Applying in nursing and care: find jobs, prepare your documents

Nursing jobs in Switzerland: which qualification for which job

If you are looking for a nursing job in Switzerland, you almost always apply for a specific role, and that role depends on your qualification. Job ads state precisely whether they are looking for a healthcare assistant, a registered nurse or a nursing aide. So put your qualification in the very first sentence of your cover letter. It saves the HR department from having to search for it.

• Nursing aide SRK (Pflegehelferin or Pflegehelfer SRK): a course run by the Swiss Red Cross (SRK), often the way into long-term care and Spitex (home care).
• Health and social care assistant EBA (Assistentin or Assistent Gesundheit und Soziales EBA, federal VET certificate): two-year basic training, working in care homes and residential groups.
• FaGe (healthcare assistant, EFZ; Fachfrau or Fachmann Gesundheit): a three-year apprenticeship leading to the EFZ (Swiss federal VET diploma), in demand in hospitals, care homes, psychiatry and Spitex.
• Registered nurse HF (diplomierte Pflegefachfrau or Pflegefachmann HF): a college of higher education diploma, takes responsibility for the nursing process.
• Registered nurse FH (Bachelor of Science in Nursing): the same professional licence as HF, with a focus on research and the development of nursing.
• Postgraduate HF diplomas in anaesthesia, intensive care or emergency nursing: for specialist jobs, where the job ad usually asks for them explicitly.

Where nursing jobs are advertised

Nursing jobs are found in hospitals and clinics, in retirement and care homes, at Spitex, in psychiatric facilities, in rehabilitation clinics and in facilities for people with disabilities. Each of these areas has its own rhythm: in an acute hospital, patients come and go quickly; in long-term care, you accompany people over months; at Spitex, you work alone in the client’s home.

The job ads are spread across the big job portals, the Job-Room of arbeit.swiss, cantonal job boards and the career pages of the hospitals themselves. If you only search in one place, you only see part of it. So set up a fixed list of search terms, for example “Pflegefachfrau HF”, “dipl. Pflegefachperson” and “Pflegefachmann”, because every facility names its job a little differently.

What belongs in your application file in nursing

A complete file is especially important in nursing, because many employers do not even look at incomplete applications. Put everything in a sensible order, ideally as one single PDF or as clearly named separate files.

• Cover letter, one page, tailored to the specific job.
• CV with photo, specialities and workload of your previous jobs.
• Diploma or certificate of proficiency (EFZ, HF, FH) and, for specialisations, the postgraduate diploma.
• Arbeitszeugnis (Swiss reference letter) and employment confirmations from your last jobs; for new graduates, the assessments from your placements.
• Proof of further training, for example courses in resuscitation (BLS-AED), wound care, kinaesthetics or palliative care.
• With a foreign diploma: the recognition by the SRK or the current status of the procedure.

The cover letter in nursing: four points that count

Hiring managers in nursing read many letters with the same sentences about empathy and enjoying working with people. What sticks is the concrete detail. These four points belong in almost every letter:

• Qualification and speciality in the first paragraph, for example “registered nurse HF with five years of experience in acute geriatrics”.
• Your workload and your readiness for night, weekend and on-call duties. This is decisive for shift planning and often the reason for an invitation.
• An example from your daily work that proves a strength: a difficult situation with relatives that you calmed down, or a process you improved in the team.
• Why exactly this facility: its speciality, its approach to nursing or the further training it offers.

With a foreign nursing diploma: recognition by the SRK

Nursing is a regulated profession in Switzerland. If you completed your training abroad and want to work here as a nurse, you need your diploma to be recognised. The Swiss Red Cross (SRK) is responsible. The anerkennung.swiss platform shows whether your profession needs to be recognised and which office is responsible.

The first step is the SRK PreCheck. It is mandatory and free of charge, and once all documents are complete, the result is available within four weeks at most. After that comes the actual application for recognition, for which the SRK promises a first decision within four months at most. Among other things, you need proof of language skills, for German at level B2.

For your application, this means: state the status of your recognition openly in your CV, for example “SRK recognition applied for, PreCheck positive”. Many employers know the procedure and plan around it. Left unclear, on the other hand, it looks like a gap.

Interview and trial day

In nursing, the interview is often followed by a trial day on the ward. There it is less about specialist knowledge and more about whether you fit into the team and how you deal with patients, relatives and colleagues. Bring comfortable clothes, ask about the induction and the duty roster, and feel free to ask the team your questions directly.

In the interview itself, situational questions come up often: What do you do if a patient’s condition suddenly gets worse? How do you handle a complaint from relatives? How do you recover after a hard week? Think of a real example from your working life for each question.