thanks so much for all your trouble in posting these lists! wish me luck!

I was looking for a job and sent numerous CV. One of them I sent to employer here in Switzerland. After one year they replied and paid for my travel expenses go to the interview to Switzerland. For me it was just an adventure, I never take it serious. But they decided to hire me

Hi KirstyJane,

hope you are still on this forum.

I am an international legal counsel and would really appreciate you to provide me with some names of recruiters who work in legal.

Thanks in advance,

Valerio

Hi Lausannebrit... I like your story, very inspiring. I myself is getting frustrated in finding a job here in Geneva, cause one of the requirements is do you speak French or German? This is when you try to apply in a local companies. I am a trailing spouse and this is our first posting that is not an English speaking country. By the way, did you already speak French when you first arrive in Switzerland? Thanks and all the best!

Thanks a lot for sharing those very helpful info! I am also trying to find a job, I will be graduating soon :-)

Hi Guy:
I am a civil engineer technician with 1 years work experience from New Zealand, do you think I have chance to get job in Switzerland.
Did anyone have similar situation as mine, Please let me know I would appreciate your feedback.

jobs.ch
tailored my CV in german with a friend's help.
applied to over 500 positions (some way bellow my field) in IT (network engineer by trade).
got hit with about 100 rejections per week (some are still coming through)
had 3 interviews.
nailed them and got 2/3 job offers.
decided on the one that i'm working now.

its not easy.
the big 4 I find that the swiss Germans look for are
1. university degree
2. german proficiency
3. job experience
4. EU national

I was lucky to have 2/4 but my german is bellow a toddler level...

I've been looking on and off for almost 2 years. Mostly for quite qualified positions in computer networking and IT security. Unfortunately, all this effort has resulted in only 3 (unsuccessful) interviews, the last of which was over 6 months ago.

In an attempt to get more hits I've even tried jobs that I am over qualified for, but that's also gotten me nowhere.

Recently I've been sending out CVs to a lot of large multinational companies, with an emphasis on English (as my German is only conversational, but I have been self learning regularly) in order to gain an advantage there. No luck.

I was contacted by a Swiss job agency the other week and was obviously very excited that they may have a position for me, but it was only to get more information from me.

I think I'm going to rewrite my CV in German this weekend and customise it even further as I am really running out of ideas. Might need to take zmaster1911's approach.

Wish me luck!

Only advice I can give is Keep trying and never give up.

Best of luck.

Also, if possible, don't be afraid to ask for feedback from a friend or former colleague. Perhaps, if they have a look they can suggest some improvements etc.

Good luck

good luck.
i had a 0 success rate with an english CV. however the moment I had it German tailored i was getting feedback...negative feedback is still feedback right

I spent four years looking for a permanent job, during which I was able to find various short term contracts and freelance gigs that kept me going comfortably enough. Naturally over that period I sent out a lot of applications, which I carefully tracked and learned from and in time I eventually got the permie job I was looking for.

I found you can broadly break down the process of an application into two parts; the approach (CV, covering letter, etc) and the interviews. The former is by far the toughest, IMO.

It works like this; application goes to a recruiter, and you go through a culling process, after which, if you make it, it gets passed onto the employer and runs through another culling process, which if you get past will bring you to the next stage and interviews.

What I found was that the rate of attrition through each cull was up to 80%, independent of whether you went through a recruiter or not. This meant, if you sent out 25 applications directly to companies, you'd get 5 interviews. If you sent them to recruiters, you'd get 1.

In short, try to bypass recruiters (I don't mean get the client from them and then screw them over, but if you see a job spec, copy some of it and Google it. In some cases you'll find the original advert on the company Web site.

Overall, and with a few notable exceptions, recruitment companies add no value to the process - certainly for the candidate - and can even be a liability. On one occasion, I got to the last two candidates for a role and lost out to someone who did not go through a recruitment agency. They were very honest with me; they liked me slightly more, but this was not enough to compensate for the 40k they'd have to pay to the recruitment company in commission.

Anyhow, that's one thing that I would recommend from experience.
More important than language is that it is clear, well laid out and the relevant information that matches the job spec can be found in under five seconds. If someone going through 50 or 100 CV's has to put in too much of an effort to find whether you tick the basic requirements, they're just going to bin you.

hello ,

i would like you to share your experience im in exactly the same position as u ... but we are in 2016 .....

can u please share ur tips... it would be great!!!!!!!

thank you very much!

Well, I think the advice given is still valid. What should have changed so tremendously??

I think standing bare boobied holding up a sign saying "please give me a job" in the national languages might work but I haven't tried that yet. Traditional routes such as agencies, adverts & reading job hunting sites don't seem to be very effective.

My first job, I found it in the UK before moving here.
My second job, I joined job mailing lists related to my profession, and checked the sites daily
Good luck!

I got posted here by my American based company from Singapore. Does this happen often? I don't see many examples of this nor hear a similar case from other expats which surprises me!

I transferred from my job in London. All very straightforward really in terms of the employer arranging everything for me and my family (including our 2 year old daughter and a 10 day old baby). It wasn't an easy start though during the height of the banking crisis.

After looking at many posted positions online - including many of the sites already mentioned in this thread - I eventually found an interesting one on LinkedIn. Somehow it just seemed right so I did a lot of research on the company, tailored my CV, and wrote a bold but polite cover letter. That got me the interview and here I am.

I also had a meeting with a recruiter which was helpful but in the end I did not apply anywhere else. This time it paid off to go all in.

Once I finished college abroad I came to Switzerland for a month for jobsearching.

(Area: IT)

Sent around 15 job appliance. Most replied, got around 5 interview, got 3 positive ones.

I consider myself lucky with this statistic.