I am trying to put a list together of Companies in Zurich that have English as their main business language. I am about to move over from Ireland to join my partner in Zurich and I am hoping to target these companies for employment whilst I work on my German language skills. I'm currently working in the Insurance industry but I have a background in Internet Marketing and Project Management and am hoping that these skills could help me fit easily into most industries.
While these companies may have english as the main language in their corporate center or head office do not assume this is the case even in Zurich city. In the company I work for the main head office is english but you will find that in the Switzerland business unit still within the confines of Zurich city (5kms from the corporate center) the predominant language is Swiss German
After being hired by UBS, and told countless times that the official language there was English, you might well discover that this isn't always true... Depending on the average level within one group, some of those communicate in Swiss German and sometimes even reluctantly switch to high German when asked...
Brian, what you need to realise is that most Swiss people, and Europeans speak English anway, just take Austria or Germany for example. An English only speaking person is not of great interest here, unless of course you have a special skill set, and a basic European language in not really a skill set.
Whilst a lot of international companies work in English, the people who work in the individual departements work in their own language,m be it German, French, Italian or English. It is here that the information flow has to work to ensure the departement works correctly. If everybody is jabbering away in Swiss German, for example, and you don't understand and you're part of a lose team, then the dynamics are lost and the tean cannot work properly. People will make some effort to assit you and you'll pick up the language eventually, but in the meanwhile, it's not easy to have a non speaker within a small group of people, speaking fluently the language of origin.
The fact you, we all speak English is not such a great selling point as most people educated in the Swiss system speak English anyway. You need to emphasise your other skills and qualities.