Hi all,

I am new to this forum and have been lurking around for the last few days, and it has given me some pointers about life in Switzerland. The threads in this 'Employment'-section has been particularly useful, but I would still like some more feedback regarding job interviews, from you who are now working for a Swiss company.

My situation is that I have been living in Tokyo for the past few years during my Ph.D-studies, but I am now seeking to go back to Europe (I have a EU-passport) and move away from academia towards a position in the industry. Switzerland seems to fit many of my requirements to provide for a good life with a family, and after struggeling with Japanese bureaucracy I believe I shall be able to overcome and accept any quirks the Swiss system might throw at me. Now, I found an interesting position at a large medical technology company, and I will have a first interview by telephone this week. I suppose there must be a lot of people who's been hired from abroad on this forum, so I would really appreciate any information on the interview process. How many interviews did you go through? Did they fly you over? Did they help with the relocation and housing issues? and so on...

From another thread I learnt that the process in general is rather slow, often taking several months before a contract is signed. The salary level is of course also on my mind, but judging from the posts I have read it is really difficult to get a clear answer to this as there are too many factors weighing in. I made a search on salaryexpert.com and got a quote of around 145000CHF yearly salary-median for an engineer in my field, but that does seem rather high - my initial thought was somewhere just above 100000CHF gross, but maybe that would be selling myself short. I do have strong academic credentials, but I am not sure how much weight a doctoral degree carries in Switzerland, so any thoughts on this would also be highly valued.