Swiss vs German cover letter — what actually differs?

Swiss and German cover letters compared

Two countries writing the same language and not the same document. The differences are small and they are exactly where an imported letter gives itself away.

The salutation without a comma — the one difference written into the rulebook

There is exactly one point where the Swiss letter convention is not habit but codified norm, in a rulebook Germany, Austria and Switzerland adopted jointly. The official rulebook of German spelling carries a note at § 72 on punctuation in salutations and closing formulas. It lists the German format first — «Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,» with a comma and a lower-case continuation — and then, word for word: in Switzerland and Liechtenstein usually without a mark at the end and with a capital letter on the next line. The same point appears a second time, at § 53: where the salutation is left unpunctuated, as is customary in Switzerland, the first word of the following paragraph is capitalised.

In practice this changes two lines near the top of your letter. «Sehr geehrte Frau Meier» stands there with nothing after it, and the sentence below begins with a capital — «Ihre Ausschreibung als …», not «ihre Ausschreibung als …». Anyone trained on German correspondence types that comma automatically and then continues in lower case. It is the quietest and most reliable signature of an imported letter, because it sits in the second field of vision, directly under the bold subject line.

The closing formula follows the same rule in both countries: it stays unpunctuated. That is in the same note. A comma after «Freundliche Grüsse» is neither Swiss nor German, merely superfluous.

Two words, two official sources

The sign-off differs on two counts at once, and both are documented. The official Swiss guidance on berufsberatung.ch walks through the components of an application letter in order and prescribes for the farewell: «Freundliche Grüsse, digitale Unterschrift, dein Vor- und Nachname.» The Bundesagentur für Arbeit, on its own page about the Anschreiben, states that «Mit freundlichen Grüßen» rounds the letter off. The missing «Mit» is one difference; the letter in the final word is the other.

That letter has its own rule, and it is shorter than most people expect. § 25 E2 of the rulebook reads: where the character ß is not available, one writes ss; in Switzerland and Liechtenstein ss may always be written — Straße becomes Strasse. So it is not an error being tolerated but an explicitly permitted variant, and in Switzerland the only one taught in schools and used in administration.

The rule reaches far beyond the sign-off: Abschluss, gross, Strasse, Massnahme, dass, Grösse, Fussball. If you are adapting a German draft, run one pass through the whole file rather than hunting word by word — searching for the single character is more reliable than reading for it, because ß and ss occupy a similar width on the page.

The subject line: workload instead of reference number

This is where the two markets, not the two manners, diverge. Germany's federal employment agency instructs applicants to name the job title used in the advert and, if a reference number is mentioned, to put that into the subject line as well. That is sound advice for a market whose adverts carry reference numbers. In the German-language adverts we hold, they simply do not: neither Kennziffer nor Referenznummer, Stellennummer or Job-ID appears in a single title, nor in the short descriptions. Only 0.3% of titles end in a number at all.

What the Swiss advert does fill is a slot the German template has no field for: the workload. 29.1% of German-language titles state a percentage and 18.2% state a range such as 80–100%. The German words for the same idea have almost vanished here: «Teilzeit» appears in 1.3% of titles, «Vollzeit» in 1.0%. An applicant arriving from Germany therefore searches for a reference that is not there and overlooks the figure the employer did put in.

The Swiss guidance is consistent on this. arbeit.swiss lists the subject line as a formal component in its own right, and berufsberatung.ch asks for the occupational title exactly «as in the advert». A subject line that carries both looks like this: «Bewerbung als Applikationsentwickler, 60–80 Prozent, Inserat vom 12. August». It tells the reader which of several openings at the same employer you mean, using the detail that is genuinely printed there.

One word, two different documents

This confusion costs more than a comma. In Switzerland, Bewerbungsschreiben and Motivationsschreiben are two names for the same page: arbeit.swiss files the dossier component under the heading «Bewerbungsschreiben / Motivationsschreiben» and describes beneath it precisely the letter that carries subject line, salutation and closing formula.

In Germany they are two documents. The Bundesagentur für Arbeit lists the Anschreiben in its inventory of application materials and, separately and marked optional, the Motivationsschreiben. It explains the distinction: the Motivationsschreiben is also called the «third page» and offers room for further facts and background with a professional bearing, such as a larger project you worked on. It does not replace the Anschreiben; it is added to it.

So when a Swiss advert asks for a Motivationsschreiben, it means the letter — not an additional third page. Conversely, a dossier that encloses both separately and tells the same story twice reads as odd. Applying from Germany, drop the third page and move its strongest content into the letter.

The language question a German letter never faces

In Switzerland, languages are not a bonus qualification but a standard field. 99.8% of the German-language adverts we hold carry a language requirement, and 96.7% of those want German at a professional level. The second line is the interesting one: 23.3% ask for at least one further language — English in 18.5% of cases, French in 8.5%, Italian in 2.5%. French or Italian together account for 9.1%.

The surrounding market confirms the picture. Among adverts whose text language can be determined, 56.1% are German, 27.2% English, 13.1% French and 2.2% Italian. A German letter is not built for this constellation because it has never met it: in a single-language market, nobody states in the cover letter how well they speak the national language.

One line is enough, and it does not belong at the end: «Deutsch ist meine Erstsprache, Französisch auf B2, Englisch verhandlungssicher.» Where the advert names a language explicitly, answer it in the letter and not only in the CV — it is the requirement stated most often, and therefore the one whose absence is noticed fastest.

Borrow the vocabulary from the advert, not from the template

The final difference is vocabulary, and it is measurable because both words denote the same thing. Across the short descriptions of our German-language adverts, «Ferien» appears in 4.9% and «Urlaub» in 0.7%. «Pensionskasse» appears in 3.7%, «betriebliche Altersvorsorge» in 0.2%. «Lohn» appears in 2.2%, «Gehalt» in 1.1%.

The contrast is sharpest in vocational training, because there the institutions themselves differ: words from the Swiss system — Lehrstelle, Lernende, Berufslehre, Grundbildung — appear in 4.9% of short descriptions, while the German counterparts Azubi, Ausbildungsplatz and duales Studium together reach 0.1%. A sentence about your «Ausbildung zum Industriekaufmann» is not wrong, but it asks the reader to translate something you could have translated for them.

The underlying rule is simpler than any word list: take the terms from the advert in front of you rather than from the template you brought with you. That covers the occupation, the workload and the benefits — and it is exactly what both official guides independently recommend when they ask for the title to read «as in the advert».

What stays the same, which is most of it

Once the differences are named, their size becomes clear. The formal components overlap almost entirely: sender address, recipient address, place and date, subject line, salutation, opening, body, closing sentence, sign-off, signature. The Bundesagentur für Arbeit and arbeit.swiss list the same elements in the same order.

The substantive advice runs parallel too. Both want a link to the specific employer, both want evidence rather than adjectives, and both advise against opening with «Hiermit bewerbe ich mich». One widely repeated difference does not survive contact with the data either: the marker (m/w/d) is often taken as a German tell, yet it appears in a large share of German-language Swiss job titles.

Only one formal item is more visibly regulated in Switzerland: the enclosures line. berufsberatung.ch lists it as a component of the letter itself and permits writing simply «Bewerbungsunterlagen» when space runs short. Germany's page on the Anschreiben does not mention it; the list of enclosures appears only in the overview of materials, and expressly as optional. Applying from Germany, you add that line — it is the one line the Swiss letter gains.