I'm going to try this question again, now from a different angle... perhaps it has become more relevant due to the pandemic.

Has anyone had concrete, positive experience with any career coaches / personal branding / whatever they are called nowadays? Hopefully around the Zurich area, or at least in the German-speaking part, though nowadays it will likely all happen online anyway.

I know there's a massive amount of self-proclaimed gurus around, and you can easily pay thousands for "optimising your personal brand and online presence" or whatever. As Switzerland is a very special job market, generic advice doesn't really cut it. The really local, Swiss job coaches, from the few examples I've seen (through friends) have a somewhat... old-fashioned approach, while the expat coaches might be out of touch with local realities (or maybe not, I don't know).

Here in Switzerland most rely on vitamin B

Am going through this right now after I found I really didn't understand the job market anymore when I wanted to change direction around Xmas and what I call all the 'shady sh*t' you have to pull on LinkedIn around social proof. I hired a coach based nr Zug (who comes out of industry so isn't a know it all millennial) and they're great but you also need a lot of curiosity to research the whole topic. Happy to talk via PM if you want to reach out.

I've heard of that, but:
a) it's difficult if your close social circles have nothing to do with your job, especially not having grown up here;
b) even the extended social circles tend to have a very hands-off approach. My experience beforehand was: you know someone, they send you a list of emails of their personal contacts in different companies, who definitely reply. Here it's more like "yeah I don't know, maybe we're looking for someone?.. check the website". On the other hand, if you have family connections, things look very different, of course.
c) difficult to fit in with non-traditional resumes and outside of the typical "ETH Engineer" and "finance guy" types.

Cheers, will write.