Check a CV against a specific job advert — which tools can?

The dividing line: is there a second input box?

Before you open any tool, look for a second field. A tool with one box — "upload your CV" — checks readability, structure, formatting and whether the expected sections are present. That is useful, but it is a check against a general standard, not against your job.

A tool with two boxes — CV and advert — can do something else: compare the words of one against the words of the other. That splits the market in two, and the marketing language does not distinguish them. Both sides say "check", "score", "ATS".

The test that always works: is there a second box? If not, the result cannot tell you whether you fit this particular job, however long the report is.

SwissJobs.app CV check

What it is: a check of your CV against one specific advert, across ten scored items. Seven are about content — ATS and keyword match, hard skills, soft skills, motivation, fit with the environment, unique selling point, and the outcomes you bring — plus three Swiss ones: permit, language levels, photo.

What it does that the others do not: open the check from a posting in our index and the advert text is already there. You paste nothing. With every other tool on this list you find the advert somewhere else, select it and copy it across — and most people copy the whole thing, company preamble included.

What it costs: one check runs with no account. Verified first-hand on 4 September 2026 — the first anonymous analysis goes through, a second from the same browser is refused with "Your free check is used — create a free account to run more". The account after that is free (email, no card), with 5 documents a day and 10 per rolling week. Beyond that: a 7-day trial, then CHF 15 a month or CHF 95 a year, cancel any time.

Who it suits: anyone applying to Swiss adverts who wants to work in German, French, Italian or English. The report comes out in the language of the interface, which matters if you are applying in a language that is not your first.

The honest limits, and they are real. Not every posting carries text we are entitled to run through a check: adverts collected through the browser extension are excluded outright, because that is the employer's own writing. Those fall back to the Swiss-standards check, and the report says which of the two actually ran. Second, the check's landing page still advertised "Free · 5-sec signup" on 4 September 2026, although the anonymous check was already live. The marketing copy is behind the product.

Jobscan

What it is: the best-known tool of this kind, and the one that describes itself most plainly. From its own home page, read on 4 September 2026: "A resume checker will scan your resume and compare it to a job description." You upload the CV, paste the advert, get a Match Rate.

It is unusually open about how that number is built. The home page prints the priorities in order: hard skills, then education level, then job title, then soft skills, then other keywords. And a sentence you rarely see from a vendor: "Resume word count and measurable results are not factored into the match rate." The recommended target is a 75 per cent match rate.

What it costs, from the pricing page on 4 September 2026: Free at USD 0, with 5 resume scans a month. Monthly USD 49.95. Quarterly USD 29.98 a month, billed as USD 89.95 every three months, after a 7-day free trial. At the European Central Bank reference rate of 3 September 2026 that is roughly CHF 40 a month, or roughly CHF 73 a quarter.

Who it suits: anyone applying to English-language adverts — which, at international employers in Zug, Basel or Geneva, is most of them. For that text, Jobscan is a sharper instrument than anything Swiss.

The limits: Jobscan names the applicant systems it models — iCIMS, Recruiterbox, Lever, Greenhouse, Taleo. None of them is a Swiss product, and the site states no seat of its own anywhere. And the Match Rate scores against everything you pasted: in a German-language Swiss advert that is a median 73.6 per cent of text with nothing about you in it.

Resume Worded — Targeted Resume

What it is: the sibling of "Score My Resume", and the one with the advert field. In its own words: "It works by comparing your resume to the job description and finding important keywords you missed out from your resume." The output is a "Relevancy Score", and the page tells you how to read it: "A score lower than 80 suggests that your resume is missing important skills from the job posting."

One sentence on that page is the best argument for this whole question, and it is not ours: "Keep in mind that no two jobs are exactly the same, even if they have the same job title." That is precisely why a check with no advert can only take you so far.

What it costs: the core function is free and requires an account. The vendor served no public pricing page on 4 September 2026, in a real browser either, so no figure is printed here rather than a guessed one.

Who it suits: anyone writing in English who wants the sharpest line-by-line criticism available. At that specific job it beats us.

The limit is printed above the vendor's own upload box and is unambiguous: "English resumes in PDF or DOCX only. Max 2MB file size." For a German, French or Italian CV the tool is simply out, and that covers the majority of Swiss adverts.

careerkit.me CV checker

What it is: a free checker that takes a CV as PDF or DOCX up to 4 MB. Its advert field is labelled "job description (optional, required for the ATS score)" — meaning: without an advert you get a structure analysis, with one you get the match.

What it costs: nothing, and no account. The tools page states it itself — free forever, no signup. That is the lowest barrier on this list to a check that actually sees the advert.

Who it suits: anyone who wants a second opinion without creating anything. The interface exists in German, French and English.

The limits: there is no Italian — the language switcher offers de, fr and en, and Italian paths do not resolve. And the match is a keyword match: a permit line, a collective-agreement reference or a workload in per cent are just words to it.

Teal

What it is: primarily an application tracker with advert matching attached. The pricing page describes the feature: "Attach your desired position and we'll highlight the keyword insights to help you build a tailored resume that gets noticed."

What it costs, read on 4 September 2026: "Free Forever" or Teal+ at USD 13 per week. The weekly rhythm is the part people miss when comparing: a month is a little over four weeks, so roughly USD 56 — more than Jobscan's monthly plan, and 52 charges a year rather than twelve.

The free ceiling is stated precisely, which is more than many do: on keyword matching against the advert, the free tier shows the "Top 5" keywords and Teal+ shows them all. Five keywords is a hint, not a check.

Who it suits: anyone running many applications at once who wants the tracker anyway. As a pure checking tool for one Swiss advert it is the wrong shape.

The limits: English-language, filed in its own footer as "Teal Labs, Inc", and no concept of a Swiss dossier.

RadarJob

What it is: a Romandie service that watches jobup.ch and jobs.ch continuously and emails you matching adverts. Alongside it sit three free tools, including "Tester mon CV (ATS) — Score de compatibilité + conseils" and "Adapter mon CV — Votre CV réécrit pour l'offre visée".

What it costs: the CV tools are free. The subscription itself — the radar, with daily suggestions and a motivation letter attached to each — is CHF 39 a month, no commitment.

Who it suits: people applying in French-speaking Switzerland who work in French. For them it is the obvious address alongside us.

The limit is the language: the service is French throughout — interface, coverage, framing. For a German-language advert in Zurich it is not built.

A general AI chat (ChatGPT, Claude)

What it is: you paste both — CV and advert — and ask for the comparison. Not a tool in the narrow sense, but what most people actually do, so it belongs on the list rather than being quietly left off.

What it can do: it reads any language, it copes with a badly structured advert, it explains its answer instead of returning a number, and the free tier costs nothing. For the 16.0 per cent of Swiss adverts with no section heading at all, that is a real advantage over any keyword matcher.

The limits, and they are serious. It does not know what a Swiss dossier expects unless you tell it — Arbeitszeugnisse (the Swiss employer references), the permit line, A1–C2 rather than "fluent", the workload as a percentage, the photo. It remembers nothing between applications. And you are uploading your CV plus an employer's text to a provider abroad, which is at least worth doing knowingly.

Who it suits: anyone who wants a one-off read, in a language no other tool serves, and is willing to write the Swiss criteria into the prompt themselves.

cvswiss.ch ATS check — the best-known one that cannot do it

It is here because otherwise people go looking for it and assume it fits. The free check at cvswiss.ch is genuinely free, needs no signup, takes PDF and DOCX, and describes itself as an "instant, AI-powered analysis of your CV's readability and ATS compatibility". It is the shortest route to a number that exists in Switzerland, and we would rather say so than hide it.

There is no field for the advert. So it measures your CV against a general standard — sensible before you apply anywhere, useless for the question of whether you fit this one job.

Its home page also carries the line "75% of CVs in Switzerland never reach a human — they get filtered by ATS software", with no source given. We do not call it false; nobody can see inside employers' filters. We only say what can be checked, and that figure cannot.

Prices, unchanged on 4 September 2026: a single CV for CHF 5 one-off, the subscription at CHF 15 a month. The ATS check itself stays free.

What you are actually pasting — and why it skews the score

Every tool with an advert field except ours asks you to select the advert text and copy it across. Almost everyone copies all of it. That is the quietest source of error in this category.

From the 873 adverts across 609 employers: 60.8 per cent label a requirements section at all — "your profile", "what you bring", "requirements". 16.0 per cent carry no section heading whatsoever and arrive as one block. Where the requirements section is labelled, it is a median 32.9 per cent of the advert across all four languages.

The rest is text that says nothing about you. A median 27.0 per cent sits before the first heading — who the company is, the history of the site, the greeting. In German-language adverts, 55.6 per cent carry a "we offer" block that takes a median 29.6 per cent of the advert where it appears. Five weeks of holiday and a thirteenth month's salary are good things; in a keyword match they are noise.

Practical consequence, whichever tool you choose: do not paste the whole advert. Paste the requirements section and the task list. With any tool that has no Swiss criteria built in, that is the single biggest improvement available to you.

If you are applying to Switzerland from abroad, read this part

The imported advice about ATS keyword matching was written for American postings, and the English-language Swiss advert is the one that most resembles them: a median 412 words, 42.3 per cent of it requirements. On that text a tool built around US resume conventions works well, and you should use one.

The German-language Swiss advert is a different document. A median 276 words, only 26.4 per cent of it requirements, and 55.6 per cent of them spend a labelled block telling you what they offer. In 46.1 per cent of German-language adverts, less than a quarter of the text is the requirements section. A keyword score computed over all of it is measuring the employer's self-description as much as the job.

Two things a Swiss dossier contains that no international tool checks, because it has never heard of them. Arbeitszeugnisse: on leaving a job in Switzerland you are given a written reference, and the dossier is expected to carry the whole series, in order and with no gaps. And the permit line: if you are not Swiss or EU/EFTA, stating your status (B, C, L, or that you need none) is standard, and leaving it out reads as an omission rather than as discretion.

One more, because it reverses a rule people bring with them: in Switzerland a photo on the CV is conventional, not a liability. Language skills are stated as CEFR levels — B2, C1 — not as "fluent". Workload is a Pensum in per cent, so an advert saying 80–100% is telling you something a tool built for US resumes will not flag. A checker that marks your photo as a mistake is applying American rules to a Swiss application.

In short: who should use which

Applying to a German-language Swiss advert and want the Swiss items scored: SwissJobs.app. The advert is already loaded when you open the check from a posting, and permit, language levels and photo are scored items rather than keywords.

Want to create nothing and pay nothing, but still have the advert seen: careerkit.me. No account, no francs, and it works in German and French.

Applying to an English-language advert: Jobscan. It is built for exactly that kind of text, and its match rate means more there than ours does.

Writing in English and wanting hard criticism of every line: Resume Worded.

Applying in French-speaking Switzerland and working in French: RadarJob, or us.

Only want to know whether your CV is soundly built before you apply anywhere: cvswiss.ch, free and without signing up. Do not expect it to answer a question about a specific job.

And whichever you pick: paste the requirements section, not the whole advert.