My background:
- born & raised in China, native Mandarin Chinese speaker
- been in Australia for 13 years; 100% fluency in English; an Australian citizen since 2014
- am moving to Switzerland in late April 2017 to join my Swiss fiancé
- have a Bachelor's degree in Commerce (major in Economics) from an Australian university
- have had 8 years of work experience as a business / data analyst in various technology and financial services companies in Sydney (number-crunching, excel spreadsheet based jobs mostly)
- current German language skill: non-existent ( )
My fiancé lives 20 minutes south of Zurich. I will most likely take German language classes in Zurich once I arrive, during those months on D visa.
I wonder what kind of job perspectives I will have after I get married and obtain my B Permit? I will be 34 yrs old this year. (So I assume my language learning ability will not be the best anymore at this age)
Should I consider doing a Master's degree in English? Should I not bother with it and focus on learning German?
Should I get my Australian employer's reference letters by print / scan? In Australia we don't need to provide references until potential employers are ready to hire you and ask for their numbers.
Thanks much.
Welcome to the forum and soon to Switzerland.
Okay, first of all if you’re planning to marry here your fiancé needs to apply for a fiancé permit for you, the Type D visa only gets you into the country for more than 90 days - it doesn’t give you the right to live and work here. If the permit is approved, then the visa will be too. More on marriage here:
https://www.ch.ch/en/marriage/
Well, Swiss employers do like their Masters and having one from a Swiss uni will certainly help. You should be able to find a Masters course in English. But the downside is you’re getting older and Swiss employers can be ageist when it comes to hiring.
To get an idea of what might be available job-wise use the following websites to see if anything fits your current skills/experience. That may help you decide whether to go for a Masters or not.
www.jobs.ch
www.jobup.ch
If you can find a job relatively quickly you could always consider doing an Open University course which are recognised here.
http://www3.open.ac.uk/courses/count…itzerland.shtm
http://www.open.ac.uk/
For the references I’d do both, have paper copies and also store them on a memory stick. You usually don’t need to supply them until asked for and having them on a memory stick would make it easy to print them out as needed.
Oy, I guess I'd better start ordering dentures and Exit membership at this rate!
Ageist at 34? Well that is a little far-fetched.....
If he does a Masters that takes 3 years normally, yes? Which would make him 37 when he starts looking for a job. Given Swiss employers increasing aversion to anyone over age 50 would they look to employ him rather than a younger person?
2 years full-time.
And OP has 8 years of work experience, i.e. is not a complete newbie. If she had never worked, well yeah then I'd agree. But these days, it's not that unusual to step away from one job to go for another through additional education, even if that means going back to uni full-time. Specific other possible professional struggles aside, every half-decent employer will say it's certainly the better option to study for another degree - and one which may well prove highly valuable if it builds on previous academic and professional experience as Bachelors degrees have a different standing in CH than in the Anglo world - than sitting at home doing little to nothing...
EXIT membership
What is a fiancé Permit? I have got my long term D visa approved. Am going to bring documents to the consulate in Sydney soon to get the visa label. I expect I will not be allowed to work for 6 months until I get the residence permit B after marriage.
Wonder if I could start applying for a university course before I arrive.
Also, are the "reference letters" more of a statement of employment which i get from the HR departments? Should I get this for every job I have had? Some of my jobs were short term contracts through agencies (not hired directly by the companies) and i might find it difficult getting those statements.
I looked into Masters degrees. Don't think I can get in because I don't have GMAT/GRE, or receommendation letters from my bachelor's degree professors (it was 10 years ago), or the original copy of my high school certificate (16 years ago in china).
I'll look into the Open University courses ....
See some comments on this thread:
applying to jobs without Arbeitszeugnis GMAT is only necessary for MBAs (most are not worth the money), GRE is not required for anything. That's a US thing. If your BS/BA is recognized here, you can get admission to MA/MS degrees. You may need to retake some courses to get full recognition for the BA/BS, but you don't need any general admission test, not for most degrees anyway. For degree recognition, you can inquire here: www.crus.ch , even if just in case.
Oh! I was just looking at the application form for University of Zurich, and in the documents list, it says GMAT/GRE results are required for Business studies .... and it mentions "bring the original copy of your high school leaving certificate once you register at the uni" .. Are there many other university choices for me if I want to do a business / finance masters degree in English? I'll read the website in more details.
Probably, but they’ll all want to see your high school leaving certificate. They’re not going to take your word that you got such and such scores in your subjects and that you actually graduated from high school. They’ll want to see a document saying so.
Can you post the link where you found that?
Masters are usually more specific and looking for business studies may just redirect you to some MBA (or MBA-type degree).
http://www.uzh.ch/dam/jcr:ba910f14-f...ication_MA.pdf The second last page of the application form. Maybe it's a specific requirement for Uni of Zurich to have GRE/GMAT results. ?
My parents have confirmed I do have my high school certificate in China still. However I definitely have no recommendation letters from uni professors in Australia. I hardly ever needed to use my Bachelor's Degree certificate. Once for immigration to Australia, and once for my first ever professional job.
I don't understand why Swiss universities want to see the high school certificate if we already have a bachelor's degree from a recognised university...
It says "strongly encouraged" and "if you intend to submit scores". I don't read this as being a mandatory requirement.
Because not all high schools are of the required standard and by far not all bachelors' degrees are either. You'd be surprised, but I've actually seen several "PhDs" with no prior academic degrees...
Doesn't it say "Additionally required application documents if applying for a program at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences or the Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics"?
You might want to contact Bucherer in Luzern. They cater to Asian tourists and consumers and they have a large staff of native-Mandarin speakers. Also, the tourism departments for the cities and larger resorts in Switzerland would surely have a need for Mandarin speakers. I'm not sure if they would have a job that exactly matches your background but who knows. Good luck.
I would actually love to work in tourism if I can - despite not having any experience in the industry (only plenty of travel experiences). My most recent experiences were in the mortgage/insurance industries.
I'm not sure if on the spousal visa I am allowed to work outside the canton of Zurich (sorry my questions may seem a bit dumb)?
Thanks guys.
Because your fiancé is Swiss then yes you can work anywhere in Switzerland. Same applies if married to EU nationals too. Non-EU, it’s a bit more difficult to manage.
If I do a postgrad course with Open University UK online, would that be helpful at all in the future in Switzerland?
Yes, OU course degrees are recognised in Switzerland and Europe. There’s a Swiss branch so you can study right here.
http://www.openuniversity.edu/