- the people aren't against you because you are from the US. But they know that it is very difficult to get you a job if you are non-European. Not because Swiss people don't like non-Europeans, but because the employment laws are set up in a way that there are fairly high hurdles to employ you (while it is a piece of cake to employ a Schengen-national.)
Advice: You are a difficult candidate for a recruiter. Recruiters are not interested in you as a person, they want to close deals fast - which will be difficult with you and take a longer time than with the 300 Million Eu nationals out there. So I think you better focus on applying at companies directly - if you manage to convince an employer directly, they are more likely to go the extra effort to get your work permit sorted.
- don't get fooled by the RAVs name - they don't get you a job. Never. They only make sure that only entitled people get money from the social insurances, not much else (if your lucky, you manage to talk them into paying for some education, for example a language course).
Good advice on the Goethe; have already been looking into that. Good to have.
Some people also send out photocopied standard letters or do not bother to double-check the writing of the company name. In that case I do not feel that I should invest my time either. Similar situation I had when we needed a native Swiss German speaker and received loads of CVs of people with only basic school German.
first of all I would like to say hello to everyone since it's my first post in this forum. I've been looking around for a long time but never written anything. Anyway currently I live outside Switzerland but I would like to move to Zurich and I am looking proper job. And since I don't know how exactly job searching process looks on Swiss market I have one basic question. If I send job application to the company is it normal that I don't get any reply? Obviously I don't mean positive but negative reply.
I had few situations that someone answered me that the hiring process was still ongoing for the position I was interested in ad that they still ask me for some patience, and then no other emails for 2 months.
The other situation was that I applied for the job which offer was on the head hunting company page and they answered me, the person from this company ask me to call them to discuss my profile etc. During this call this person has promised me to send me the details of the company to which I should send my application but no mail so far and it's already 2 weeks. Of course I've sent them email asking if they are going to send me the information they'd promised to but no reply.
I am just really confused, because it's not my first job and I have the experience in searching job abroad but this is the first time when someone treats me like that. Is it normal in Switzerland? Or is it just my bad luck?
Have a nice day!
I hope that helps.
Good luck
You should be grateful they don't bill you for the time they spent reading your CV!
Lets say you have 4 positions open, and you receive 200 applications for each one. That's 800 CV's to review. Nobody, not even in the big orgs, have the resources to reply to every unsuccessful candidate.
To do this, they'd need another bod in HR. Which is another position open, and another 200 applications...
And that's a conservative case. A high profile position can attract 1,000 applications, and even if 50% of those were total dross (written in crayon, etc), that's still 500 CV's you need to discriminate the ideal candidate out of.
So - like it or not - only successful applications get contacted. Not even the best candidate gets a look in, because sometimes they fail one of the basic HR filters used to get the list of CV's down into the double digits, yet may have exelled in the role. It's life these days.
I have no experience with recruiting agencies, but I applied to tons of jobs when I was looking. Like everyone, I received many rejections, with or without ackowledgment, but the jobs I got, were the ones where: I was focused - applied to very specific jobs in my field, but was open as far as location at the beginning (now, with some years' experience under my belt, I have a higher freedom to pick locations I like) There was a link between the recruiting manager and a reputable external party - once I applied for a job and presented as recommendation letter a reference of someone who was a client of the person above. Score. I previously had an internship/volunteer/unpaid project in the field and had made contacts that became useful later. I found that, in my field where there is a worldwide network and people more or less all know each other, this kind of contact/networking helps. When I started as an entry-level position, I had done a 3-month unpaid internship in my field (not much, but a start) and the boss at the internship was a reputable professional in the field whom my prospective employer who offered me the job later knew and appreciated, and had the chance to work with in the past. When I subsequently changed jobs, but always in the field, it was always through contacts.
To our Silicon Valley poster - good luck, it's not impossible, but lots of work. That entry-level job I was mentioning above...I got it in the Silicon Valley, as a foreigner needing work visa. As I said, hard but not impossible. While you keep applying for jobs left and right, would you consider also volunteering with someone in your field who might give you leads and contacts that may turn out to be useful? Again, good luck!
P.S. Silicon Valley rocks!
This "engagement model" can also apply socially in general.
Hope your job search was fruitful.
I am sick and tired of sending my CV out and being bombarded by companies wanting me to pay a sum for the connection to a potential employer.
I have not been unemployed for almost 30 years, so the past three months have been a shock to the system, are there no ethics on this rock anymore?
Speaking of ethics, have you ever compensated a recruiter financially for refusing a job offer they helped to arrange in your 30 years of employment?
Have you considered incentivizing the recruiter once you land a position? What was the response. As ever, caveat emptor/buyer beware.