I don't know about the general practice, but the agency that found me for my permy job here got 3 months of my salary - not from me you understand, but my employer. Who knows if it was worth it?? I like to think so

If the job you take is permanent then the Agency is paid a one off fee by your employer, nothing should be paid by you. However if you take a contract position then a percentage of your wage is taken every month to pay the agency. The actual percentage varies depending upon the agency and your rate and you don't always know what it is. You negotiate your hourly/daily/weekly rate with the agency and that is what you get; their cut is on top of that from your employer.

Hi,

After reading some threads where some posters seemed to be desperate for a job, I felt obliged to pass on my experience to job seekers. I'm Swiss, but have always had an affinity for the Anglo-Saxon world (particularly US). My career path so far has been "unusual" with long gaps in-between jobs due to stays abroad. This made it quite hard for me to find a job last year, when I got back from a prolonged stay in the States. I would say it is no coincidence that I now work for an American company. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at highskai_at_yahoo.com. Following is my guide:

Best industries for English speaking people (besides banking)

Reinsurance
Uniquely international business. There are three big players here in Switzerland

SwissRe is #1 Reinsurer in the world. Very international environment
Converium Formerly part of Zurich, now an independent reinsurance business. Was struggling to recover from big issues with their US subsidiary in 2004. In the meantime, they got rid of it, and are in much better shape. Their Technical Accounting department is almost always looking for new people, especially in their Overseas Team. This job requires basic administrative skills, some accounting knowledge & especially languages. You might even get hired w/o knowing any German. Be warned, though that the work isn't particularly pleasant, because in order to do your work properly, you depend on the South American clients doing their job in a diligent manner, which almost never happens.
Zurich Their Global Reinsurance division still serves internal clients.


Trust Companies
If you don't mind a lot of paperwork, capricious clients, and sometimes shady business, this is definetely the sector for you. This industry is growing rapidly due to increasing numbers of so called High Net Worth Individuals (HNWI). Zurich & Geneva are home to legions of trust companies. Just search help.ch or directories.ch using keywords "trust" or "wealth management". Many of them will probably require German, but since most of them serve an almost exclusively international clientele, you may be able to get away without. They might also ask for accounting knowledge. Big advantage with these companies is that they are always small, so there are no HR people in your way. Just call them up, ask for some manager and then introduce yourself. Fringe hours are best, because you still have to get past a secretary.

Some examples:
Trident Trust located in Zollikon. I went there for a job interview. The lady that runs the Swiss branch is very nice.
Kendris
Rothschild
etc.


Travel
Ok, there really is only one company that I can recommend here. It's Kuoni
Destination Management (www.kuoni-dmc.com). They are always looking for accounting temps during the summer, but since their business is expanding fast, they may be hiring even off-season. This job requires absolutely no knowledge besides English & typing. Boring, doesn't pay that well, but if you are really desperate, it should do. Give it a try and call them (ask for John from Accounting).

Also in this category:
If you have a driver's license, try limo services (like Transunix). Or become a cab driver if you know German.


Misc
Try all the international companies that have their head offices in Switzerland. A few that come to my mind:

Kraft Foods They are moving their European headquarters from London to
Zurich, probably sometime during the next year.
GMC (Zurich), Dow (Horgen), Man Investment (Pfaeffikon SZ), Xstrata (Zug), Philipp Morris (Lausanne), Unilever Supply Chain Company (Neuhausen), EBAY (Bern), Citrix (Schaffhausen), etc.

And if you're in Bern, how about embassies?

Hope this will turn out to be useful to somebody. Again, if you have any questions, please contact me at the above e-mail address.

See ya,
Steve

Amazed no one has replied to this one.
Great post. Thanks for the list.
Here's my list of companies that I've worked up in the last week.
I've not worked for any of them, or really have any experience of them, other than they advertise jobs in English and that they are based in Zurich.

Zurich and
SwissRe
have aleady been mentioned, some other banks that should also be included are the big 2.
UBS
Credit Suisse
My girlfriend works for Credit Suisse, and gets annoyed that although she spent years perfecting her German she never gets to use it, she is also not in IT.

Also I have heard good things about
GE Money Bank and again they seem to require English.

Siemens have a horrible employment record (at least among my friends) in the UK, but they often seem to need English.
Swisscom and cablecom also seem to want English speakers.

One of the best choices though is Sunrise they only seem to want English, German is a nice to have. I've had an interview with them, and thought they were fairly decent people, although they did **** me off by not making a job decision for 6 months and being amazingly rude and upset when I complained about the wait. O well. Didn't get the job either, *******s!!!

Alcatel-Lucent another company advertising in English.

General motors have already been mentioned. There job application process is a pain in the arse though, and I haven't been bothered to go through the entire "write your life story in 250 words" bit yet.

KPMG not really much good for me, I'm an IT bod, but they seem to need English speakers, and have a lot of jobs on offer.

Kraft Foods just moved their European headquarters over to Zurich, not many jobs on offer at the moment though.

HP and IBM both have offices in Zurich and want English speakers, although IBM seems to only advertise for English and German speakers, ignore it and apply. I've worked for IBM and they use English throughout the company.
Same goes for Microsoft they want German but you have to have English first.

Well thats my current list, if anyone has any others please post them here, seems to me like there are a lot of people trying to find jobs that could do with the help.

EDIT

ManInvestments
English speaking company looking for a lot of IT people at the moment.

What about Axis Capital in re-insurance?
Citigroup in banking?
And of course Google...

T-Systems, Cable & Wireless, BT, AT&T all have satellite offices in Schweiz.

Swisscom Mobile is English speaking only.

Thanks for bumping this up! I wonder how I missed this last week.

so basically if you don't want to work for a big business corporation you're out of luck?

Speak fluent German, probably Swiss German, and you'll be OK for smaller places...

wow this is cool, will try one of them:-) thanks for the post.

Couple of more agencies I have had some luck with.

Swisslinx
They have been the best agency I have spoken too, helpful and friendly, and unlike some others they actually seem interested and want to help.

Michael Page
Seem to have a lot of jobs advertised, and seem decent and helpful on the phone.

Adecco Hated them in the UK when I had to use them, but they at least replied to a job I applied for and went through the brief with me.

ElanIT These guys are more of an IT recruitment agency. Seen some other "lower" scale jobs on offer though.

mbaswitzerland I have applied to a few jobs with these people and I can't begin to describe how utter shit they are. To the point of being sent a job by them , responding and then being told it had been filled 1 week earlier; Dopey cow.

Harvey Nash No experience with them, and they seem to deal mainly with IT jobs.

And another company I know a bit about from friends is,
PriceWaterhouseCoopers
They offer some English speaking jobs, although always with the caveat that German is advantageous.

Actually the above also goes for KPMG

Hi guys

This is all great info, thank you for providing it!

I am going to gather all of the info together from this thread and make a sticky, so please add anything you've got so I can put it on the list!

Also, info for outside of Zurich is also quite welcome

Nellen & Partners tend to have some quite high profile poitions, across most verticals. The man to talk with is Thomas Ritter.

www.nellen.ch

t.ritter@nellen.ch

At some point, i put together this list of websites:

http://job.search.ch/
http://www.jobup.ch/
http://www.inpharm.com/External/InpH
http://www.jobwinner.ch
http://www.eurojobs.com
http://www.job.ch
http://www.topjobs.ch

Many respectable companies advertise here rather than monster, jobpilot to filter the applicants in advance.

http://www.stellen.ch

One of the best sites out there for english speaking roles.

Thanks guys for this info. Still I am thinking why I didnt stumble upon EF these years.

A Big thanks to everyone who has added - I have to start a job hunt and I wil try as many.

Dont know how lucky I will be but I have 7 years work-ex already after doing my MBA - hopefully I can find a job in Ticino.

Many thanks to everybody here...

The Swiss headquaters for Unilever is in Thayngen (SH). I used to work for them in North Wales with very close contact to the German speaking countries and unfortunately they closed down most of the offices in Switzerland, e.g. Ostermundingen (BE) and Zug (ZG) due to cost saving reasons. So if someone thinks of applying or calling them, then try:
their website (unfortunately on in German): <http://www.unilever.ch/ourcompany/ca...OffeneStellen/>

Also one might try to apply for a job with ABB (see also <http://www.abb.ch/cawp/abbzh253/161b...004680ac.aspx#>).

There is also Bombardier Transport (used to be part of ABB) (see <http://www.bombardier.com/index.jsp?...en/1_0/1_0.jsp>)

Or there is Alstom (also used to be ABB) (see <http://www.alstom.ch/home/index.EN.php?languageId=EN>)

Have to throw my hat in for SwissLinx too, they are excellent. Very helpful and approachable and are actually pro-active on your behalf.