common mistake is sending one CV in one language to everyone. The right rule is simple: international companies and tech firms take English without hesitation. Smaller Lithuanian companies and traditional sectors expect Lithuanian. Even at companies that operate in English internally, applying in Lithuanian for support, administrative, or customer-facing roles tells the recruiter you bothered. This is part of the broader pattern covered in Is Lithuania an English-friendly country?.
If you don't speak Lithuanian, that's fine for IT, finance, fintech, shared services, and most international roles. Just send the English CV and don't fake the language line at the end. Recruiters here check, sometimes with one switch-the-interview-to-Lithuanian moment to see what happens. Listing "Lithuanian: basic" when you actually have zero kills trust faster than leaving the language off entirely.
What recruiters actually screen for
The stages are standard: screening, one or two interviews (often a phone screen first, then a panel), and an offer letter before the formal contract. What's less obvious is what gets weighted. Lithuanian recruiters in competitive roles place strong emphasis on work-life balance fit, professional development trajectory, and company culture alignment, alongside the usual qualifications. They are not necessarily looking for the most aggressive candidate. They are looking for someone who will still be there in two years.
This is also why tailoring matters more here than in larger markets. Lithuania is small enough that recruiters across companies know each other, and a CV that's clearly been copy-pasted to fifteen openings will get noticed and discarded. Personalize it for the specific role, mention the company by name in the cover letter, and explain why this opening (not "an opening like this") fits. The cover letter itself should be one A4 page. It still gets read in Lithuania, especially at mid-size companies. Treating it as optional is a noticeable miss.
A final thought
The CV gets you into the room. What closes the job is something the CV can't show. Two years after you arrive, the people who hired you, the people who interviewed you, and the people who turned you down are mostly still in the same small ecosystem of HR contacts and former colleagues. Your reputation travels faster than any document, which means the version of yourself that shows up to the interview matters more than the perfect format. That's also why people who land their second Lithuanian job rarely struggle with the format question at all. By then, the work has already done the talking, and the first 90 days is where that next chapter starts.