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For parents

Your child is looking for an apprenticeship? How you can support them without taking over, and what you should know about Stifti.

Which occupation suits you? Read the guide

The apprenticeship in Switzerland

About two thirds of young people in Switzerland do an apprenticeship after compulsory school. They learn in a company, at a vocational school and in industry courses, and they earn a wage from the first day.

  • The Federal VET Certificate (EBA) takes 2 years and is more practical.
  • The Federal VET Diploma (EFZ) takes 3 or 4 years.
  • With the vocational baccalaureate (Berufsmaturität), universities of applied sciences are open later on, and with an extra exam, universities too.

An apprenticeship is not a decision for life. The Swiss education system lets people move between paths, and many options stay open. More on this in the article EFZ, EBA, vocational baccalaureate: what is what?.

The timeline

The search usually starts in 8th grade with taster placements (Schnupperlehren). Apprenticeships should be advertised no earlier than August of the year before the apprenticeship starts, and apprenticeship contracts should be signed no earlier than one year before it starts. The apprenticeship usually begins in August.

For an overview, see the timetable to an apprenticeship.

How to support your child well

  • Ask instead of deciding. What do you enjoy? What surprised you during the taster placement? Your child makes the decision.
  • Make experiences possible. Talk about your own job, put your child in touch with people, go to a career fair together.
  • Let them do it themselves. Your child should make the calls, write the emails and the cover letter. Companies notice the difference.
  • Read it over. A second look at the dossier finds typos and unclear parts.
  • Help them through rejections. Almost everyone gets rejections. Encourage your child to keep going.

The career guidance service of your canton advises young people and parents for free, also in many languages. You can find addresses on berufsberatung.ch.

What Stifti does differently

  • Pay for every year of training. Every apprenticeship shows the gross pay for all years of training. This is required for companies.
  • Reply rate. You can see how reliably a company answers applications. Nobody can buy or polish this number.
  • Free. Stifti is free and has no ads. Parents and young people never pay.
  • Safe. School reports and documents are encrypted in your child's browser. Stifti itself cannot read them.

Your child's data

For an account, Stifti only needs a name and an email address. Sign-in runs through EAuth, a specialised sign-in service. This way Stifti itself stores no passwords. School reports, dossier and applications are encrypted: only your child and the companies they apply to can read them. Our servers are in Frankfurt (Germany), we do not sell data and we do not use trackers. Your child can delete their account themselves at any time, and then everything is gone.

All the details are in the privacy policy.

In your language

Stifti is available in many languages. Most translations are made by machine and are checked by people step by step. Where nobody has checked yet, there is a note. How we translate is explained under Translations.

Questions?

Write to us at support@stifti.ch. Every email gets an answer.