Hello, we are an English family who are considering a move to Zurich. I have a potential job lined up but my husband is a general builder of 16 years experience and we were wondering if it would be easy for him to find work, either as self employed or working for a Swiss Construction firm. Any advice gratefully received.

You need to give more info on specifically what he does/what he has experience in.

I could well imagine German or Italian being pretty essential for building jobs

He is a bricklayer by trade but can do groundwork, plastering, tiling as well. Unfortunately, he can't speak any other languages at present but wasn't sure if this would be a major problem if English was widely understood?

He really would need some German at least if he was to work for a company in general building, however he might get freelance work for the ex-pat community while he learns German. We are sometimes needing help with small building projects, PM me when you arrive.

That's great, thanks for your help. I'll invest in a German language course in the meantime!