I am an Indian national with a Ph.D in engineering from the US. Have more than 5 years of work experience as a risk analyst at a large insurance company in Zurich. I have a Swiss C permit and will soon get the Swiss citizenship being married to a Swiss.

I would like to move to Geneva due to family reasons. I have been looking for quant based jobs in Geneva for over 3 years but somehow I am not able to even land up an interview. Some of the industries where I applied are private banks, commodity trading companies, hedge funds and big-data companies based in Geneva region. Although not a professional programmer, I can code in quite a few languages.

Headhunters/recruiters weren't of much use neither. Most of them weren't motivated to follow up on my requests.

I don't know if I have a problem with my CV format or my cover (motivation) letter. Somehow the same were able to help me land a job 5 years ago in Zurich. Can someone please help me understand better how job market in Geneva region works. Will be great to know from your experiences landing a job as a quant/coder in Geneva region. Also can someone please help me review my CV or point me to some professional reviewers.

Many thanks in advance for reading through my entire query and will really appreciate your response.

CM

Do you make it very very clear that you have a C Permit? Else most employers will think they need to jump through extra hoops to be able to hire you.

Try to speed up that swiss citizenship, and put in evidence the C permit.
But zürich is the center for your kind of business I guess. Being a weekly commuter is not easy on everyone but it's a reality for many people.
You are right to have someone review your CV in any case.

Do you speak french?

While not every job may require it, it is the language here, and does help. If you have the language or maybe are studying it, put it in your CV as well. Working towards acquiring the language will look good to potential employers.

Many thanks for all your kind responses. I am going to check my CV and letter with http://www.karriere.ch/

I do speak pretty good French and would say intermediate when it comes to writing.

Job hunting in Geneva is horrendous. You can send CVs & applications directly to companies without even getting a reply. Certain agencies don't bother replying. There's the official level of unemployment which is a drop in the lake compared to the actual amount of people looking for jobs in the area - those who are actually registered, frontaliers who are all looking for jobs in Geneva, those who are not registered as job hunters as they aren't entitled to benefits anyway & all those from abroad who want to move to Switzerland.
Good luck is all I can say.

You are absolutely right neddy. I know that in many countries (anglo-saxon) recruiters work hard for you to get you a job. Swiss recruiters (like Finansys) in my experience aren't very responsive or either have enough talented people to recruit for the available positions.

In principle I should fit in well into a quant analyst jobs in a bank or hedge fund which are in plenty in Geneva region.

Anyway I will keep applying and will update you if I have any success. Meanwhile it will be great to know from your experience on how to approach companies/HR while applying for an open position.