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CV check

How do I check a CV for a federal role?

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In short

Check five things, in this order: that a second official language is stated with a level and a dated proof, that your first language is unmistakable, that your target job title is spelled the way the advert spells it, that diplomas and employment references are actually attached, and that you apply through the button inside the advert. Article 8 of the Swiss Language Ordinance obliges federal employers to ensure every employee has the spoken and written knowledge of a second official language the function requires. Among federal adverts on SwissJobs.app, 39.6 per cent of the regular posts name two official languages, against 7.4 per cent in the rest of the market.

The important word in that sentence is "obliges". In a private company the language line is a preference written into the body text of the advert. In the federal administration it is a rule addressed to the employer, who must be able to show the requirement is met. A CV that says nothing about it leaves the recruiter with an unresolved question at exactly the moment the file is being sorted against objective criteria — and an unresolved question costs one round.

The clearest sign of how different this market is sits in the advert language itself. Of the federal adverts in our index, 29.6 per cent appear in Italian, 26 per cent in German and 24.9 per cent in French; for just under a fifth the language could not be determined. Not one federal advert whose language we could determine is written in English, while 20.5 per cent of everything else is. Federal bodies account for 1.7 per cent of the open adverts we hold, spread across 35 offices, general secretariats, state secretariats and courts.

Share of adverts naming a requirement in each language
Share of adverts naming a requirement in each languageGerman — federal56.8%German — rest of market48.2%English — federal38.7%English — rest of market31.4%French — federal37.4%French — rest of market14%Italian — federal36.5%Italian — rest of market2.4%

Regular vacancies only — apprenticeships and internships are excluded on both sides so the two populations are comparable. Rolling analysis of the adverts open on SwissJobs.app, as at 23 August 2026.

  • Find the line in your CV that evidences a second official language. If there is none, the document is unfinished for this employer whatever else it does well. Article 8 paragraph 1 letter a ties the requirement to the function rather than the person: what counts as "required" is set by the advert, and what the advert sets has to be visible in the file.
  • State the level on the Common European Framework scale rather than as an adjective. The Federal Office of Personnel, in its guidance for the "Sprachkompetenz" application, treats active knowledge as B2 and passive knowledge as B1 at minimum. "Good French" cannot be checked against that scale; "French B2" can.
  • Put a year on every language certificate. The same guidance states that a diploma, certificate or test must not be more than five years old. An undated certificate is not judged strictly — it simply cannot be placed.
  • Make your first language findable in one glance. The job portal's privacy statement lists, alongside salutation, names, postal address, email address and telephone numbers, "information on the first language as well as the CV" among the data the application profile stores. The question is going to be asked; answer it in the document.
  • Copy the job title exactly as the advert writes it, including the slash form. 70.4 per cent of federal adverts spell the function as "Projektleiter/-in" or "Chef/fe de projet"; only 7 per cent of the rest of the market does, where "(m/w/d)" dominates at 31.7 per cent against 4.2 per cent federally. Do not translate the title into English either — there is no English original to fall back on.
  • Carry the reference number if the advert has one. 4.7 per cent of federal titles include a number in brackets, against 0.2 per cent elsewhere. It is the key the file is filed under, and it is worth more in a covering letter than any turn of phrase.
  • Leave the workload percentage out of your headline. Only 2.3 per cent of federal adverts name a percentage in the title against 22.4 per cent in the rest of the market, and 97.9 per cent are advertised as full-time. Where part-time is possible the advert says so in the body, and that is where your answer belongs too.
  • Attach the diplomas and references instead of promising them. Among federal adverts we hold a summary for, 22.9 per cent mention a university or higher-education qualification and 15.2 per cent mention diplomas or references explicitly, against 11 and 5 per cent in the rest of the market. The formal proof is raised roughly three times as often.
  • Apply through the advert. The portal's FAQ is explicit that you apply by clicking the button in the vacancy itself and that the federal administration as a rule does not accept speculative applications. A perfectly checked dossier emailed to an office is an unchecked dossier.
  • Expect a short window. Federal adverts in our index have a median age of 18 days against 20 for the rest of the market, but only 9.4 per cent are more than 30 days old against 40.7 per cent elsewhere. The federal stock turns over noticeably faster than the median alone suggests.
  • Work out which of the three entry routes you are competing on. 31.9 per cent of federal adverts are apprenticeships and 10.4 per cent are internships or stages; only 57.7 per cent are regular posts. In the rest of the market the same three shares are 5.7, 2.5 and 91.8 per cent. A CV aimed at a graduate internship is read against a different grid from one aimed at a management post.

The rule your CV is checked against

Article 8 paragraph 1 of the Language Ordinance grades the requirement by level. Letter a requires every employee to have the spoken and written knowledge of a second official language needed to perform the function. Letter b requires middle management to have good active knowledge of at least one second official language and, where possible, passive knowledge of a third. Letter c extends that to senior management and to middle managers with a leadership function — and for them the passive third language stops being a "where possible" and becomes a requirement.

The Federal Office of Personnel turns those three letters into a table by salary class. Employees in salary classes 1 to 23 need one official language actively. Middle management in classes 24 to 29 without a leadership function needs two actively. Middle managers with a leadership function, and senior management in classes 30 to 38, need two actively and one passively. Active means B2 and passive means B1 as a minimum, both on the Common European Framework. That is the scale to hold your language block against, and the reason a five-star rating or a bar filled four fifths of the way does no work here.

Our own figures show the rule reaching the adverts. Of the regular federal posts, 56.8 per cent name German, 38.7 per cent English, 37.4 per cent French and 36.5 per cent Italian. 39.6 per cent name at least two official languages and 19.8 per cent name all three, against 7.4 and 1 per cent in the rest of the market. Broken down by level, German at professional level leads on 32.4 per cent, followed by Italian at professional level on 26.6 per cent, German at conversational level on 22.5 per cent, English at professional level on 20.3 per cent and French at professional level on 18.5 per cent. A substantial share of the requirements therefore sits deliberately below professional level — which is precisely where an honest B1 beats an omission.

Why there is no English version of the advert

English is asked for more often in federal adverts than in the market at large — 38.7 per cent against 31.4 per cent for regular posts. It is never the language the advert is written in. That combination catches out English-speaking candidates more than any other single feature of this employer: the working requirement is real, the reading requirement is real too, and there is no English text to apply against.

The practical consequence for a CV check is that every term you match has to be matched in German, French or Italian. If the advert asks for a "Wissenschaftliche/-r Mitarbeiter/-in", your document should carry that phrase, not "Research Associate". If it asks for "conoscenze passive" of a third official language, the answer belongs in the language block in those terms. Federal titles are also longer than average — 54 characters on average against 44 elsewhere — because they carry the organisational unit or the specialism inside the title. That extra material is the part worth mirroring.

The mix of specialisms is different too, and the vocabulary follows it. Among regular federal posts, 20.3 per cent carry an administrative or case-handling job title against 6.6 per cent in the rest of the market, 18 per cent an IT title against 11.4 per cent, 17.1 per cent a leadership title against 10.5 per cent, 9 per cent a scientific or analytical one against 1.7 per cent and 6.3 per cent a legal one against 0.9 per cent. Someone arriving from the private sector often finds their own role filed under a word they would not have chosen.

Your first language is a stored field, not small talk

Article 7 of the Language Ordinance sets target ranges for the representation of the language communities in the federal administration, expressly including at management level: German 68.5 to 70.5 per cent, French 21.5 to 23.5 per cent, Italian 6.5 to 8.5 per cent, Romansh 0.5 to 1 per cent. Paragraph 3 converts that into a procedural instruction: when filling posts, employers must ensure that candidates from all language communities are retained at the pre-selection stage and invited to interview, provided they meet the objective selection criteria. It adds that where qualifications are equivalent, candidates from a community under-represented in that administrative unit are engaged in priority, and that this applies in particular to management posts.

That rule bites at pre-selection — the stage where your CV is doing all the talking. It can only bite if the affiliation is legible. Which is why the first language is a separate stored field in the portal profile rather than something raised at interview. Burying it as a fourth line under three learned languages does not cost you goodwill; it costs you a position in the procedure.

In practice: one line, at the top of the language block, without a code. "First language: Italian" is a statement of fact. "Italian C2" is a placement on a learning scale and does not answer the question about language community. If you grew up bilingual, name both — the personnel office explicitly provides for a second, near-equal language recorded at C2 in its own system.

What the dossier has to carry — and the gap you may name

Which documents are required is set out in the individual advert; the portal does not publish a single universal list. The signal from the adverts themselves is nonetheless clear. Among federal vacancies we hold a summary for, 22.9 per cent refer to a higher-education qualification and 15.2 per cent refer explicitly to diplomas or employment references, against 11 and 5 per cent in the rest of the market. The formal proof is put on the table far more often than it is elsewhere.

One special case is worth knowing because it removes the most common self-imposed block. Article 8 paragraph 3 states that where a management appointee does not meet the language requirements on engagement, the employer takes the measures necessary to improve them within a year. The third official language therefore does not have to be finished on the day you apply. It has to be named — with the level you actually hold and what you are already doing about it. Paragraph 2 obliges employers to offer language courses in German, French and Italian in any case, and paragraph 4 counts the training needed to reach the required level as service-related training.

Two things belong outside the document because the procedure handles them differently. Under the portal's privacy statement, application documents are deleted automatically no later than three months after the recruitment process ends; if you are engaged, they are filed in your personnel record instead. And because one profile serves several applications, the document sitting in that profile is the one read repeatedly — so the tailoring to a specific post belongs in the covering letter, not in a renamed CV.

Route, place and entry level

The route allows no variation. You apply via the button in the vacancy, speculative applications are as a rule not accepted, receipt is confirmed automatically and the responsible organisational unit contacts you in the days or weeks that follow. A dossier sent to a general address never enters the objective pre-selection at all — and therefore never reaches the rule in Article 7 paragraph 3 either.

The geography is more concentrated than most people expect. 43.1 per cent of the federal adverts we hold name Bern as the place of work, 24.7 per cent Neuchâtel, 9.9 per cent Zollikofen and 2.6 per cent Thun. In the rest of the market Zürich leads on 13.9 per cent ahead of Bern on 7.1 per cent. Candidates from the French- and Italian-speaking regions are therefore applying mostly to posts in the German-speaking part of the country, which is what turns the second-official-language requirement from a formality into a description of the working day.

And the entry level decides which grid reads your file. Almost a third of federal adverts are apprenticeships and a further tenth are internships or stages — together more than four in ten vacancies, against a little over eight per cent in the rest of the market. For a graduate internship what counts is the dated qualification and the first official-language line. For a management post the second active and the third passive official language count as well. Sending the same document against both grids is the mistake the five checks are there to prevent.

Rolling analysis of the adverts open on SwissJobs.app, as at 23 August 2026. Federal adverts are those posted by federal offices, general secretariats, state secretariats, the Federal Chancellery and federal courts, plus every advert whose application runs through the federal job portal. Apprenticeships and internships are excluded on both sides for the language comparisons.

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What our job index says about the Swiss market

Computed live from our own index, not quoted from a study. Shares only, as of today.

Language the advert is written in

Deutsch
60%
English
23%
Français
13%
Italiano
3%

Of adverts that state a language requirement, the share asking for

Deutsch
70%
English
43%
Français
21%
Italiano
3%

19% posted in the last 7 days · Largest markets: Zürich 18% · Bern 10% · Genève 5% · Basel 5%