How do I write a cover letter after being laid off?
Updated:
In short
Write it forward. One factual sentence with a date does the whole job: what ended, when it ends, and when you are free — then straight back to the role. Put that sentence after your strongest argument, not in the opening line. Do not apologise, do not explain at length, do not blame anyone. In Swiss hiring a dismissal is a dated fact, not a stain you have to talk your way out of.
The common mistake is not hiding it but dwelling on it. Spend three paragraphs on the circumstances and the loss becomes the subject of the letter, while the job becomes a footnote. Leave it out entirely and the gap surfaces at interview instead, where it reads larger than it is. One sentence settles both at once.
There is also a structural reason for confidence. More than half the market you are writing into is carried by employers who hire continuously rather than once: 54.0 per cent of the adverts we hold come from employers who have both an advert posted in the last fourteen days and one still open from more than forty-five days ago. At those addresses a no is rarely a permanent no.
Share of the adverts analysed, split by the posting behaviour of the employer behind them. Ongoing analysis, August 2026; figures rounded.
- One sentence, not a paragraph: fact, date, move on. Anything longer shifts the letter away from the employer and onto you.
- It does not go first. Place it after your strongest argument, usually in the second or third paragraph, next to the availability line where timing belongs anyway.
- Ask for the reason in writing. Under Art. 335 para. 2 of the Code of Obligations, the party giving notice must state the reasons in writing if the other party asks. Reuse that wording and your letter, your certificate and your interview all say the same thing.
- The work certificate is the cross-check. Art. 330a gives you the right to request, at any time, a certificate covering the nature and duration of the employment and your performance and conduct — or, if you expressly ask, one limited to nature and duration.
- If it was a collective redundancy, name it. The term is defined in Art. 335d, the procedure in Art. 335f and 335g, including written notification to the cantonal employment office. That is a process, not a verdict on you.
- A dispute over the dismissal belongs elsewhere. Art. 336b requires a written objection to the party who gave notice, by the end of the notice period at the latest, and an action within 180 days of the end of employment. That letter goes to your former employer, not your next one.
The sentence, and the three words that ruin it
The sentence has three parts and no more: what happened, effective when, available from when. "My role was cut in a restructuring effective 31 October; I am available from 1 November." The question is answered before anyone asks it, and the letter carries on.
What ruins it is adjectives. "Unfortunately", "unexpectedly", "after many good years" — each one invites a follow-up question and moves the register from report to justification. English adds a trap the German does not: "let go", "laid off" and "made redundant" all carry an emotional charge in a Swiss letter that the neutral "the employment was terminated by the employer" avoids entirely.
For the common situations there is a usable version of each. Position cut: "My position was eliminated with effect from 30 September." Employer-side notice without a reorganisation: "The employment was terminated by the employer and ends on 31 December." Fixed-term contract: "My fixed-term contract runs to the end of the year." Garden leave: "I have been released from my duties and could start immediately." That last one is the only case where the dismissal becomes an advantage in the letter — use it plainly.
Placement decides the effect. In the first line, the dismissal becomes the headline of your application. In the second or third paragraph, immediately before you talk about the start date, it is one administrative detail among several. Same words, different letter.
Use the wording your employer has to stand behind
You are not the only source for this story. The work certificate tells it too, referees tell it on the phone, and the interviewer will ask. Where those versions diverge, you create precisely the impression you were trying to avoid — not because of the dismissal, but because of the discrepancy.
So take a step almost nobody takes and ask for the reasons in writing. Art. 335 para. 2 of the Code of Obligations is one line long: the party giving notice must state the reasons in writing if the other party requests it. What arrives is the version your former employer has to defend to third parties as well. Copying that phrasing into your letter costs nothing and makes your account checkable.
The second piece is the certificate itself, the Arbeitszeugnis, and it is the part internationals most often underestimate. Art. 330a lets you request at any time a certificate covering the nature and duration of the employment together with your performance and conduct; on express request it is limited to nature and duration. Swiss recruiters expect it in the file, read it closely, and notice when it does not match your letter.
In practice: read what the company writes before you write anything yourself. If the certificate says "for economic reasons", do not write "for strategic reasons". Aligning the two is not cosmetics. It is the difference between a question that is finished in ten seconds at interview and one that takes ten minutes.
A collective redundancy is a procedure, not a verdict
Collective redundancy is one of the few cases where the statute carries the weight of your sentence for you. Art. 335d defines it by thresholds: notices given within thirty days for reasons unrelated to the person of the employee, affecting at least ten employees in establishments with more than twenty and fewer than a hundred staff, at least ten per cent in establishments with a hundred to under three hundred, and at least thirty in larger ones.
The decisive clause is "for reasons unrelated to the person of the employee". It is in the law, not in your letter — which is exactly why you can be brief. "I lost my job in the layoffs" is not needed. "The position was cut in a collective redundancy effective 31 July" is complete.
The procedure makes the statement verifiable. Under Art. 335f the employer must consult the employee representation or the employees, and must give them in writing the reasons, the number of employees affected, the number usually employed and the period over which the notices are to be given, with a copy to the cantonal employment office. Art. 335g adds a written notification of every intended collective redundancy to that office and provides that the employment ends no earlier than thirty days after it.
For your letter this is a relief. The event is on record, often in the press, and the person reading you may already know about it. A detailed account would be duplication. Half a sentence is enough, and the rest of the page goes back to the job you actually want.
The availability line, and why it goes last
What is striking about the adverts is how little they say about timing. In the German-language advert texts we hold, a start date appears in 0.3 per cent and the word availability in 0.4 per cent; the notice period appears in none of them. The question keeping you awake is almost never asked in writing. It still has to be answered — by you, voluntarily, and therefore on your terms.
That is the argument for putting availability at the end rather than the front. First the reason this role fits what you have already done; then, in one line, the date. "Available from 1 December, and able to attend an interview at short notice." If you can start now, say exactly that: immediate availability is the one thing an employed competitor cannot offer.
During your notice period that flexibility is a legal entitlement, not a favour. Art. 329 para. 3 obliges the employer to grant the employee, once notice has been given, the time required to look for another job. You do not have to schedule interviews into your holiday, and you do not have to ask for indulgence in the letter. A clear offer is enough.
Give a date rather than a mood. "By arrangement" sounds accommodating but forces the other side to write back before they can plan anything. A concrete date, with "earlier possible" appended if that is true, is shorter and cheaper for both of you.
Where the letter is worth sending
After a dismissal the scarce resource is not motivation, it is time for good letters. So sort the recipients by how they post. In our records 54.0 per cent of adverts come from employers who have something fresh and something older open at the same time — a running need rather than a one-off gap. 26.0 per cent are fresh only, 13.2 per cent older only, and the small remainder sits between.
The same picture from the other side: employers who posted something in the last seven days are just under a quarter of all employers, yet they hold 61.7 per cent of all open adverts. Among employers with at least two adverts, the median distance between their oldest and newest is thirty-eight days, and a good fifth of them span ninety days or more.
For your letter this has two consequences. First, a rejection from a continuous hirer tells you very little: something new is likely within weeks, and a polite second contact then is timing rather than pestering. Second, at an employer with exactly one advert — 45.4 per cent of all employers, but only 7.0 per cent of all adverts — that single letter decides everything, and the extra half hour is worth spending.
This is worth one more note for international applicants. English-language adverts are 27.6 per cent of everything we hold with a detectable language, and within that English segment 49.3 per cent of the adverts come from continuously hiring employers. Writing in English does not shrink the market as much as people fear; it does concentrate it into employers who hire often, which is the segment where a second approach pays.
What has no place in this letter
An ongoing dispute stays out. If you consider the dismissal abusive, there is a separate route: Art. 336b para. 1 requires a written objection to the party who gave notice, at the latest by the end of the notice period, and para. 2 sets a limit of 180 days from the end of employment for bringing an action. Both are addressed to your former employer. In a cover letter to the next one they have no recipient and no purpose.
Judgements about people stay out too. A line about the manager who "ran the department into the ground" answers no question the advert asked, and mainly describes how you will talk about this employer later. Hints work the same way; they are only harder to rebut.
The administrative half of your situation stays out as well. Whether you have signed on with the RAV, how many applications you have to record each month, which fund pays you: that is your relationship with the unemployment insurance, not the employer's business. It has its own deadlines, and nobody else will keep them for you.
What is left is a letter about the job with one line about your date. That is how the other side will read it: as an application in which an administrative detail happens to be a dismissal. It is the least dramatic solution available, and it is the reason nobody asks a second question.
What people report
Unemployment-insurance practitioners writing publicly repeat that suspension days at the start of unemployment usually come from applying too late or too little, not from the reason for the dismissal.
Recurring pattern across thirteen posts about dismissal within a collection of 408 public Swiss labour-market posts gathered in July and August 2026.
Several specialists argue that assessments should turn on the quality of each application rather than a monthly count, describing the familiar ten-to-twelve target as outdated.
Aggregated from the same public posts and reported as a pattern, not as a quotation from any individual.
People who have been through it describe a named introduction as far more useful than a general offer of help, which is the practical case for approaching employers who hire repeatedly.
Recurring observation in the same public posts by Swiss specialists and affected professionals, July and August 2026.
Market figures come from our ongoing analysis of the Swiss job adverts we hold, as at August 2026. "Continuously hiring" means the employer has at least one advert posted within the last fourteen days and at least one still open that is more than forty-five days old; the four shares in the chart together cover the whole set of adverts carrying a publication date, with rounding. The counts for start date and availability refer to the German-language advert texts, which we hold in condensed form, so an absent term means "not emphasised" rather than "never mentioned". We publish shares, never absolute totals. Legal references are to the Swiss Code of Obligations as published on fedlex.admin.ch and are not legal advice; for duties towards the unemployment insurance, your RAV is the authority.
Sources
Related questions
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%