In this part I will cover the whole process of finding a company to work for.
After the first role was a no-go for me, I started looking at all kind of job sites. Here are some of them:
- https://swissdevjobs.ch
- https://www.xing.com/
- https://www.indeed.ch/
- https://www.jobs.ch/en/
- https://www.glassdoor.com/
I think most of the positions I found and that were up to date, were from indeed.ch and glassdoor.com. The problem with directly applying to jobs is that, although there is a big demand for developers, if you apply directly to that company, they will take a long time to contact you (lack of personnel in the HR department) or not contact you at all. But if the ad is from an HR company, they will surely get in touch with you. Another reason to do this through an HR company is that they will mitigate your relation with the company, they will advise you on your resume, salary and expectations. Also the HR company already knows the upper limit for your position, so you will avoid applying and going through the whole process and at the end be disappointed by the salary.
What I did was to have an updated CV and/or profile on any job site that had jobs from Switzerland and the two HR companies that I worked very well with were http://www.arrowsgroup.com/ and http://www.nonstop-recruitment.com/ .
After I talked with them and discussed my requests for an ideal position, they started telling me about different roles. I also managed to book some interviews on my own (from the dozens of emails sent).
The process was straight forward:
- You like the job.
- You request an interview for that position.
- You plan an initial discussion.
- If you don’t seem crazy, you’ll get to the technical interview.
- If you pass with flying colors, you have the salary and benefits talk.
All roles had almost the same process, but at some the technical part was more in depth.
For the entire country I found ~50 front end dev positions. I liked ~30 of them and had ~15 interviews. Some of them were weird, some of them were really nice. At some I failed because they were asking for experience in different libraries/frameworks that I haven’t worked before, at some I did ok. Most of the technical questions were in the lines of these.
With only one company I clicked in terms of everything so they wanted to meet me in person. I flew to Switzerland, I stayed for a couple of days and in the meantime I went to this company where I had several interviews. The final interview I had back home and it didn’t worked out because of the reasons I mentioned in the earlier post.
Here is some advice for any developers that want to relocate to Switzerland:
- Decide the region you want to work in. (language and education curriculum will differ)
- Get in touch with http://www.helloswitzerland.ch/ and they will provide lots of answers to your relocation problems.
- Ask for a relocation bonus.
- Have enough money for at least 3 months of rent because you will need it.
- If you have kids, do your “math” over and over
- Be sure that your company will provide all the necessary info and paperwork to apply for a work visa (from what I know it’s not necessary if you work less than a year there).
- Also read this article Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture
I know it’s hard to move to Switzerland, but here is a clip that will make you move there even more.
If you have any questions, please feel free to ask me in the comments.
