Do I need to put references on my Swiss CV?

References on a Swiss CV

In Switzerland the written employment reference does most of the work references do elsewhere. "References available on request" is an Anglo formula and reads as evasive here.

The provision that names references — and the two acts behind it

Look for a legal basis for the reference line on a CV and you will not find one, because none exists. A CV is not a document with prescribed content. No rule requires a section, none forbids one, and none attaches a consequence to leaving anything out.

One provision in federal law does name references, and it sits in the Employment Services Ordinance. Article 19 is headed "Data protection" and opens with the principle that an agency may in principle process data on job seekers and vacancies only with the consent of the persons concerned. Paragraph 1 then lists three cases where consent is "in particular" required: passing the data to other branches or to legally independent business partners; obtaining opinions and references on job seekers; and passing the data beyond the country's borders.

Behind the ordinance stands Article 7 paragraph 3 of the Employment Services Act, which states the rule in one sentence: the agency may process data on job seekers and vacancies only to the extent and for as long as the data are necessary for the placement, and must keep those data secret. Together they form a permission with a condition attached, not a piece of etiquette.

The Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner lists exactly these two acts, alongside the Code of Obligations, as the legal bases for processing data in a recruitment procedure. So the answer to "do I need to" is that the duty falls on whoever wants to collect the information, not on the person applying.

In writing, and revocable at any time

Paragraph 4 of the same article is the part almost no career guide mentions, and in practice it is the most useful: consent must be given in writing, may be withdrawn at any time, and the person concerned must be made aware of that right.

Three consequences follow whenever a private agency is involved. The consent has a form — a nod across the table does not satisfy the ordinance. It is not final; a withdrawal needs no reason and no notice period. And the agency has to tell you about the right to withdraw on its own initiative, not only if you ask.

Where you apply directly to an employer with no agency in between, that formal requirement does not apply. The Commissioner states the principle more generally there: if a prospective employer wants to obtain information from third parties — from a current or former employer, for example — it must first obtain the applicant's consent. The difference between the two routes is therefore not whether consent is needed, but whether it has to exist on paper.

Two acts with no English version — read the German, French or Italian

This point is specific to anyone reading in English, and it is worth stating plainly. Fedlex publishes the consolidated Employment Services Act and the Employment Services Ordinance in German, French and Italian only. There is no English realisation of either. The Data Protection Act, by contrast, does have an English text on Fedlex, and the Commissioner's guidance on the phases of the employment relationship is published in English as well.

So an English-language reader can read the general data-protection framework in English, but not the two instruments that actually contain the word "references". The quotations in this answer are our renderings of the German text, checked against the French and Italian versions of the same articles; where a detail matters to you, the German, French and Italian texts are the authoritative ones.

This is the same pattern that shows up across Swiss employment material: the framework statutes are often translated, the sector-specific ordinances rarely are. It is a good reason to treat any English-language summary of Swiss recruitment rules — including this one — as orientation rather than as the source.

What the agency may do without asking you

An honest reading includes the other side of the rule. Paragraph 2 lists three disclosures that need no consent: to employees of the agency's own branch; to a client with a view to the imminent conclusion of a contract; and to a wider circle of potential clients, provided the data do not allow the job seeker or the employer to be identified.

For the reference question that last condition is the operative one. Your dossier may circulate inside the agency, and it may go to the one client where something concrete is happening. What it may not do is go out to a broad circle while remaining identifiable — and a third party's telephone number is precisely the kind of detail that keeps a document identifiable.

Paragraph 3 sets the time limit. Once the placement has been made, or the placement mandate has been revoked, the agency may continue processing the data only if the person concerned consents again, subject to retention duties arising from other rules. The permission expires with the mandate rather than quietly continuing.

Staff leasing: the same rule, a stricter statute

If you are working through a temporary staffing firm, the applicable provision is Article 47 rather than Article 19, and the wording is identical apart from the role names: the hirer-out needs consent in particular to obtain opinions and references concerning job seekers and its own workers.

The statute behind it is drafted more tightly than its counterpart for placement agencies. Article 18 paragraph 3 of the Employment Services Act allows the hirer-out to process data on the worker and to pass them to hirer companies only to the extent and for as long as the leasing requires; any processing or disclosure beyond that requires the worker's express consent.

There is a practical reason for the difference. In staff leasing your file is meant to go to several hirer companies rather than to one employer — Article 47 paragraph 2 permits disclosure to interested hirer companies that can show a specific interest. A CV carrying three telephone numbers is not forwarded once in that arrangement; it is forwarded as often as there are assignments.

Nobody in this framework is protecting the person you named

Read the provisions in sequence and a gap appears that goes to the heart of the question. Every one of these duties is owed to the job seeker. The placement agency needs your consent. The hirer-out needs your express consent. Under Article 34 of the Act, staff involved in the public employment service must keep information about job seekers, employers and vacancies secret from third parties, and under Article 58 of the ordinance you may demand free written information, correction of inaccurate data and destruction of data no longer needed.

About the person whose name and telephone number you typed into your own document, none of these provisions says anything at all. That person did not commission the placement, has no contract with the hirer-out, and is not registered with the cantonal authority. They appear in your file without being known to any of the rules that protect it.

No instruction follows from that; it is a description of the position. "References available on request" moves a piece of information out of a document that circulates and into a conversation that takes place. It changes nothing about your rights. It changes how many places hold somebody else's phone number before that person knows a call might be coming.

Where your file actually lands after you press send

How many places that is can be measured. For every open advert in our index we looked at the address the apply button leads to and counted how many different advertisers use the same destination. As at 31 August 2026.

Adverts written in English are markedly more likely to lead to a shared destination than German-language ones: 52.0 per cent against 42.6 per cent. Remove the single largest English-language advertiser and the English figure is still 49.1 per cent. That gap matters for exactly the audience reading this page, because English-language adverts in Switzerland skew towards international employers, and international employers rent their application track rather than building it.

None of this is a scandal — it is how the market is built. But it is the part of the answer that decides the practical question. Roughly half the applications sent in response to an English-language Swiss advert do not go to a company; they go into an environment where other companies are working too, and the CV is the file that gets stored there.

One qualification belongs with the figure: the shared group is not the work of one giant advertiser. The largest single advertiser inside it accounts for 6.4 per cent of it. The order of magnitude holds; the decimal does not.

If the advert asks for referees outright

Then it asks, and nothing above stands in the way — none of these provisions forbids an employer from asking for referees. What they regulate is the call, not the question.

What an advert asks for beats any general convention. The decision still open is one of timing: whether the names travel with the dossier or are handed over at the interview, once the people named know about it. The Commissioner notes for the dossier itself that it may be seen only by authorised persons, in general the human resources department or the direct line manager — a duty on the employer, not a guarantee across the whole chain.

Who can be named, and who is a poor choice, is a separate question, and we answer it separately. This answer is only about the obligation, and there is none.

What this answer does not do

It explains rules and does not assess an individual case. The provisions quoted apply to private placement agencies, to staff leasing and to the public employment service. They do not apply to an ordinary direct application to a company with no intermediary; there the Code of Obligations and the Data Protection Act carry the assessment.

Public-law employment follows the personnel law of the Confederation, the canton or the commune in addition, and that differs from canton to canton. Individual sectors — healthcare, finance, security roles — run additional checks on their own legal footing.

For an assessment of your own situation, a legal advice centre, a trade union or the cantonal careers guidance service is the right address.