SwissJobs.app or Google Docs for your CV — which and when?

Feature comparison

Everything about Google Docs was read from the vendor's own page on 4 September 2026; our rows come from the code (lib/stripe/trialConfig.ts) and from walking the live flow. "not stated" means it could not be read on their site — not "does not exist".

Pricing side by side

Everything about Google Docs was read from the vendor's own page on 4 September 2026; our rows come from the code (lib/stripe/trialConfig.ts) and from walking the live flow. "not stated" means it could not be read on their site — not "does not exist".

What Google Docs genuinely does — and it is more than it gets credit for

We walked the route a job seeker walks, logged out, on 4 September 2026. It opens with a barrier that rarely gets mentioned: without a session, docs.google.com redirects to Google's sign-in page. A Google account is not optional, it is the ticket in. After that it is good. The template gallery sits top right; Google's own help page calls the collection «Google-created templates like resumes, budgets, and order forms» and lists 22 languages in which templates exist, German, French and Italian included.

There is no save button — the help page states that changes are saved automatically as you type. Version history keeps every earlier draft and restores it on a click, with one restriction Google spells out: to browse earlier versions of a file, you need permission to edit that file. Offline works too, but only under conditions: Chrome or Edge, the Google Docs Offline extension installed, no private window. And the file downloads in formats other than Google's own: its help page names PDF and Microsoft Word explicitly.

If you are applying to Switzerland from abroad, one of those properties matters more than any other: Google Docs needs nothing but an e-mail address. No Swiss address, no AHV number, no local phone. That makes it the most portable option on any list of CV tools, and it is a real advantage we are not going to talk you out of.

Where Google Docs stops: it does not know the advert

A word processor is an empty surface with margins. It does not know which job you are applying for, and it cannot — the text of the posting is nowhere in the document. In Switzerland that is where half the tailoring lives: which language is required and at which level, what Pensum is advertised, which qualification the employer names.

Google's own writing assistant does not change that, and Google says as much on its pricing page, where the feature is listed as «Gemini in Docs – tackle the blank page or polish draft documents with AI». Filling a blank page and polishing a draft are text problems. Tailoring is an advert problem. Let Gemini write your CV and you get a good general CV — after which you still have to work the posting in by hand, in every version.

Ours runs the other way round. You open a Swiss job advert on our pages and the CV is written against its wording, in about a minute. From there it is an ordinary document: every line can be edited by hand, and if you would rather say what should happen, you write it as an instruction — «shorten the work history to three roles», «bring out the leadership experience» — and the document changes. The same applies to the motivation letter.

The price nobody quotes: writing help inside the document costs CHF 17

«Google Docs is free» is true of the editor and stops being true the moment you want the document to help you write. We read both Swiss price ladders on 4 September 2026, in francs, as Google serves them here — and the same figures appear on the German, French, Italian and English versions of those pages.

Private accounts: a free account brings 15 GB of storage and Google Docs, but no Gemini in the document. Google One Basic with 100 GB is CHF 2 a month and is storage only. Google AI Plus with 2 TB is CHF 10 and lists «Gemini in Gmail» — Gmail, not Docs. Only Google AI Pro with 5 TB, at CHF 17 a month, lists «Gemini in Gmail, Docs, Vids & More».

Business accounts: Google Workspace Starter is CHF 7 per user per month, excluding tax, and again names only Gemini in Gmail. From Standard, CHF 14, the entry reads «Gemini in Gmail, Docs, Meet and more»; Plus is CHF 22. Our CHF 15 a month therefore sits between the two routes on which Google sells the same promise — and a year with us is CHF 95 rather than twelve times fifteen.

What our editor actually is — counted, not claimed

We hold our own column to the standard we hold Google's, so we counted in the source rather than writing from memory. On 4 September 2026 the editor offers two layouts (plain, and with a filled sidebar), three typefaces (Inter, a serif and Helvetica) and nine accent colours. That is 2 × 3 × 9 = 54 design variations, mixed freely.

What it is not: 54 different designs. It is one Swiss format in 54 variants — colour, typeface and sidebar of a single base form built for a Swiss dossier. A gallery with thirty drawn layouts offers more visual variety than we do, and that is honestly a disadvantage. The trade we offer in exchange: a template changes how the CV looks; ours changes what it says.

Export is PDF and Word, neither carrying a watermark — the Word file included, which closes the loop back to collaboration: upload our .docx to Google Docs and you have our version inside Google's comment margin.

The free ladder, exactly as the product runs it

Trying it needs no account. The editor opens without signing in, and a line above the document says a free account is what keeps the changes permanently. The account is asked for to save and from the second document, never before.

On a free account it is five documents a day and ten per rolling week; the same ceiling covers motivation letters and the instructions you use to rewrite a document. After that come seven days without limits, and only then CHF 15 a month or CHF 95 a year, cancellable at any time.

That is the honest comparison: Google Docs is unlimited and free as long as you do the writing. We are free for a single application too, and only become a subscription once you are sending dossiers out week after week. For one application that somebody should comment on, Google is the better arithmetic.

The language line: the official guidance and the market do not agree

Here is the line that almost every template builds wrongly. The official Swiss careers portal — published by the SDBB on behalf of the cantons — tells German-language readers, under the heading for languages, to state all your language skills and always to begin with your mother tongue. No level is mentioned. Its French sister page asks for more at the same spot: «Mentionne toutes les langues que tu connais et le niveau que tu as dans chacune d'elles.» Same institution, two language versions, two different instructions for the same field. Both pages are written for apprenticeship applicants, which shows.

The market is less ambiguous than the German guidance, and English carries the highest bar of all. Of the currently open Swiss adverts that name English explicitly, 84.2 per cent want it at professional level and only 12.9 per cent settle for conversational. German is close behind at 80.8 per cent professional; French asks for professional level in 72.6 per cent of cases but wants a native speaker in 6.4 per cent. «English: fluent» answers none of this. It is a self-assessment where a level was requested.

That matters most for readers arriving from outside Switzerland, because it is the point where a US resume and a Swiss CV diverge quietly rather than obviously. On a resume, «fluent» is normal. Here, a CEFR level — B2, C1, C2 — is what the advert asked for, and the two are not interchangeable.

What a Swiss dossier carries that a general template has no field for

A Swiss CV is not a translated resume. The photo is conventional here rather than discouraged. Non-Swiss applicants state their permit — B, C or G. Workload is a Pensum given as a percentage, not «part-time». Two pages is the norm, not one. And the dossier carries Arbeitszeugnisse: the written employer references every Swiss employee is entitled to at the end of a job, which have no equivalent in most countries and which decide how long the finished dossier ends up being.

A document in a general word processor has no field waiting for any of this. You build it yourself each time, and by the twelfth application you are building it differently from the first — which is exactly the sort of drift a hand-maintained file produces and nobody notices until a recruiter does.

If you are registered with the RAV — and the line that applies there

Anyone registered with a regional employment centre is not only writing CVs but also keeping the monthly record of job-search efforts. With us, the federal monthly form fills itself from the applications you logged, in German, French or Italian; the name, AHV number and signature go only into the generated PDF. In an empty document you retype the same rows by hand. The official English-language guidance says the same thing about the habit, if not the form: keep a record of applications sent, ongoing procedures and outstanding responses.

The limit belongs in the same paragraph: the proof is handed in to the RAV — through the Job-Room eServices or whatever route your canton prescribes. We fill the paper, we do not replace the filing. If you are unsure which route applies to you, ask your RAV adviser.

In short: which, and when

Take Google Docs if you are writing one application, if somebody should read it and comment, if you are working on a borrowed computer, if it matters to you that the file is yours and still opens in five years, if you are applying to Switzerland from abroad and want a tool that asks for nothing but an e-mail address, or if you already pay for Google AI Pro and have the writing help anyway.

Take SwissJobs.app if you are applying to Swiss adverts continuously and want a separate version for each, if you want the permit line, the photo, the CEFR levels and the Pensum to land in the right place without thinking about it, if you are registered with the RAV — or if you want to try the whole thing without creating an account first.

And the route between them is the best of both: generate the version for the specific advert here, download it as a Word file without a watermark, upload it to Google Docs and have it commented on. The two tools do not contradict each other; they solve two different halves of the same application.