OK.
After having gone through the job process here and succeeding I thought I'd post my thoughts and some advice.

This is Zurich, and only my experiences.

Applying directly to jobs from company websites has given me very little joy. The only success I have had with this was through UBS and that was due to ringing up the HR person and being a pain in the arse until they looked at my CV properly.
All other jobs I applied for directly either still haven't responded or have sent back negative responses. I believe that a lot of the companies threw my CV straight into the bin without looking at it.
Only evidence I have for this is that I applied for a job directly, got rejected and then applied for the same job through a recruitment agency (who pushed my identical CV) and I got an interview.


Don't spam jobs out there. Advice I was given is try not to apply for everything at once because you end up pissing off the recruitment /HR people who get your CV 3 times.

It takes a long time to get responses and then to get an interview. My experience was, a notification (sometimes) that my application was received and then a long wait, the shortest being a week. Interviews were never arranged for the next day, it always seemed to be next week at the earliest, often longer.
I received a request for an interview 3 months after I sent the initial application, I had heard nothing from them until that point...made me wonder if they were really interested in hiring anyone.
Contract jobs are obviously different in this respect and the turn around was quicker.

HR will give you the run around.
I had telephone interviews that were canceled 5 mins before they were due to happen, or in one case I wasn't phoned at all and had to ring them up to find out what had happened (job had gone, no one told me)
I had interviews where I heard nothing from them again, and had to phone them myself.
I even had interviews were I was told I would be called back, and then a week later told the job had been filled internally.

Typically I seemed to have to go through 3 interviews. Telephone followed by a mixture of HR/Line manager/uber manager.
All interviews asked personality questions...you know the type Strength/weaknesses - career goals - outgoing or introvert.

Salary was discussed at each and every interview, so know what you want..and don't be surprised if they offer you less - they will quote benefits, bonuses, pay structure in place, everyone else gets the same etc.
I found this very odd, salaries are never quoted in the job advert in my experience and even the agencies don't seem to know exactly what is being offered, it is expected that you will talk about money in the interview.

Knowing some German was a massive help.

The most joy I got was through Swisslinx they were the best agency and I regularly got phone calls from them keeping me updated and offering advice and new jobs that I hadn't seen.
In fact they were the only agency that seemed to offer any help.
Once again Swisslinx were the best at helping me find work.
In future I would start by talking to Swisslinx and then searching for stuff on my own using monster, topjobs etc.
I am not employed by Swisslinx just my opinion of them.

Most of the big companies (UBS/Credit suisse etc) seemed to be wanting permanent positions and were less interested in contracting.