The apprenticeship page for a trade business

The seven sections

Here is the whole structure before I explain anything. Copy it, fill it with your own details, and you have a usable apprenticeship page.

1. Pay and numbers. Apprentice wage per year, holidays, working hours.
2. The working day. What an apprentice actually does in the first year, three to five lines.
3. Who does the training. Name, photo, how long they have been with you, how many apprentices so far.
4. What became of former apprentices. Two or three lines per person.
5. How to apply. One named person, one address, what to send, by when, and how fast you reply.
6. Trial weeks. Bookable dates instead of “on request”.
7. What you do not promise. For example, no guaranteed job after the apprenticeship.

One subpage, seven headings, no photo gallery. You only need the rest of this article if you want to know why the sections look like this and which sentences belong in them.

What this page does not do

Of the apprenticeships Swiss companies offered for summer 2025, 87 percent were filled by August, that is 75’839 out of an extrapolated 87’342. That left 11’503 unfilled, 13 percent of the apprenticeships on offer. In construction, one in four stayed open; in agriculture and forestry 20 percent, in manufacturing 18 percent, in retail 15 percent. The figures come from the Nahtstellenbarometer of August 2025, the transition barometer that gfs.bern conducts on behalf of the federal government.

Companies with open positions give two reasons, and neither has much to do with the website: 56 percent say they received only unsuitable applications, 53 percent say they received none at all. Late withdrawals are named by 12 percent. Those figures refer to companies with open positions. Across all training companies, at most 12 percent receive no applications at all according to the same report, so there is hardly a general shortage of applicants. And a company’s own lack of name recognition is mentioned there only occasionally, as self-criticism.

I could tell you now that your apprenticeship stays empty because you are not visible enough online. The numbers do not say that, and I would be selling you something that does not solve your problem.

The search starts elsewhere. According to the same report, young people find their apprenticeship mainly through personal contacts. Job search engines and the companies’ own websites come next and sit roughly level in the barometer; roughly a quarter name company websites, with multiple answers allowed, and they have lost ground compared with previous years. Behind those comes LENA, the cantonal apprenticeship register, the only channel the report describes as having gained noticeably. Add portals such as yousty.ch, which describes itself as the largest vocational training portal in Switzerland, and gateway.one.

So the order is: job ad on a portal, then the company name typed into a search box, then your page. That is where someone decides whether to apply or move on. And the parents have a say: according to the same report, 86 percent of young people turn to their parents for advice on training decisions, well ahead of teachers at around half and friends at 42 percent.

Section 1: pay and numbers

Pay goes first because it is the first question.

What belongs here: the apprentice wage per year of training, holiday days, weekly hours, and whether there is a thirteenth month’s salary.

Example With us the wage is CHF ___ in year 1, CHF ___ in year 2, CHF ___ in year 3 and CHF ___ in year 4. On top of that come ___ holiday days a year and a ___ hour week.

One point that is wrong on many pages: the collective labour agreement for the joinery trade does not govern apprentice wages. Its personal scope expressly excludes apprentices within the meaning of the Vocational Training Act, and it contains no wage provisions for them. What binds is the apprenticeship contract; what guides you are your industry association’s wage recommendations. So do not point to the collective agreement, write down your own figures instead.

Do not copy sample numbers, use your own. A wrong figure on the website is worse than none, because it surfaces in the interview.

Section 2: the working day

What belongs here: a list of activities, three to five lines, starting with the first year. No adjectives.

Example, joinery In year 1 you are mostly in the workshop: getting to know the machines, cutting to size, sanding, gluing, tidying up. From year 2 you come along to fittings on site. Work starts at ___, ends at ___, and on Friday at ___.

Example, landscaping In year 1 you are outdoors almost all the time: planting, weeding, laying slabs, loading material, cleaning machines. In winter, pruning, maintenance and snow clearing come on top. We set off at ___, finish at ___, and on Friday at ___.

“We offer varied training in a motivated team” says nothing. A fifteen-year-old wants to know whether he will be standing at the saw on Monday morning or carrying boards. Both are honest answers, and each attracts different people. That is the point: you do not want many applications, you want fitting ones. When 56 percent of firms with an open position say the applications they got were unsuitable, a plain description of the working day is the cheapest remedy for exactly that.

Section 3: who does the training

What belongs here: name, photo, role, how long they have been with the company, how many apprentices they have trained.

Example Your trainer is ___, with us since ___. Since ___ they have seen ___ apprentices through their training. You can reach them directly at ___.

Three practical points. First, if you want to name the trainer’s qualification, write down what your own certificate says and do not invent a title for it. Second, a picture from your own workshop beats any bought photo, even if it was taken with a phone. Third, if you show employees, get their release in writing before the picture goes online, and for minors get the parents’ consent as well. How I handle that in a project is in A photo release for customer projects.

Section 4: what became of former apprentices

What belongs here: two or three lines per person, with their agreement.

Example ___ finished an apprenticeship as a joiner with us in 2019 and works today as a foreman at ___ in ___. ___ finished in 2021 and is now taking the Techniker HF Holztechnik, the advanced diploma in wood technology.

This is the most credible part of the page, for a simple reason: everything else you write about yourself. This section is the one you cannot invent without it being noticed, because in a trade where everyone knows everyone, someone eventually asks. And for the parents reading along, it is the only answer to their real question: will my child get somewhere here?

Ask the former apprentices first. A phone call is enough, but it has to happen. Anyone who does not want to be named does not go on the page.

Section 5: how to apply

This is where it goes wrong most often. On the company websites I looked at for this article, there was usually a generic inbox address and nothing else.

What belongs here: one named person, one address, what to send, by when, and how fast you will reply.

Example Send your application to ___ (___@___.ch). We need a short letter, your last two school reports and, if you have one, your aptitude test result. The deadline for the intake in August 2027 is 30 November 2026. We will get back to you within two weeks, including if the answer is no.

That last sentence is the most important one on the whole page. The transition barometer names the biggest difficulties young people face as writing the application documents, searching for a position, and dealing with rejections. Promising a reply window costs you nothing and sets you apart from the majority. You do then have to keep it, otherwise it works against you.

Section 6: trial weeks

Almost nobody decides without a trial placement first. Of the young people who started vocational training in summer 2025, 78 percent had done several trial placements and 19 percent one, with only 3 percent doing none at all. So the trial week is not a side path to an apprenticeship, it is the path.

Even so, many pages say “trial placements on request”. That is a hurdle, and it hits precisely the reserved young people who would otherwise fit a trade business well.

What belongs here: the length, specific weeks with dates, a named contact with a phone number, and how fast you will offer a date.

Example A trial placement with us lasts ___ days. We have slots in weeks ___ and ___ and over the spring holidays. Get in touch with ___ at ___ or call ___. You will have a date within a week.

In landscaping only the season shifts: name the weeks when work really happens outdoors, and say whether trial placements go ahead in the rain.

A concrete date instead of an invitation to enquire is the whole point of this section. Write down a week with a date and you get sign-ups; write “on request” and you get silence.

Section 7: what you do not promise

What belongs here: what you cannot guarantee, in plain words.

Example We cannot guarantee a job after the apprenticeship. Over the past ___ years we have kept on ___ of ___ apprentices. If there is no place with us, we help with the search and write a reference that opens doors.

A section that concedes something makes the rest of the page believable. Parents have a fine ear for sentences that sound too good, and a fifteen-year-old notices quickly when a page is selling to him. The same goes for the rest of the truth: that you leave at six in summer, that a building site in winter is cold, that the weeks in high season are long. Write that down and you get fewer applications and better ones.

I do the same on my own website. When a service is not worth it for someone, I write that down, even though I sell it.

When you do not need this page

If you are not advertising an apprenticeship in the next two years, or you are not an approved training company at all, you do not need an apprenticeship page. A paragraph on the team page is enough.

Example We are not taking on apprentices at the moment. As soon as that changes, you will find it here.

That is not a fallback, it is the better option. An apprenticeship page still advertising an intake from three years ago is the first thing someone sees when they type in your company name. It says: nobody looks after this. You can spare yourself that impression by not creating the page in the first place.

Getting it done, in four lines

1. Create a proper subpage, not a block on the home page. You need an address you can pass on.
2. Link it from the menu, under Team or About us. Not only in the footer.
3. Put the address everywhere: in every job ad, on LENA, in your portal profile, in your email signature and on the handout at the careers fair.
4. Update it once a year, ideally in autumn when you are advertising anyway. One calendar entry is enough.

What I am not telling you: that this page will move you up in Google, or that applications will start coming in afterwards. I do not know that, and the figures above do not support it. What I can say is this: these seven questions get asked, and on the company websites I looked at they mostly went unanswered.

If you write the sections yourself, the text is done in an evening and costs you nothing. If you would rather I built the page into an existing project, you will find how I put a website together for a joinery on Websites for joineries and more generally on Web design. What people in your trade otherwise google is in What people really google when they look for a carpenter, the wider picture of a company site is in Business websites in Switzerland, and what the whole thing costs is in What does a website cost in Switzerland.

Write to me via Contact if you are unsure whether the page is worth it in your case. I reply within one working day (Mon to Fri).