Your CV in another language

Where French is the working language of the market can be counted. Among adverts on SwissJobs.app whose language is detectable, French accounts for 69.2 % in Vaud, 65.0 % in Neuchâtel, 64.5 % in Fribourg and 49.5 % in Geneva. German has almost vanished from Geneva and Vaud adverts (1.0 % and 1.8 %). English has not: 49.5 % in Geneva, and 20.3 % in Valais, where French is at 41.5 %. Nationwide, French is the third advertising language at 14.1 %, behind German at 59.4 % and English at 23.9 %.

That leaves a real decision in exactly the places people assume are settled. In Geneva, French and English are almost level, so the advert — not the canton, and not the company name — decides. One consolation for anyone weighing the effort: a French-language advert stays online noticeably longer, a median of 30 days against 18 days for a German one.

• Take the official French block list as your structure. The French edition of arbeit.swiss lists it: «titre “Curriculum vitae”, données personnelles avec photo vous mettant en valeur, activités professionnelles précédentes, écoles fréquentées, formations et formations continues suivies, connaissances linguistiques, connaissances ou activités particulières, centres d’intérêt et loisirs, références», in reverse chronological order. Copy that order and the document is already Swiss-French.
• Mirror the advert’s job title, minus the gender marking. 26.3 % of French advert titles carry «(H/F)» or «(h/f/d)» and 13.6 % use an inclusive or double form such as «Cheffe ou chef de projets», «animateur·trice» or «chargé(e)». That is the employer writing about an open role. On your own CV the line carries the single form that applies to you — «Décolleteur CNC», «Cheffe de projet» — with no brackets.
• Write the qualification the way the federal system writes it. The official vocational-training portal is explicit: «Les porteurs de ces titres ne sont pas autorisés à les compléter par la mention “diplômé-e” ou “dipl.”. Une horticultrice peut se nommer “horticultrice CFC” ou “horticultrice AFP”.» The abbreviation matters here: 18.8 % of French adverts name the CFC, more than the share of German adverts naming its German equivalent (10 %).
• Give every role a «taux d’activité». 18.5 % of French advert titles state a workload, 8 % of them a range such as «80-100 %». A French CV answers in kind: «Assistante de direction, taux d’activité 80 %, 03/2021 – aujourd’hui». French typesetting puts a space before the percent sign; «80%» without it is one of the tells of a translated document.
• Grade the language line by the CEFR, in French letters. The Vaud guidance asks for exactly that: «Langues : indiquer le niveau CECR (A, B ou C)». The market backs it up — 95.4 % of French adverts that state a language requirement want French at professional or native level. German is asked for by 28.2 %, and in 61.5 % of those cases only at conversational or basic level, so an honest «Allemand B2» is worth more than an inflated claim.
• Get the accents right, every time. 60.4 % of French advert titles contain at least one accented character; a document that drops them reads as machine output. The Vaud leaflet sets the bar for the CV as «Orthographe irréprochable», and for the covering letter it advises having it read by «une personne maîtrisant le français» — worth doing for both, even when your spoken French is fluent.
• Choose the length for the reader, not the maximum. arbeit.swiss states «Le curriculum vitae ne doit pas dépasser trois pages», while the canton of Vaud asks for «1 à 2 pages A4» with «typographie (arial, calibri, helvetica, par exemple)». For a Romandie employer, follow the cantonal, shorter rule: three pages is a ceiling, not a target.
• Bundle the attachments in the French order. «Les certificats de travail doivent figurer dans un unique document PDF, dans l’ordre chronologique, le plus récent en premier», says the same federal page, and for referees: «indiquez que vos références peuvent être fournies sur demande». Same architecture as an English application, different vocabulary — and the vocabulary is what the reader is scanning for.

Market figures were counted on 22 August 2026 from the adverts then live on SwissJobs.app; the shares of adverts by written language were recounted on 27 September 2026. Language shares per canton are calculated over adverts whose advertising language could be detected; adverts without a detectable language are excluded. Cantons are assigned from the place name, and Jura rests on a very small base. Language requirements are measured over the adverts that state one at all, and occupational families come from word patterns in the job title — read them as orders of magnitude, not as industry statistics. The statements about block names, length, title usage and attachments are quoted from the arbeit.swiss, canton of Vaud and vocational-training pages linked below.