Applying in IT: find jobs, prepare your documents

IT qualifications in Switzerland: from EFZ to master’s degree

In IT, what you can do counts, but HR departments still sort by qualification and role first. If you name your path clearly in your CV, you make it easier for them to read. The most important levels:

• IT specialist EFZ (Informatikerin or Informatiker EFZ, Swiss federal VET diploma): a four-year apprenticeship, in a company or at a full-time school. After the first semester, you choose the specialisation application development (software, apps, websites) or platform development (servers, networks, cloud services).
• Related basic training: ICT specialist EFZ (ICT-Fachfrau or ICT-Fachmann EFZ) and digital business developer EFZ (Entwicklerin or Entwickler digitales Business EFZ). They also lead into IT departments, often with a different focus.
• Professional examinations with a federal diploma of higher education, for example ICT Application Development Specialist, ICT Platform Development Specialist or Cyber Security Specialist.
• College of higher education: IT specialist HF (Informatikerin or Informatiker HF), business IT specialist HF (Wirtschaftsinformatikerin or Wirtschaftsinformatiker HF).
• University: a bachelor’s degree from a university of applied sciences or a master’s degree from a university or ETH in computer science.

Where IT jobs are advertised

IT specialists do not only work at software companies. Banks, insurance companies, hospitals, retailers, industrial companies and public administration have their own IT departments, plus IT service providers that look after networks and workstations for SMEs, and web agencies. Public administration and large companies in particular often advertise their jobs first on their own career page.

Search on the big job portals, in the Job-Room of arbeit.swiss, on cantonal job boards and directly at companies that interest you. In IT, many recruiters also fill jobs for their clients. That is an extra route, but no substitute for your own search. Since job titles vary a lot, several search terms pay off: “Software Engineer”, “Applikationsentwickler”, “System Engineer”, “ICT Supporter”, “Plattformentwickler” or the name of the technology itself, such as “Java” or “Linux”.

Portfolio, GitHub and certificates: show what you have built

A link to your own work often says more than a page of text. If you develop, link a repository on GitHub or GitLab, your own website or an app in the store in your CV. What matters is not quantity but quality: two or three well-maintained projects with an understandable description, clean code and short instructions on how to start them. A project folder full of half-finished exercises looks weaker than none at all.

In platform development and support, it works differently: here you show your work with a short project description, for example “migration of 40 workstations to a new software distribution system” or “setting up a backup solution for an SME”. Name your role, the technology and the result. Leave out anything confidential.

Vendor certificates for cloud platforms, networks or operating systems are common in systems engineering and are often explicitly listed in the job ad. List them in your CV with the year. A certificate does not replace practice, but it proves that you have deliberately worked your way into a field.

What belongs in your application file in IT

Even in IT, a complete file is expected in Switzerland, even if the job ad is worded casually.

• Cover letter that addresses the stack and the role of the job.
• CV with a short technology block: languages, frameworks, systems, tools, each with an honest assessment of how well you know them.
• Links to your portfolio, GitHub or your own projects, if you have them.
• Final certificate (EFZ, HF, FH, university) and, for professional examinations, the federal diploma.
• Arbeitszeugnis (Swiss reference letter); for apprentices, the vocational school reports and the assessment of practical assignments.
• Certificates that suit the job, with dates.

The cover letter in IT: four points that count

A good letter in IT is short and technically concrete. HR staff and team leads skim it and look for keywords from their job ad. These points belong in it:

• Your role and your main stack in the first sentence, such as “application developer EFZ focusing on backend in Java”.
• A project that suits the job, with your part in it and the result.
• Why this company: the product, the sector, the technology or the way of working.
• Conditions that matter for planning: workload, readiness for on-call duty, readiness for on-site work at customers.

Changing careers, technical interview and technical test

If you want to switch to IT from another job, there are several routes. For adults, there are programmes that lead to the IT EFZ, including shortened training for career changers and people with a baccalaureate. The careers advice service of your canton helps you find the right route. In your cover letter, you turn your previous job into an advantage: if you come from accounting, you understand the processes finance software is built for, and if you have worked in retail, you know the users at the till.

After the first interview, IT often has a technical interview with the team, sometimes a technical test: a small programming task, a bug in a piece of code, a fault in a test network or questions about support situations. Think out loud, ask if a requirement is unclear, and say openly if you do not know something and how you would find out. That shows more than an answer learned by heart. Prepare for questions about the projects in your CV, because they almost always come up: What was your task, what went wrong, what would you do differently today? If you answer honestly and precisely, you show that you learn from your work.