CV check: SwissJobs.app or Resume Worded — which checks against a Swiss advert?

What each check can do — read on 4 September 2026

The Resume Worded column comes from their own pages — home, Score My Resume, Targeted Resume, Get Pro, the score guide and the help centre — read on 4 September 2026. The flow was not walked through to the report itself; that needs an account. “Not stated” means we could not read it on their pages, not that it does not exist. Our column comes from the code and from four runs on the live site.

What the check costs

As at 4 September 2026, both pages read the same day. Our figures come from the code, not from marketing copy.

What a Swiss advert actually says — counted on 4 September 2026

The first row comes from our reading of the whole open stock; every other row from roughly 285 randomly drawn open adverts per posting language, apprenticeships and internships excluded. In the text, a language counts only when a level or requirement word stands in the same window — “good English is an advantage” counts, a company called “English Language School” does not.

The English-language Swiss advert is a different document

If you are reading this in English you are probably applying to Swiss jobs advertised in English — relocating, on a permit already, or commuting in. That corner of the market behaves unlike the rest of it, and the difference is measurable rather than atmospheric. We drew roughly 285 open adverts per posting language from our own index on 4 September 2026, apprenticeships excluded, and searched the full text for the requirements that set a threshold rather than supply a keyword.

The Swiss vocational qualification is the clearest split. A German advert names an EFZ, an HF or FH degree or a federal certificate 32.4 per cent of the time, a French one names a CFC or an ES/HES qualification 38.4 per cent of the time — and an English one names anything of the sort in 1.1 per cent of cases. The Pensum goes the same way: 29.6 per cent of German adverts state the workload in per cent, against 5.6 per cent of English ones.

What does not disappear is language, and it comes in three layers. Across the whole open stock, 92.5 per cent of English-language Swiss adverts carry a language requirement of some kind. Only 40.7 per cent write it into the advert text, and two or more languages appear in 26.7 per cent — usually German plus English, sometimes French. A CEFR level is stated in 2.8 per cent. A tool that matches words between two documents sees the middle layer only, which is exactly the requirement most likely to decide a Swiss application.

What Resume Worded checks, in its own words

Score My Resume reads the CV on its own: 30+ checks, up to around 40 depending on career level, grouped into impact and quantified results, brevity and style, growth and leadership signals, and ATS readability. It returns a number out of 100, and their score guide sets the bar at 85 and above. The checks are weighted by hiring-manager importance rather than averaged, and the same file is meant to return the same number every time.

Targeted Resume is the part this question is about. You paste a posting and get a Relevancy Score. Their own explanation of it is more careful than the usual keyword-matching pitch: it weights required qualifications above preferred skills and checks whether the experience matches, with above 80 counting as well matched. There is also a scanner that shows the text an applicant tracking system would extract, a cover-letter generator and a LinkedIn profile review.

Two sentences on their site matter more for a Swiss application than the whole feature list. Above the upload box: “English resumes in PDF or DOCX only. Max 2MB file size.” And in their ATS help article: no tables, single column, and no embedded images, diagrams or photographs. That is sound advice for a US resume. A Swiss application photo falls under it.

What our check returned against a real posting

We built a deliberately mediocre invented CV — Marc Bühler, Swiss commercial apprenticeship, ten years of accounting at small firms, duties rather than results, “Languages: German, English” with no levels, no photo — and checked it without signing in against a genuine open advert from our index: Finance & Accounting Specialist, 40 to 50 per cent, a manufacturer in central Switzerland. The posting asks for a federal certificate in finance and accounting (the eidgenössischer Fachausweis, a Swiss vocational qualification above apprenticeship level), “very good German (C1) and good English (B2), French an advantage”, and experience with Intrastat and EC sales list filings.

Back came seven scored dimensions — keyword and ATS match 52, hard skills 48, soft skills 62, motivation 18, environment fit 44, unique selling point 20, evidenced outcomes 15 — nine graded ATS elements from the contact block to date formatting, and a table of the posting’s terms with the frequency of each in the advert. Matched: Abacus, SAP, VAT filings, year-end close, accounts payable and receivable. Missing: Intrastat, EC sales lists, intercompany reconciliation, group reporting — and the federal certificate itself.

The part a coverage score cannot produce was the three Swiss fields. Work eligibility came back as met. Languages came back as partly met, quoting the posting: German and English are listed but without levels, while the role asks for C1 and B2. The photo field came back as missing, noting that in Switzerland an application photo is standard — the exact opposite of the American guidance.

We then sent the same CV again with the levels written out (German C1/C2, English B2, French A2) and a photo line. The photo field flipped to met. The language field stayed at partly met but changed its reason: German and English now clear the requirement, while French at A2 sits below what the role’s international interfaces would want. The check is holding a level against a demanded level, not looking for a word.

Where Resume Worded is better — and one number that counts against us

Four things they do that we do not. They review your LinkedIn profile, and Swiss recruiters search there first like everybody else — we offer nothing at all on that. They hold 250+ sample lines from resumes that led to interviews, which beats any checker when you are staring at an empty bullet. They give feedback line by line. And their check is useful with no posting in hand, because it judges the writing itself.

The uncomfortable part is ours. Resume Worded sells a reproducible score: the same file returns the same number, so you can revise, re-upload and measure progress. We sent the same CV against the same advert three times on the same day and got 37, 30 and 34. Seven points of drift with nothing changed. If you measure a five-point improvement in our tool, you have measured nothing.

What was stable across all three runs was everything else: the same three Swiss fields with the same grades, the same missing terms, the same four priority fixes. So the useful way to read our report is the list, not the number — and if a comparable score over time is what you want, that is a reason to use Resume Worded, not a reason to use us.

Where the American rule breaks in Switzerland

The photo is the visible one. US guidance is unanimous against it, and Resume Worded’s ATS article names embedded images as a parsing problem. Swiss convention expects one, and 11.5 per cent of German-language adverts ask for the full application documents outright, several with the words “with photo”. Following the American rule here removes something the reader is looking for.

Length is the quiet one. Brevity is a whole check group at Resume Worded, calibrated on a resume that fits one page. A Swiss dossier runs to two or three pages because it is continuous and carries the Arbeitszeugnisse — the employer references every Swiss employee receives on leaving. What is a deduction there is the norm here.

And the document itself is different. What gets sent in Switzerland is not one file but a dossier: CV, motivation letter, references, diplomas. A check that knows only the one file says nothing about the folder it sits in — and the line that decides half the application for a non-Swiss candidate, “Permit B, no sponsorship required”, appears on no American checklist. Only 2.1 per cent of English-language adverts here spell the permit condition out, which does not mean it is not being asked.

Which one to use

Use Resume Worded if your CV is in English and you are applying to an international employer, in Switzerland or anywhere else. That is the market it was built for, and our own count supports it: only 13.3 per cent of English-language Swiss adverts carry one of the thresholds a US-built checker cannot weigh. Use it too if you want your LinkedIn profile reviewed, or a score you can compare week to week.

Use SwissJobs.app if the advert is in German, French or Italian, if you are applying to one specific posting, and if the text names things you either hold or do not: a federal qualification, a language level, a workload, a permit. The check starts without an account, the advert comes out of our search instead of your clipboard, and the report arrives in the language you work in.

And if you have no particular posting in front of you and simply want to know whether your CV is well written, the Swiss-advert question does not arise. Both tools do much the same job then — Resume Worded closer to the individual sentence, us closer to Swiss convention.