CV check: SwissJobs.app or the Enhancv resume checker?

Feature comparison

As of 4 September 2026. "not stated" means it could not be read on their own site — not "does not exist". Our rows come from the code (lib/stripe/trialConfig.ts) and from walking the live flow, not from marketing copy.

Pricing side by side

As of 4 September 2026. "not stated" means it could not be read on their own site — not "does not exist". Our rows come from the code (lib/stripe/trialConfig.ts) and from walking the live flow, not from marketing copy.

The disagreement is about what kind of document this is

A Swiss application is a Bewerbungsdossier, not a resume. It is normally two to three pages, it conventionally carries a photo and a date of birth, it states languages as CEFR levels rather than as "fluent", it names the Pensum — the workload as a percentage, because 80 % posts are ordinary here — and for anyone without a Swiss passport it states the permit (B, C, G or L). Arbeitszeugnisse, the written employer references every Swiss employee collects on leaving a job, belong with it.

An international resume checker is built for a different object. That is not a flaw in it; it is the market it was written for. But it means the two tools can look at the same PDF and disagree about almost everything, and the disagreement is worth seeing in detail before you trust either number.

So we built a plausible Swiss CV that does not belong to anyone — a nurse in Bern with nineteen years of experience, a date of birth, "Schweizer Bürgerin", a desired Pensum of 80–100 %, languages at native, B2, B1 and A2, and continuing education — exported it as a clean one-column PDF, and uploaded it to both.

What Enhancv checked: 27 things, four of them about the job

Enhancv publishes its list, which is more than most tools do: 27 checks in seven categories, named on the page. Six ATS essentials, three on sections, five on content, four on job tailoring, four recruiter red flags, two on bias and discrimination, three on seniority and impact.

Four of the 27 involve the advert: hard skills match, soft skills match, action verbs, tailored job title. The other 23 are properties of the file. And the advert is explicitly optional — the page says the checker reads your CV "against a job description, if you provide one, or based on signals we know from evaluating and researching hundreds of ATS platforms".

On our upload, with no advert given, the tailoring category header read "??%" and the four checks under it were blank. The overall 79 was printed anyway. That is the structural point of this comparison: a number that can be produced without the job cannot be a statement about your fit for that job. It is a statement about your file.

It is also worth counting what "free" bought. Ten checks came back with a finding; thirteen were labelled "Locked", including the file-name check, section order, credibility, interview risks, peer benchmarking, LinkedIn match, age and date bias, employment gaps, career progression, skills evidence and leadership signals. The locked categories still showed percentages — "HR RED FLAGS 70 %", "DISCRIMINATION 63 %" — so the free score includes findings you are not shown. Enhancv describes the same boundary in its FAQ: the paid version goes deeper, "including inadvertent age bias, handling employment gaps, showcasing clearly career progression, skills evidence and leadership signals".

Three findings that only make sense for a resume

Enhancv shows you how an applicant tracking system re-assembles your CV, which is the most instructive single screen in either tool and something we do not have. In that view, our line "Wunschpensum: 80–100 %" had been filed under WEITERBILDUNGEN — continuing education. The most Swiss line in the document landed in the wrong section. The stated parse rate was 90 % read, 10 % missed.

Under contact information: "You are missing essential contact information: LinkedIn." Under design: "Your resume is using a generic layout and has little chance of standing out." Both are sensible rules for a US resume market. In Switzerland the layout being plain is not a problem, and a LinkedIn URL is common but not a missing mandatory field.

The clearest case is the category called "Bias & discrimination", which checks age and date bias and employment gaps. In the US and in Germany, a date of birth on a CV is treated as an avoidable risk. In Switzerland the date of birth and the photo are conventional, and our own scoring instructions say in as many words that a photo must never be marked down merely because the extracted text does not mention it. Run both tools and you will get contradictory advice at exactly this line — and for an application in Zurich, Bern or Basel the Swiss reading is the correct one.

One observation we will not lean on: the spelling check reported two issues on a German-language CV and displayed the word "projekts" three times with the English suggestions "projects" and "crickets" — a word that appears nowhere in the file we uploaded. Whether that is a free-tier placeholder or a misfire is not visible from outside. We record it because we saw it, and we build no argument on it.

What changed when the advert was in the room

In our tool the job is step one and the CV is step two. You either pick a specific advert — searched in our own index or pasted in — or you explicitly choose the Swiss standards run. Only then does the file get uploaded.

Without an advert the report was general: motivation 22 out of 100, because the dossier never says why this person is moving; differentiator 35, because the combination of wound-care certification, practice training and a digitisation project is never stated as a differentiator; and length flagged as "about one page, at the lower end of the Swiss norm of two to three pages". Total 57.

With an advert pasted in — one we wrote ourselves for the test, a long-term-care nursing post — the same observations turned into different sentences. The report named RAI/BESA and the documentation software because the advert named them; it asked for fall prevention and quality management because they were listed as duties; and the language line stopped reading "solid for German-speaking Switzerland" and started reading "German native (C1 required), French B2 (named as an advantage) — both requirements met". Total 68. The number went up because the yardstick got narrower: measured against one advert, less is missing than measured against a complete Swiss ideal.

A third run showed the limit of that. We picked a real advert from our index, a nursing post in Lucerne, and no text was stored for it. The report demoted itself and said so in its own header — "Lucerne · Swiss standards" — rather than reporting a fit score against nothing.

If you are applying in English, the check is only half the question

People arriving in Switzerland tend to assume the language question is settled once the CV is in English. Our own index says otherwise. Of the open adverts that state any language requirement, 47,1 % ask for English — and of those, 55,4 % ask for another language as well. The commonest companion is German, in 45,5 % of the adverts that want English; French appears in 20,0 % of them.

A document-only check cannot see any of that, because the requirement is not in your document — it is in the advert. It can tell you your English is spelled correctly. It cannot tell you that this particular employer wants German at professional level alongside it, which is the thing that decides whether your application is considered at all.

The same data explains when a document-only check is genuinely enough. Among adverts stating a requirement there are 277 distinct language-and-level combinations; the most common single one, German at professional level, covers 32,3 %, and it takes 18 combinations to reach 90 %. But the spread is very uneven by occupation. In nursing there are only four language combinations at all and German alone covers 95,6 % — one target, so a document check loses very little. In commercial and administrative roles there are 14, and the largest covers only 33,5 %. The more scattered your field, the less a single score about "your CV" can mean.

Who should use which

Use the Enhancv resume checker if you want a fast, free document check; if what you need is a proofread; if you are applying outside Switzerland, where its yardstick is the right one and ours is wrong; or if you simply want to see how a tracking system takes your file apart. Its 27 checks are listed openly, its free report needs no account, and paying six months up front makes its PRO tier cheaper per month than our CHF 15.

Use our CV check if you are applying to a specific Swiss advert. Then it matters that the job comes first, that the permit line, the CEFR levels and the photo are each graded, that the report comes back in your language, and that you can upload a photo or a screenshot of your CV rather than only a PDF or DOCX. Without an account you get one check per browser; a free account keeps the report, and the AI improvement, the builder and downloads run on a seven-day trial and then CHF 15 a month or CHF 95 a year.

If you want both, the order is obvious: check against the advert and fix the content first, then proofread last. And keep Enhancv’s own caveat in view for both numbers — there is no real ATS score. Two checklists, two summaries, no prediction.