How formal should a Swiss cover letter be?

Formal or informal address in a cover letter

The formal Sie is the default. The exception is not industry or age but what the advert itself does — the employer has already chosen the register.

English removes the pronoun problem and moves it to the salutation

In German, French and Italian, the writer must choose a form of address before the first sentence exists: Sie or du, vous or tu, Lei or tu. English has one «you» and therefore no such decision. That is why the question «how formal should my letter be» sounds simpler in English than it is — the decision has not disappeared, it has moved.

It has moved into three places. The salutation, which is either named or generic and either surname-based or first-name-based. The closing, which is either a greeting formula or a sign-off. And the register of the body, which in English is signalled by contractions, exclamation marks, adjectives and idiom rather than by grammar.

SECO's own English page makes the frame explicit. It describes the cover letter as your «personal business card» and says it «should usually contain the following information: your postal address, the company's postal address, date, subject heading, opening salutation, closing greeting and signature». The salutation is listed among postal addresses and dates — a field to be filled, not a stylistic opportunity.

The same page exists in German, French and Italian with the same seven fields: «Absenderadresse, Empfängeradresse, Datum, Betreffzeile, Anrede, Grussformel und Unterschrift», «adresse de l'expéditeur, adresse du destinataire, date, objet, civilité, salutations et signature», «indirizzo del mittente, indirizzo del destinatario, data, oggetto, appellativo, formula di saluto e firma». Four languages, one skeleton. If your letter has those seven parts and a plain body, it is formal enough in every language region of the country.

Who is actually reading your English letter

Of the adverts in our index whose language is unambiguous, 56.1 percent are in German, 27.2 percent in English, 13.1 percent in French and 2.2 percent in Italian. English is the second language of Swiss recruiting, not a separate market inside it — and the people reading English adverts are usually the same people reading the German ones.

The overlap is measurable. 30.4 percent of English-language adverts in our index come from employers who also post adverts in German, and 41.1 percent of all language-identified adverts come from employers who advertise in more than one language. Among employers with a known advert language, 14.1 percent publish in at least two.

That matters for tone in a specific way. A reader whose professional default is the formal Sie will read your «Dear Anna, I'd love to chat about this role» through that default. Nothing in English marks it as informal grammatically, but the effect is the same as a German applicant duzing a stranger: a familiarity that was not offered.

The reverse mistake is rarer but real. Applicants who have been told that Switzerland is formal sometimes produce a letter of nineteenth-century politeness — «I take the liberty of submitting my candidature for your esteemed consideration». Swiss business German is direct, and so is Swiss business English. Formality here means correct fields and a neutral register, not elaboration.

One practical shortcut: if the advert names a contact person and gives a phone number, call. Thirty seconds on the phone tells you whether this is a house where people introduce themselves by first name, and that answers the register question better than any rule.

What the job title tells you — and what it does not

Job titles almost never address anybody. In our index, 0.3 percent of English-language titles contain «you» or «your», 0.1 percent of German titles contain any address pronoun, and Italian titles contain none at all. If you are looking for the register, the title is the wrong place; the responsibilities section is the right one.

What the title does carry is a notation habit, and that habit gives away which language a house thinks in. 13.4 percent of English-language titles in our index append a gender marker. The two most common are «(f/m/d)» at 4.6 percent and «(m/f/d)» at 3.4 percent — but 2.5 percent use «(m/w/d)», with the German letters for männlich and weiblich, inside an otherwise English title.

The third letter is the tell. Among English-language titles that use a slash marker, 96 percent carry a third letter, «d» for divers or «x» — a convention that comes from German-language job advertising and has no native English equivalent. A title reading «Senior Data Engineer (f/m/d)» was written by someone whose template language is German, whatever the rest of the advert says.

Compare the language regions and the difference is stark: 70.1 percent of German-language titles carry a marker, 30.3 percent of French, 13.4 percent of English, 9.2 percent of Italian. The German-language market has 33 distinct slash spellings in circulation; the Italian-language market has six, and every one of them is borrowed from another language.

For your letter, the practical consequence is small but worth getting right. Quote the job title exactly as advertised in your subject line, because that is what attaches your application to one vacancy — but drop the marker. «Application: Senior Data Engineer, Zurich, available from 1 November» is a subject line. «Senior Data Engineer (f/m/d)» is a copy-paste.

Salutation, closing and the small things that get noticed

Use the name when you have it. Swiss guidance in all three national languages puts the named salutation first and the generic one second: berufsberatung.ch offers «Sehr geehrte Frau Muster / Sehr geehrter Herr Muster» and keeps «Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren» for «when you do not know the name of the responsible person». In English the equivalent pair is «Dear Ms Meier» and «Dear Sir or Madam».

«To whom it may concern» is worse than «Dear Sir or Madam» in this market — it reads as a form letter, which is precisely the impression a cover letter exists to avoid. If the advert names a department but no person, address the department: «Dear Human Resources team» is acceptable and honest.

For the closing, «Kind regards» and «Yours sincerely» are both safe. Avoid «Best!», «Cheers» and «Thanks a lot» in a first letter. Swiss templates close with «Freundliche Grüsse», «Meilleures salutations» and «Cordiali saluti», all of which are neutral rather than warm, and English should sit at the same temperature.

Two spelling details give away a letter written for another country. Swiss German writes «Grüsse» with a double s and never uses the ß — if any German phrase appears in your letter, use the Swiss spelling. And Swiss dates are written 1 November 2026 or 01.11.2026, not November 1st.

Finally, decide the register once and hold it. The most common failure is not choosing wrong but drifting: a formal salutation, a chatty second paragraph copied from another application, a formal closing. Read your letter for register alone before you send it, and cut whichever sentence does not belong.

If you switch languages, the answer switches with you

If the advert is in German and you answer in German, the rule is: mirror the advert's form in the body, but keep the salutation formal. German-language adverts frequently address the reader as du, and answering du in the body is correct when they do. The salutation still reads «Sehr geehrte Frau Meier» — the informal opening «Hallo Anna» belongs only where the advert names a contact by first name and uses du throughout.

If the advert is in French, use vous. The French-language template on orientation.ch prescribes «Madame,», «Monsieur,» or «Madame, Monsieur,» when the recipient is unknown, and closes with «Meilleures salutations». Tutoiement in a French-language application letter is essentially not done, even where the advert is written informally.

If the advert is in Italian, use Lei. The Italian template on orientamento.ch prescribes «Gentile signora Bernasconi / Egregio signor Bernasconi», with «Gentili signore, egregi signori» when the name is unknown, and closes with «Cordiali saluti».

The trap to avoid is translation of register. A German advert that duzt you has not authorised «tu» in a French letter to the same employer, and it has certainly not authorised «Hi Anna» in English. Register is a property of the language you are writing in, and it resets each time you switch.

One more asymmetry worth remembering, whichever language you land in: being slightly too formal costs you nothing measurable, while being too familiar costs you the reader's first impression. When the advert gives you no signal at all — and plenty give none, because they are written impersonally throughout — take the formal option and spend your attention on the content instead.