Export your LinkedIn profile as a CV, or SwissJobs.app — which do you submit?

The Swiss job portals at a glance

Click an image for the full-size view. What each portal actually is stands beside it.

1. 

   1. SwissJobs.appOur app

   Over 21,000 open Swiss roles from ATS systems, company sites and LinkedIn in one place — and from any advert, straight into a CV, a motivation letter, a CV check and interview prep. The RAV job-search-efforts form fills itself from your application tracker. Free to use; the account is asked for at save.

   SwissJobs.app →

2. 

   2. LinkedIn Jobs

   The best reputation for English-speaking and international roles in Switzerland. Considerably thinner for trades, care and commercial roles.

   LinkedIn Jobs →

Feature comparison

As of 4 September 2026. "not stated" means it could not be read on their own site — not "does not exist". Our rows come from the code (lib/stripe/trialConfig.ts) and from walking the live flow, not from marketing copy.

Pricing side by side

As of 4 September 2026. "not stated" means it could not be read on their own site — not "does not exist". Our rows come from the code (lib/stripe/trialConfig.ts) and from walking the live flow, not from marketing copy.

What LinkedIn itself says about the export

On 4 September 2026 we opened the help article "Save a profile as a PDF" in all four languages we publish in. The route is the same everywhere: the Me icon, View profile, the More or Resources button in the introduction section, then Save to PDF. So are the four limits — the feature is "available only to members who have profiles and whose profile language is set to English", it "currently supports only English characters", it "is not available on the LinkedIn mobile app", and it "may not be accessible to all members".

The English page was last updated three months ago; the German, French and Italian versions are a year old, and they disagree with it on one number. The English page sets a ceiling of 200 profile PDFs per month and counts your own downloads towards it. The three translated pages say 100 per month for other members’ profiles and state that the limit does not apply to your own. LinkedIn adds a note under the translated versions that the information "has been partially machine translated", so the English page is the one to trust on a detail like that.

Two things the help pages do not say, which is why we do not claim them: what the generated PDF looks like section by section, and whether the profile photo travels with it. We did not run the export ourselves. Everything above is quoted from LinkedIn’s own help pages as they stood on 4 September 2026.

A Swiss application is a dossier, not a resume

If you are arriving from the US, the UK or India, this is the part that costs interviews rather than the file format. A Swiss application is expected to be a dossier: a CV of usually two pages, a motivation letter, and copies of your Arbeitszeugnisse (the written employer references Swiss companies issue when you leave, and on request during a job). A one-page resume with no references attached reads as incomplete rather than concise.

A photo is the contrast that surprises people most. In the US and the UK a photo on a CV is actively discouraged and some recruiters discard CVs that carry one; in Switzerland it is conventional and its absence is noticed. Language skills are stated as CEFR levels — B2, C1 — not as "fluent" or "native speaker", because Swiss employers compare the levels directly. Workload is a Pensum in per cent, because Swiss adverts are written that way: 80–100% is a normal line in a posting and the application answers it.

And if you do not hold a Swiss or EU/EFTA passport, one line does more work than any other on the page: your permit status — B, C or G — and whether you already have the right to work here. Recruiters screen for it early. A profile export cannot carry that line, because the profile has no field for it.

Where the application actually lands

LinkedIn’s help on reusing a stored resume is blunt about the limit of staying on-platform: if you see "Apply on company website" instead of Easy Apply, you will be routed away and cannot use a resume you previously uploaded to LinkedIn. It also notes that an application submitted through LinkedIn cannot be edited or withdrawn once sent.

Our own index says how often that matters here. The open adverts lead to more than two thousand distinct destination sites, and 47.6 per cent of them belong to recognisable applicant systems — the international names, plus a set of Swiss providers no English-language ATS guide mentions. The spread is the real finding: it takes 48 different destinations to cover even half the adverts, and 5.3 per cent of adverts point at an address that appears exactly once in the whole pool.

So in practice you are filling in a stranger’s upload form nearly every time. That is what makes "profile or CV" the wrong question. The right one is which file you put into that form — and whether that file was written for the advert you are answering.

What the adverts ask you to prove

The chart above shows the language the postings are written in. Beyond that, 66.1 per cent of the open adverts name at least one language explicitly as a requirement, and 20.7 per cent name two or more. German is asked for in 42.7 per cent of all adverts, English in 31.2, French in 14.4, Italian in 2.4. A fifth of the market wants to know how good you are in two languages, not merely whether you speak them.

That is the practical reason a CEFR line matters more here than in a country with one working language, and the practical reason an English-only export is a poor fit for a bilingual application. It is also the honest counterweight to everything above: at 29.9 per cent of the adverts we can classify, English-language postings are a real and sizeable part of this market, particularly in IT, pharma and finance around Zürich, Basel and Zug. For those adverts an English profile export is not a category error at all.

When the LinkedIn PDF is the right answer

Take the export when your profile is already in English and genuinely up to date, the role is advertised in English, and the application runs through Easy Apply. The file then comes from the same source the recruiter has already read, it costs nothing, and it cannot go stale while your profile is current — which is more than a CV sitting on your hard drive can say.

It is also the right file for everything that is not a formal application: an attachment for a networking conversation, something to send a recruiter who has already seen your profile, a snapshot for your own records. And if you are applying from abroad, note what still works without a Swiss address or an AHV number: the export needs neither, and neither does our editor before the point where you save or take a second download.

The honest weakness on our side is the mirror image. We produce a document, and a document is a snapshot from the moment it is made. If you apply once a year, that is one more file to keep track of. The advantage only pays when you are applying to several postings and want each version to carry the vocabulary of its own advert.

Use the export as an input, not an output

The most useful thing to do with a LinkedIn PDF is upload it rather than submit it. The second step of our wizard asks for exactly that — "paste plain text and/or attach a PDF or Word file", in its own words — and accepts PDF, DOC and DOCX up to 10 MB. One pass turns an English profile export into a German, French or Italian CV in the Swiss format, without retyping a career you have already typed once.

The step before it is the one that does the work. Instead of copying the posting out of your browser, you can search for the job in our own index — the field says "search by job title" — and the advert you pick becomes the basis. The CV is written for that posting, the posting is stored with the document, and every later edit still knows it. To be fair about it: tailoring to a specific advert is sold by several tools, cvswiss.ch prominently among them. Our narrower, checkable claim is that the adverts are already here, because we are a Swiss job board and a CV tool in the same place.

After that the document is yours: every line editable in place, plus a field where one sentence rewrites a section. Appearance runs across 54 design variations — 2 layouts x 3 fonts x 9 accent colours, counted in the code on 4 September 2026 — and it exports as PDF and as a Word file, neither watermarked. If you are registered with an RAV, the applications you track also produce the official SECO job-search-efforts sheet in German, French or Italian; the efforts still have to be recorded with the RAV itself, we only fill in the paper.

Short version: who should take which

Take the LinkedIn PDF if your profile is English and current, the role is English, and the application stays on LinkedIn — or if you just need a file that shows your career today, for free, right now.

Take SwissJobs.app if you are applying to Swiss adverts and want the dossier in the language of the posting, with the permit line, the Pensum and CEFR levels where a Swiss recruiter expects them — and if you would rather send a version written for each advert than one file for all of them. The editor runs without an account; it asks for one when you save and from the second document. And the best route is not either-or: the export is a good beginning and a poor final document.