Swiss CV guide: structure, example and checklist

A Swiss CV should make your relevant experience, education and skills easy to find. Put recent experience first, emphasise evidence that fits the role and follow the employer’s instructions. Swiss guidance often mentions conventions such as a photograph and a CV of no more than three pages, but neither is a universal requirement.

Start with the evidence the role needs

Keep the job advert beside you. Mark its main tasks and requirements, then find honest evidence for each one in your work, education, projects or volunteering. Put that evidence where the reader can find it quickly.

Do not copy the advert’s claims into a skills list. “Good stakeholder management” is weak on its own. “Coordinated weekly handovers between a five-person warehouse team and two retail branches” gives the reader something to assess.

The Swiss public employment service describes the CV as a central part of the application and recommends a complete, clear, reverse-chronological record. It also advises applicants to check the requested documents and submit clearly named PDF files. Treat that as a useful baseline, then follow the specific advert and application form. Read the federal application guidance.

Use a simple structure

This order suits many experienced applicants. Put education before experience if you are applying for a first role and your training is your strongest evidence.

FIRST NAME SURNAME
Target role or professional focus
City, Switzerland | phone | professional email | portfolio or LinkedIn

PROFILE (optional: 2–3 lines)
Your field, level of experience and two points relevant to this role.
Avoid personality claims that the rest of the CV does not prove.

EXPERIENCE
Job title — Employer, City                     MM/YYYY–MM/YYYY
- Action + scope + result or useful context
- Action + tool or method + result
- Relevant responsibility, stated precisely

Earlier job title — Employer, City             MM/YYYY–MM/YYYY
- One or two relevant points

EDUCATION AND TRAINING
Qualification — Institution, City              YYYY–YYYY
- Relevant focus, project or distinction if it helps this application

SKILLS
- Languages: language and honest level
- Tools or methods: only those you can discuss or demonstrate
- Certificates: issuer and year where useful

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION (optional)
- Relevant volunteering, professional memberships or interests

REFERENCES
Available on request

The University of Zurich’s Switzerland-specific guidance also recommends adapting the CV to the job and including the employer, location, department, responsibilities and achievements for each relevant position. See the UZH CV guidance.

Decide what personal information to include

Swiss CV examples often contain more personal information than those in other countries. These fields are not all compulsory.

Include your name, a reliable phone number, a professional email address and a useful location such as “Lausanne, Switzerland.” Add work-authorisation information when it answers a likely practical question and you are comfortable doing so. Do not add sensitive information merely because a template has a box for it.

Some Swiss guidance, including the federal application page, still includes a professional photograph. Not every employer expects one. Follow any instructions in the advert; otherwise, decide whether a photograph suits your field and circumstances. If you include one, use a recent professional image. If you omit it, check that the layout still works.

Write bullets that can be checked

A strong bullet answers at least two of these questions:

• What did you do?
• For whom or at what scale?
• How did you do it?
• What changed?

Use a number only when you know it is accurate and the number helps. A credible scope can be useful even when there was no clean performance metric.

Weak:

Responsible for improving customer service and working with different teams.

Stronger:

Reworked the handover between customer service and dispatch, giving both teams one daily list of delayed orders and named owners.

The stronger version does not invent a percentage. It shows the problem, the action and the operating change.

Worked example: logistics coordinator

The applicant and employer below are fictional. The facts are deliberately modest: a good CV does not need inflated claims.

MARA KELLER
Logistics coordinator
Winterthur, Switzerland | +41 79 000 00 00 | mara.keller@example.com

PROFILE
Logistics coordinator with five years of experience in retail distribution.
Works in German and English and has hands-on experience with SAP order
tracking, carrier coordination and store replenishment.

EXPERIENCE
Logistics Coordinator — Nordtal Handel AG, Winterthur     03/2022–present
- Coordinate daily deliveries from one distribution centre to 14 stores.
- Introduced a shared exception list for dispatch and customer service,
  replacing separate email threads for delayed orders.
- Train new team members to record delivery exceptions in SAP.
- Prepare the weekly carrier review with late-delivery cases and open actions.

Logistics Assistant — Rheinfeld Markt GmbH, Frauenfeld    08/2019–02/2022
- Checked inbound deliveries against purchase orders and recorded variances.
- Answered store queries in German and English during the afternoon shift.

EDUCATION
Federal VET Diploma in Commercial Employee — Example School, Frauenfeld
2016–2019

SKILLS
- Languages: German (native), English (B2), French (A2)
- Systems: SAP order tracking, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Teams

REFERENCES
Available on request

What the example shows:

• The target role is clear without a long personal statement.
• Recent responsibilities receive the most space.
• The bullets show scale and working context.
• Language levels are stated without implying fluency.
• The example avoids invented savings, rankings and character claims.

The CV still needs tailoring. If the advert stresses customs documents, shift planning or advanced Excel, Mara should add real evidence for that requirement or leave the gap visible.

Handle gaps and short roles honestly

A CV should make the sequence understandable without explaining every private circumstance. Use years and months consistently. If a label helps, describe a period briefly—for example, “family care,” “full-time language study” or “job search and professional training.”

Do not change dates to hide a gap. Prepare a short, factual explanation for an interview. UZH also advises applicants to plan how they will answer questions about gaps rather than disguising them. Review its guidance on CV gaps.

Assemble the application file

The advert is the authority on what to send. A Swiss application may ask for a CV, motivation letter, employment references, diplomas or certificates. Other processes ask for a CV only or collect the same information through form fields.

Use the requested channel and file format. Check that dates, job titles and employer names agree across your CV, letter and application form. Keep the advert and the exact application you sent so you can refer to them if you are invited to interview. UZH’s application-portfolio guidance recommends both tailoring the documents and keeping the advert and application. See the application portfolio checklist.

Name the file so another person can identify it, for example Mara-Keller-CV.pdf. Open the exported PDF before sending it. Check page breaks, links, selectable text and whether the most important information remains readable on a phone.

Common mistakes

• Using one CV for every role without changing the emphasis.
• Listing duties but giving no scale, method or result.
• Claiming skills that cannot be supported in an interview.
• Hiding gaps by changing dates.
• Treating a photograph or personal detail as mandatory without checking context.
• Using progress bars or star ratings for languages and skills; labels such as B2 or “daily working use” are clearer.
• Sending a dense design that is hard to scan or parse.
• Forgetting to check the final PDF and filename.

Final Swiss CV check

• ✓The target role and strongest relevant evidence are easy to find
• ✓Experience is in reverse chronological order and dates are consistent
• ✓Every claim is true and can be explained in an interview
• ✓Language and technical skill levels are stated plainly
• ✓Optional personal details were chosen deliberately
• ✓The CV follows the advert's document and format instructions
• ✓A second person has checked spelling, clarity and page breaks
• ✓The exported PDF opens correctly and has a clear filename

Next, use the requirement-to-evidence method in this guide to prepare a motivation letter that adds context instead of repeating your CV.