How do I write a cover letter for a part-time role in Switzerland?
Updated:
In short
Convert the percentage into days and put both in the letter. «60%, Monday to Wednesday plus Friday morning, available from 1 October» answers the question every part-time advert is really asking: not whether you want the job, but when you are there. Swiss law thinks in days too — Art. 319 para. 2 of the Code of Obligations defines part-time work as work performed regularly «by hours, half-days or days». And 69.7 per cent of the reduced workloads advertised here fall on whole days of a five-day week.
That single conversion is what separates a Swiss part-time letter from the version most templates produce. The advert already offers the smaller workload, so there is nothing to argue for. Yet a large share of these letters open by defending part-time work in general — productivity in fewer hours, excellent organisation, focus. It is an answer to an objection nobody made, and it occupies the space where the one genuinely open fact belongs.
What is open is coverage. An employer buying 60 per cent of a role is buying particular days on which someone picks up the phone, staffs the shift, hands over. That is why a good part-time letter is shorter and more specific than a normal one: figure, pattern, start date in one sentence near the end, and everything before it about the work itself.
Share of adverts stating a workload whose upper bound is below 100 per cent that give a range (for example 40–60%) rather than one fixed figure, split by the language the advert is written in. Ongoing analysis of the Swiss adverts we have indexed, 23 August 2026. The French and English segments are much smaller than the German one; the Italian-language segment is too small to show.
- Do the arithmetic the employer would otherwise have to do. 69.7 per cent of advertised reduced workloads are 20, 40, 60 or 80 per cent — one, two, three or four whole days. The other 28.6 per cent are 10, 30, 50, 70 or 90 per cent, and every one of those hides a half day that has to sit somewhere. Say where.
- Use the market's own notation. 98.0 per cent of advertised reduced workloads are multiples of ten, and the figure normally sits in the job title, in the second half of it, in 89.4 per cent of cases. Offering 65 or 75 per cent asks the employer to map you onto a grid the company does not keep.
- If the advert names one figure, take it. 54.2 per cent of reduced adverts do, most often 80 per cent (32.2 per cent of them), then 60 (21.7), 50 (18.0) and 40 (8.3). English-language adverts are the most rigid of all: 90.0 per cent of them state a single figure rather than a range.
- If the advert names a range, pick a number inside it and say what that number covers. Ranges average 23.4 percentage points wide — more than a working day — and 47.0 per cent of them are exactly twenty points. Their floors cluster at 60 per cent (29.0 per cent of ranges), 40 (26.2), 20 (15.2) and 50 (15.0).
- Watch for the disguised part-time advert. Among adverts whose range tops out at 100 per cent, 20.3 per cent open at 60 per cent or below — «60–100%», «50–100%». They carry no part-time label and appear in no part-time filter, but the floor is a real offer, and applying at it needs no justification.
- Answer «flexible» with a pattern. Adverts with a reduced workload ask for flexibility almost twice as often as the rest — 23.2 against 12.8 per cent — because a part-filled role has less slack. Naming the movable day beats repeating the adjective.
- Expect the language question to be sharper here. Among adverts that state a language requirement at all, 84.9 per cent of the reduced-workload ones require German, against 66.9 per cent of the rest. Part-time work in Switzerland sits disproportionately in care, teaching, retail and administration — roles that talk to people locally all day.
- Mention a second job in a subordinate clause. Art. 321a para. 3 of the Code of Obligations bars paid work for third parties only where it breaches your duty of loyalty, «in particular if such work is in competition with his employer». The issue is the sector, never the existence of the second contract.
- Do not propose job sharing unless the advert names it. Roughly one advert in a thousand mentions it, and where it appears it is usually written into the title as an explicit invitation — mostly by hospitals and cantonal employers. Elsewhere, proposing it means proposing an employment model instead of applying for a job.
Why the percentage alone settles nothing
A Swiss employment percentage — the Beschäftigungsgrad — is an accounting figure, not a schedule. Sixty per cent can be three full days, five short ones, or three days one week and four the next. Payroll does not care. The hiring manager cares about nothing else, because a part-time vacancy is a hole in a week, not a spare budget line.
The Code of Obligations happens to speak in exactly those terms. Art. 319 para. 2 extends the definition of an individual employment contract to a contract «whereby an employee undertakes to work regularly in the employer's service by hours, half-days or days (part-time work)». Hours, half-days, days. The percentage is a market convention laid on top of that, and your letter is the place where the two meet.
Running the conversion takes a minute. On a five-day week, 20, 40, 60 and 80 per cent are whole days, and 69.7 per cent of advertised reduced workloads use exactly those figures. The remaining 28.6 per cent land on 10, 30, 50, 70 or 90 per cent, where a half day has to be placed. That half day — Wednesday afternoon or Friday morning — is the single most common unresolved detail in part-time hiring, and it costs you four words.
So the working sentence has three parts and no more: the figure, the pattern, the date. «80%, Monday to Thursday, from 1 November.» With that in the letter, an invitation is a scheduling matter. Without it, the invitation requires research first, and research is what busy people postpone.
Read which of the two adverts you are answering
Before you write a word, look at how the workload is written in the title. Among adverts whose stated workload tops out below 100 per cent, 54.2 per cent give one fixed figure and 45.8 per cent give a range. These are two different letters, and generic templates treat them identically.
A fixed figure is information about the employer, not an opening bid. «80%» means the rota already has four days in it and the fifth is spoken for. The letter repeats the figure verbatim and moves on. Countering with 60 because it suits you better converts an application into a request, and requests from strangers are the easiest thing in an inbox to leave unanswered.
A range is a genuine question addressed to you. Its floor is the least the employer can work with; its ceiling is the budget. Where the floor sits is informative: 29.0 per cent of ranges start at 60 per cent, 26.2 per cent at 40, 15.2 per cent at 20 and 15.0 per cent at 50. Your sentence says where inside that span you sit, plus half a sentence on what fits completely into that figure.
One national quirk matters for anyone applying in English. English-language adverts in Switzerland almost never use ranges: 90.0 per cent of the reduced ones state a single figure, against 42.6 per cent among German-language adverts. If you have been reading English postings, you have been trained on the strictest corner of the market, and a German advert reading «60–80%» is a more open invitation than it looks.
What «flexible» means in a part-time advert
Adverts with a reduced workload use the vocabulary of flexibility far more than the rest of the market: 23.2 per cent of them against 12.8 per cent. That gap is not decoration. A role staffed at 60 per cent has forty per cent less slack for illness, peaks and holidays, so movability is the thing being bought alongside the hours.
The reflex is to hand the word straight back — «I am very flexible with my hours» — which conveys precisely nothing. The useful answer names the edges of your pattern: which day can move, which cannot, how much notice you need, whether school holidays or late afternoons are workable. That is four extra words and it is the difference between a claim and a plan.
The opposite failure is a pattern with no give at all. A letter stating that you are available on Tuesdays and Thursdays only has imposed a condition before the work has been discussed. The usable middle is a fixed pattern with one named movable part.
There is a third kind of flexibility that adverts rarely name and interviewers always test: what happens on the days you are not there. One sentence on handover — what waits until Monday and what someone else must be able to pick up — answers the quiet worry behind every part-time hire, which is that the role is unattended three days in five.
Part-time postings are more often temporary than people assume
A pattern in the adverts changes what belongs in the letter. Reduced-workload postings carry the vocabulary of fixed terms, cover and casual work almost four times as often as the rest: 7.3 per cent against 1.9. On-call or hourly-paid wording appears in 2.2 per cent against 0.5, and explicit maternity or sickness cover in 1.8 against 0.6 per cent.
If the posting is cover, your immediate availability is the argument, not your five-year development inside the company. If it is permanent but you would also take cover work, say so in one clause: it costs nothing and enlarges the set of roles you are eligible for.
Something else worth checking before you write: 6.4 per cent of reduced-workload adverts come from an employer who is simultaneously advertising the same job title at full workload. In those cases the part-time role is not a separate invention but a slice of an existing one. Write about the slice — which parts of the job you take over completely — rather than about part-time work in the abstract.
Order matters. Duration, workload and start date belong together in the same late paragraph. Everything before it is about the work, and at 40 per cent that argument has to be denser than at full time, not thinner: there is less runway for learning the job.
Two jobs, one letter
Many part-time applications are one half of a plan to combine two contracts. Letters tend to treat this either as a confession or as a secret, and neither is necessary. The governing rule is Art. 321a para. 3 of the Code of Obligations: for the duration of the employment relationship the employee «must not perform any paid work for third parties in breach of his duty of loyalty, in particular if such work is in competition with his employer».
The test is the sector and the overlap, not the existence of a second job. Forty per cent in a medical practice and forty per cent in a school do not touch each other. Two roles in the same industry and the same catchment area are a question that will come up, and a letter that raises it first is in a better position than one that waits for it.
The form is a subordinate clause with three facts: size, field, place in the week. «I also work 40% in adult education, on Thursdays and Fridays.» No employer name, no history, no apology. It resolves in advance what would otherwise be the first item of the first interview.
What does not belong there is a promise about the other job's future. «I would of course give it up immediately» answers an unasked question and casts you as someone who drops commitments quickly. If the combination turns out to be a problem, that is a negotiation, not a letter.
Language, subject line and the last three lines
One figure should shape your preparation more than any phrasing advice. Among adverts that state a language requirement at all, 84.9 per cent of reduced-workload postings require German, against 66.9 per cent of everything else. Part-time hours in Switzerland concentrate in work that is done in front of patients, customers, pupils and colleagues — and that work is done in the local language.
In practice this means two things. If the advert is in German, the letter is in German, even if the company's working language is English; and if your German is at B1, one honest line about your level is worth more than a flawless English letter that answers a German advert.
The subject line is easier than it looks: copy the job title with its workload exactly as advertised. Only 33.3 per cent of adverts stating a reduced workload in the title also carry a part-time label, so the figure in the title is the real marker — and reusing it verbatim also makes your application findable in the employer's own system.
Close short. One sentence on availability with a date, one on the pattern, one offering a conversation. Skip the thanks for the opportunity to work part-time: the employer advertised it that way, and nothing is being granted to you. Then run a final test — delete every occurrence of the words «part-time» from your draft. If the figure, the days and the date are there, nothing is missing. If what remains is only general enthusiasm, the letter was about your workload instead of the job.
Market figures come from our ongoing analysis of the Swiss job adverts we have indexed, as of 23 August 2026. Workloads are read from the advert title as written; an advert counts as «reduced» when the highest figure it names is below 100 per cent or when it is flagged as part-time. Statements about wording refer to the title and to the shortened version of the advert text available to us, so an absent term means «not stated», not «not possible». We publish shares, never absolute collection sizes. Legal references are to the Swiss Code of Obligations as published on fedlex.admin.ch, in the official English translation, and are not legal advice.
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%