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CV check

49 questions · 47 pages

• Do Swiss companies use ATS?About a third of Swiss adverts lead into an applicant tracking system — and the two largest are Workday and a Swiss provider international advice never mentions. What that means for your CV.
• What does a recruiter check first on a CV?Two gates before anything else: permit and location, then languages. Only then title, education and the shape of your history. Why — and why 45 percent of adverts list requirements that are not requirements.
• How do I check my CV against a specific job advert?Comparing a CV to a Swiss job advert fails at the same place almost every time: the languages. Nearly 30 percent of English-written Swiss adverts still require a national language. What a real check looks at, in what order, and what it cannot see at all.
• Is there a free CV check?Yes — three different kinds, and they do not check the same thing. The best-known free scanner accepts English files only, the free expert review arrives by email about 48 hours later, and Switzerland's public channels cost nothing at all. What each one is worth for a Swiss application.
• What is the best CV checker for Switzerland?No single tool wins, but five tests separate the ones that understand Switzerland from the ones scoring you against another country: the advert’s language bar, a live advert instead of a template, the Swiss dossier, the workload percentage, and Swiss qualifications. With the numbers, by region and by occupation.
• Are free CV checkers any good?Good at document hygiene, blind to the part that decides a Swiss application. The vendors describe their own scope plainly, and 79.1 per cent of open Swiss adverts state at least one condition that is nowhere in your CV. Three probes let you test any free checker in five minutes.
• How many requirements do I need to meet?Count gates, not bullet points. Only 16.6 percent of open Swiss adverts name a single checkable barrier — with the figures from the open listings, by occupation, by years demanded and by language level.
• Is my CV ATS-friendly?A two-minute test you can run yourself — and why the standard advice to mirror the job title barely applies here: about three quarters of Swiss advert headlines occur exactly once in our index.
• How do I make my CV machine-readable?Real text instead of an image, one column, characters that survive the export — plus the Swiss twist: in English-language adverts, Zurich and Zürich appear almost equally often, and your CV has to handle both.
• Which keywords is my CV missing?There is no fixed list: two Swiss adverts for the same occupation share only a handful of specialist words. Measured across our index — plus the keyword problem nobody warns you about in Switzerland, which is language.
• Why does my CV keep getting rejected?Why does my CV keep getting rejected? · Why do I only get rejections?
• Does my CV match this job?Three questions settle it, not thirty — and when one comes back no, rewriting the CV is usually the wrong move: the employer behind a typical Swiss advert has around twenty other vacancies open right now.
• How do I tailor my CV per job?Swap four fields instead of rewriting the document. We measured what actually differs between two Swiss adverts carrying the same job title at different employers — and what never does.
• Is my CV too long?Three pages is the official ceiling in Switzerland, but a CV goes wrong earlier: where it answers questions the advert never asked. English-language Swiss adverts name years of experience in 20.7 percent of cases and a specific tool in 13.0 — and 93.9 percent raise at most two requirement themes at all. What that means for your last page.
• Is my CV too generic?Generic is testable once you use the adverts as the ruler: English-language Swiss adverts name their own roles in five words at the median, half of them use five or more, and 73 per cent carry a title that appears nowhere else in our index.
• How do I check an English CV for Switzerland?An English CV rarely fails in Switzerland on its English. It fails because it answers the questions a different labour market asks. Three passes in a fixed order — language, answer to the advert, Swiss form — and the figures you measure each one against.
• How do I check a nursing CV for the Swiss market?Swiss nursing adverts put the qualification in the job title and the workload percentage next to it. The five fields a nursing CV has to carry, how long Swiss Red Cross recognition of a foreign diploma actually takes, why an English-only nursing CV almost never matches, and a ten-minute check you can run against a real advert.
• How do I check an IT CV?A Swiss IT CV is judged on classification, not prose. Which nine role families Swiss IT adverts name, how often the title carries an English role noun, an acronym or a platform, what languages employers actually ask for in Zurich versus Romandie, and the order to run the check in.
• How do I check a CV for a federal role?A CV for the Swiss federal administration is not judged on style but against an ordinance: Article 8 of the Language Ordinance requires a second official language. Which languages federal adverts really ask for, the CEFR levels the Federal Office of Personnel attaches to each salary band, why your first language is a stored field, and the order to work through your dossier.
• How do I check a CV with many short jobs?Three tests for a fragmented Swiss CV: does every short stint carry a contract name, do the years add up per role field, and does the top line still name one profession. With the figures on what Swiss adverts actually ask for — and what they almost never mention.
• How do I check a CV with overseas experience?Five places where a career built abroad becomes unreadable in Switzerland: the profession, the qualification, the employers, the language line and the missing employment reference. With the shares from open Swiss adverts and the official bodies behind each step.
• How do I check a CV after a career break?Five passes over a CV that has been through a break: the dates against your free AHV account statement, the top third for anything dated in the present, tools and certificates for expiry, the top line for the level you claim, and the whole thing against three adverts open today.
• What does a professional CV review cost?Nothing to CHF 690, depending on which counter you walk up to. The cantonal career-guidance tariffs, the Swiss commercial prices, and what the language and express surcharges actually buy you in the live advert market.
• How do I check my CV for gaps?Gaps are found by arithmetic, not by reading: every entry as month and year, education on the same timeline, every interval subtracted, then the list compared with the reference letters that state duration. Including what year-only dates hide and how fast the open end grows.
• Should I get someone to review my CV?Yes — but not with the question "is it any good?". A second reader finds clarity faults reliably and fit not at all. With the five closed questions worth asking, what Swiss job-title data says about wording advice, and the price in days of waiting for feedback.
• How do I check a CV for the Romandie?A CV for French-speaking Switzerland is not a translated CV. Check which of the region's two markets the advert belongs to, the title line and its (h/f) tag, accents, the language block against the canton, the activity rate, and the status of a foreign qualification.
• How do I spot bad CV advice?Weak CV advice gives itself away by its grammar, not its content: no condition, no market, no measurement, no way of being wrong. A five-minute counter-check, plus seven rules everyone repeats, measured against the open Swiss market.
• Which CV rules do not apply in Switzerland?One page, no photo, no date of birth, a cover sheet, a data-protection line at the foot: each rule answers a problem another country's law created. What the official Swiss guidance says instead — and the one import that survives the border.
• How do I measure if my CV improved?Ten applications before, ten after — that comparison is close to a coin toss. The arithmetic of small samples, why two rounds of applications are never the same test, and the four things you can measure the same day.
• How much time should I spend per application?The number falls out of a division, not a rule of thumb: your weekly search hours divided by the adverts your occupation and region actually produce in a week. What that division gives, and where the hours really go.
• How do I check my application photo?Shape, crop, resolution, file weight, capture date. Switzerland publishes exact numbers for exactly one photo — the one in your passport — and none at all for the one in your dossier. Why the crop costs more than the camera, and why the advert will not tell you.
• Which requirements are negotiable?Swiss adverts usually mark the negotiable line themselves. Measured across live listings: tools 29.3 per cent, certificates 26.8, languages 21.0 — and the degree only 4.8. With the ranking, the signal words in four languages, and the two lines Swiss law fixes.
• How do I show results instead of duties?How do I show results instead of duties? · Does the Google XYZ formula work on a Swiss CV?
• How do I quantify my achievements?A figure only claims something once you name what it was measured against, over what period, and what your own share of it was. In Switzerland a fourth condition applies: your CV arrives with the Arbeitszeugnisse, and the law limits what you may disclose.
• What should I leave off my CV in Switzerland?The official Swiss CV list names eight rubrics — marital status, religion, parents, social-security number and salary expectations are on none of them. Where omission ends and misstatement begins: Art. 28, 24 and 31 of the Code of Obligations. Last checked 31 August 2026.
• Which outdated details hurt my CV in Switzerland?Old is not the same as outdated. Swiss law protects titles awarded under earlier rules, and only one ordinance actually orders an entry off a CV. Meanwhile English-language Swiss adverts name "EFZ" in 0.05 % of postings. Last checked 31 August 2026.
• How do I check a CV after ten years at one employer?After a decade in one house, a CV is checked on its vocabulary, not its length. 89.8 per cent of the role titles in English-language Swiss adverts are used by a single employer — with the test for what needs translating.
• How do I check the language levels on my CV?Switzerland recognises four ways to prove a language level, none of them an adjective — and for English it recognises none at all. How to check your CV line against the official rules.
• How often should I update my CV?Not on a schedule. People who changed jobs in Switzerland in 2023 had spent an average of 5.6 years with the same employer first, and only one in seven changed at all that year. What that means for how often you rewrite — with FSO figures and our own advert data. Updated 31 August 2026.
• CV check: SwissJobs.app or the Kickresume checker?Both walked on 4 September 2026: uploading to Kickresume’s ATS checker lands you on their registration page, and their own pricing table puts the checker behind Premium. What each score actually measures, where the two agree, and why a clean ATS pass is not yet a Swiss application file.
• How does a CV get to the top of the recruiter's sorting?Sorting comes from workload, not from judgement. How long the queue actually is in Switzerland, why the English-language segment is the exception, and what a CV has to show in the first seconds.
• What is wrong with my CV?Not style — five checkable faults: no target role, languages without CEFR levels, no Pensum, a qualification in the wrong designation, an incomplete dossier. With figures from open Swiss postings and the official arbeit.swiss checklist.
• Why was I rejected without even an interview?In Switzerland the invitation to interview is a shortlist decision, not a pass mark. What Swiss employers settle on paper before anyone meets you, why the bar you missed is usually never written down, and how to tell a gate from a ranking.
• Why am I not hearing back on my applications?Measured advert run-times, where Swiss applications physically go, and the Swiss feedback duty that points at the employment office rather than at you.
• Why does my application go nowhere despite matching the requirements?You tick every line of the Swiss job advert and still get silence. Our count of open Swiss adverts shows why the requirement list stops deciding at exactly that point — and what decides instead.
• I sent 200 applications and got nothing — is it the market or my dossier?At 200 applications the number finally means something. What zero replies rules out statistically, why 200 applications are never 200 comparable ones in Switzerland, and how to separate market from dossier.
• How do I get more interviews?An interview is the product of three numbers: how many suitable adverts you see, how many you apply to, and how often an application converts. Counting the open Swiss adverts shows which of the three actually moves — and it is rarely the CV.