Data Warehouse/ETL/BI Opportunities in Switzerland

Visas, Permits, Passports and Naturalization
1
Hi,

I am going to join my husband in Switzerland on a dependent VISA.My husband is on an L-permit.I have extensive experience of 5 years in IT Industry in the DW(Data Warehouse) space as an ETL Datastage , Teradata developer and Data Modeling using ER Studio.

What are my options of getting a job in Switzerland?

2
Potential responders will likely ask or want to know the following:

a) Age

b) Do you speak DE, FR or IT ?

c) Nationality / passport

and welcome to the forum.

3
Without getting into the red tape... there is plenty of work in that arena.

4
Aye it's my field....

BTW 5yrs is not extensive experience in data warehousing You're just starting to learn your craft.

5
Unless you work for Infosys/Wipro/Accenture et al, then you're a Senior Consultant.

6
Which area of Switzerland? I'm in a similar situation. I have 13yrs in the field at companies everyone would know.. and have been looking for 9 months now with barely any opportunities in the Geneva/Lausanne area. There just isn't any jobs open in that field right now - and often when you see one its just a fake posting as a company already has an international transfer or someone in mind (or its a fake ad from a recruiting company with no real position, they just want your CV). Banks normally are the big hiring companies but most of them are in hiring freezes or even layoff now.

Sorry to be such a downer.. good news is I have had calls from companies in Zug and Zurich - so I'm hoping for your sake that's where you are headed.

7
What are you looking for, contract or permanent role?

Agree times are tough and with 17+ years in DW even I see the offers I get are not that good even when offered. Sign of the hard times at the moment.

8
I am left wondering where you guys are actually looking?? the company I work for has been after people with these skills for the past 9 months or so! not one suitable person has applied. (please don't pm me they filled the positions now)

try monster jobs.

9
I started with permanent only but expanded to include contract after no bites.

Strange, I have 2 of the biggest recruiting agencies in Geneva looking for me as well as using indeed.ch (which searches many other job sites), jobup.ch, jobs.ch, linkedin (looking for jobs directly, posting in groups, networking etc), efinancialcareers as well as some other smaller sites. I continue to have companies from the USA and London (and once Luxembourg) contact me but nothing in Geneva/Lausanne.

The few positions (7 or so) I have found usually already have someone in mind or they never reply. I wonder if some of it is recruiters not knowing what to look for as in BI and warehouse there a ton of terms/acronyms etc. I was told before that I was not considered becuase I didn't have SSAS on my CV.. um I had "SQL Server Analysis Services", OLAP and DMX queries on my CV so I think recruiters do no know what they are looking at. Many people have told me " don't take it personally its just anti-USA prejudice " but I don't believe it (btw I have a B permit). Even if it were prejudice it doesn't change the fact there aren't that many jobs to apply to in the first place. The big Geneva recruiters have told me its been a very poor autumn for them so far and they are hoping for a big push in January.

Its weird that you can't find anyone.. just 2 weeks ago I had a company tell me that though my CV was good they had lots of other candidates with as much experience but a broader background so they weren't going to bother asking me in for an interview (and this was a job I considered a rather large step down from my last job). On the other hand I had a company tell me that last year they spent forever trying to find someone with my skills before finally giving up and paying big bucks ex-pat package to move someone from the usa so they were sad that I wasn't available just a few months earlier.

10

Are you chances very slim if you don't know DE, FR or IT? Or are there still plenty of opportunities?

11
Most of the jobsites I look at are inundated with jobs from recruiters -- jobs that don't look genuine.

Is there a jobsite where employers directly post their openings?

12
I am surprised no-one mentioned the L-permit restrictions. Or has anything changed in the last 1.5 years that I wasn't looking for a job? Then, it was impossible to get a job with L-permit. Correct me if I am wrong.

13
Roam, You already asked the exact same question in a separate thread (as it should be) and received many responses.

Is there a jobsite with jobs from employers?

14
ETL is hot among large corporations, you could even make them get the right visa for you.

15
Another related question. I am business analyst (Not BI but generic). I want to become technical BI Analyst by some training or working on tools. I have strong SQL skills. No exposure to any BI or ETL tool. Any recommendations on how to develop these skills? Is there any standard tool which can be downloaded or can be practiced online. I check with BO and they have nothing. Training are there but difficult to manage.

Thanks for suggestions.

16
You should be able to get a trial version of BO, otherwise check SAP for online BI training. It's not cheap but it is to certification level. You can do this for BO/BW.

Otherwise check Microstrategy, Cognos, Crystal Reports, BEx (will become defunct), QlikView, MS BI Tools.

For ETL you should be able to get a trial version of Data Integrator, which is part of the Data Services SAP BO package portfolio.

Be sure to check out MS SSIS, MS SSAS.

The tricky thing with something like BO is that you need to have the Central Management Server (backend repository and admin consol) installed and good luck with that. It keeps me in a job :-)

To be honest it's difficult getting a hold on these tools with real and meaningful context.

17
Check out the BI Jobs in Switzerland on LinkedIn. And monster. I am on the analytics side, for which jobs are scarce, but I have come across many on the reporting/etl/data side. Unfortunately, many do require German.

18
The only relevant point above is the passport/permit.

Plenty of people in big internationals doing this kind of work without speaking any DE/FR/IT. And many of them have been here for years. Of all ages and sexes.

Go to Jobserve, there are ETL jobs listed today.

19

exactly! at our place it didn't matter what languages you could or couldn't speak, just as long as you had the skills set, we interviewed people from all over the world who said they had, but a very quick and easy spoken test proved otherwise.

20
Right, we have an open position

please PM me for more info

you must have business objects 6.5 & boxi, report creation, universe creation etc

Sql skills

Database knowledge - oracle and terradata would be good

informatica and sap would also help

english is the working language, german would be nice but not necessary

Its a permie position based in the zurich area

please don't pm if you don't have Business Objects or sql skills, your wasting your time

If you don't have a valid work permit then don't bother - we have been down this path and getting you a permit is a non-starter

We need someone ASAP as we have just been badly let down