How do I write a cover letter for a Swiss apprenticeship?

What 'apprenticeship' means here, in legal terms

If you arrived from a country where an apprenticeship is a training scheme bolted onto an entry-level job, the Swiss version will read differently. Vocational basic education lasts two to four years under Article 17 of the Vocational Training Act: the two-year route ends with the federal vocational certificate, the three- and four-year routes with the federal diploma, and the diploma combined with extended general education leads to the vocational baccalaureate. It is the standard route into a Swiss occupation, not a fallback.

The contract behind it is regulated on its own terms. Article 344a of the Code of Obligations requires written form for validity and lists what the contract must settle: the nature and duration of the training, the wage, the probation period, working hours and holidays. The probation period may be no shorter than one month and no longer than three; if the parties agree nothing, three months apply, and it can be extended to six only exceptionally, before it expires, by agreement and with the approval of the cantonal authority.

The employer's side of the bargain is spelled out too. Article 345a obliges the company to place the training under the responsibility of a qualified person with the necessary professional skills and personal qualities, to release the apprentice — without deduction from wages — for vocational school, inter-company courses and the final examinations, and to grant at least five weeks of holiday per training year until the age of twenty. Article 14 of the Vocational Training Act requires cantonal approval of the contract and forbids charging a fee for it. None of this belongs in your letter. All of it explains why the letter is read the way it is: as the opening of a multi-year commitment that a public authority will countersign.

The calendar runs a year ahead of the job market you are used to

Almost every apprenticeship advert open in Switzerland at the end of August is for the following August. Of the adverts naming a year in the title, 97.7 per cent name 2027 and 0.9 per cent the current year — the latter are leftover places, not the main round. That single fact reorganises the letter. The paragraph about yourself is written in the present tense of school: which school year you are in now, and when compulsory schooling ends. The closing paragraph is written about a start eleven or twelve months away.

It also changes what counts as early. The cantonal careers portal tells pupils that vacant apprenticeships can be consulted from November or December. In our reading of the market, adverts for the 2027 intake were already being published in April and May, and more than half of everything we currently hold in this category was posted within the last month. Applying in late summer or early autumn is therefore not premature; it is ahead of the official listing.

One consequence is worth stating plainly. A fifteen-year-old has no employment history, no references from previous employers and no professional network. Timing is the one advantage that is fully available and costs nothing. A careful letter sent in September to a company that has just published its 2027 place competes with a much smaller pile than the same letter sent in February.

The language question, answered with numbers

English-speaking families in Switzerland reasonably ask whether an English letter is acceptable for a strong candidate. In this part of the market the answer is unusually clear. Only 0.6 per cent of apprenticeship adverts we hold are written in English. Only 9.9 per cent state any English requirement at all, against 29.9 per cent of all open adverts. And 68.7 per cent state a requirement for German at professional level. Apprenticeship adverts are also more explicit about language than the market generally: 86.8 per cent state a language requirement of some kind, against 72.1 per cent of everything else.

The reason is structural rather than cultural. The apprentice spends one or two days a week at a vocational school taught in the cantonal language, sits inter-company courses in that language and takes the final examination in it. An employer reading an English letter is not judging your English; they are wondering how the school days will go.

The conventions differ inside Switzerland as well, and the official guidance shows it. The German-language portal ends its model letter with a digital signature; the French-language version asks for a handwritten signature, scanned and inserted before the file is saved as a PDF; the Italian-language version specifies an electronic signature. Same institution, three regional conventions. If you are applying across a language border, follow the one on the destination side.

Two kinds of employer, two kinds of letter

Apprenticeship places in our data are concentrated at one end and scattered at the other. The ten largest training employers hold 39.2 per cent of the apprenticeship adverts, and 51.1 per cent of all places sit with employers advertising ten or more — the federal administration, CKW, AMAG, Volg, Roche, fenaco, Medbase, Axpo. At the same time, 42.6 per cent of the employers advertising an apprenticeship at all are advertising exactly one.

At the large training employers the application goes through a form with fixed fields, often with a deadline; the official attachment list includes aptitude test results, so expect those to be asked for somewhere in the process. Your letter is read, but precision is what carries it: the right occupation, the right intake year, the right site. Site matters more than newcomers expect — 52.8 per cent of apprenticeship titles name a location, branch or specialisation after a comma or a dash, and a company with a dozen branches treats those as separate places.

At the employer with one place, the person who reads the letter is the person who will train you, and they will be legally responsible for doing so. That is the case where a specific, verifiable observation about the company changes something, and where a short phone call before applying is normal rather than pushy. The official guidance actively suggests calling to ask which documents are wanted and how the process runs.

The one paragraph that cannot be borrowed

Strip out the addresses, the subject line and the closing, and a Swiss apprenticeship letter has one paragraph that does real work: the account of something you have actually done in the direction of this trade. A trial week, a school project, a summer job, Saturdays in a family business, a course with a certificate. Described as an activity with a duration and an outcome, it is evidence. Described as an adjective — reliable, motivated, hard-working — it is the same sentence every other applicant wrote.

The cantonal guidance is explicit that the rest of the file carries the proof, which is why the letter can stay on one page. The listed attachments are the lower-secondary school reports, the trial-placement reports, aptitude test results, any document the company specifically requests such as a medical certificate, and where they exist, references or confirmations of holiday jobs and courses. Scan them in colour, one PDF per attachment, most recent document first, one folder per application, file names that say what they are.

Two smaller points come from the same source and are easy to overlook. Ask an adult — a teacher, a family member, or a counsellor at a cantonal careers centre — to read the file before it goes. And assume the employer will search your name online: keep social accounts private, check publicly visible profile pictures. Where a video application is wanted, keep it under ninety seconds.

On using AI, the official position is permissive with a boundary, and it is a sensible boundary whatever tool you use: strip personal details such as your address, and do not upload confidential documents such as your CV. That marks out what a tool is for — structure, spelling, the shape of a paragraph — and what it cannot supply. The trial week you actually did is the part no generator has access to, and it is the only part of the letter that another applicant cannot also write.