Ayayay…young graduate complains about no jobs in Zürich: useless Master Diploma. This arrived via office gossip. Mr. Oiviredet has been jobless for several year and now spills out everything to social media.
New word for me: Vetternwirtschaft (EN: Nepotism). A RAV officer working on his case said: “hey you have to meet people to get any job”. The surprise is that meeting people is framed as Nepotism. People you went to school with? Nepotism. Ex-colleagues? Nepotism. Keeping professional contacts? Nepotism.
Of course, the root of the issue is not any peculiar framing of social relationships but a common problem around industrialized countries around the world. For some reason people with good formation (Uni, Apprenticeship) ends up in the gig economy. China, USA, Switzerland, Germany, Austria. Young graduates are not to blame, jobs for qualified positions are scarce (!). And, you know where this is going:
Wir eben keinen Fachkräftemangel haben / We do not, in fact, have a shortage of skilled workers.
Good thing is that the guy keeps motivated to chug along. I agree, having small jobs or living in a room in a shared flat are no reasons for shame. Breaking down mentally and ending up drinking at 9h00 in the train station is the issue.
Ahhh, people from the medical jobs are scarce, engineering related workers at my job are scarce, wifey has heard about a children daycare in desperate need of workers. Some sectors of the economy go up, others down. There’s no overall crisis.
Personally, I’m learning German as plan B in case of harder times. But, it’s clear that there are other skills that influence the outcome. A question arises, does being local ensures full integration or locals not integrated to their own society are more common than expected?
To some extent, it depends on luck: how good economy is, how many job vacancies there are, how many people are also looking for jobs.
You can also make your own luck by targetting a job/industry, making contacts there, studying for it and getting internships. Or deliberately targetting jobs/industries with shortages, moving to geographic locations with shortage of people etc. or just striking it out alone and become self-employed.
Then on the other side you can just be very good. Someone I know already retired but had OpenAI and Anthropic falling over themselves to hire him - he only took the job to get access to compute as his hobby computations with AI was starting to get very expensive.
It can also depend on your willingness to take on jobs that are not related to what you studied. My first jobs were assistant roles and I then got a job with a bank due to the languages I know and I took certifications and degrees in that field from there on.
But then, times have changed so that may not be longer possible.
People here shamelessly flaunt their “Vitamin B” (Beziehungen/Bekannte) — in other words, personal connections and networking. Merit-based hiring seems to have become the exception rather than the rule.
Before Brexit, several British recruitment agencies were active in Switzerland, and there was at least some emphasis on merit and qualifications. British recruiters generally seemed more open-minded and willing to put forward candidates regardless of their nationality or background, provided they had a valid work permit and met the requirements of the job description.
Since Brexit, many of those agencies have left or reduced their presence, and over the past four or five years, I’ve noticed what feels like a significant deterioration in merit-based recruitment in Switzerland.
It’s genuinely disappointing to see personal connections seemingly outweighing qualifications, skills and experience. In the long run, such practices only undermine Switzerland’s competitiveness and deprive the country of talented professionals who could contribute to its economy.
What a shame that a country known for excellence and professionalism appears to be allowing such practices to undermine its own strengths.
I should have been a bit more clear. The mention of nepotism is a bit weird because not being an asshole to people and trying to be the average agreeable person is branded as “nepotism”. As immigrant, it would be laughable if I believed longtime personal connections outweigh skills and ability. I arrived here on an airplane with a carry on “item” (the laptop) and a 22 kg roller suitcase. If long time personal connections mattered that much, I’ve had nothing.
Back to Mr. Complainer from Züri, the guy got a Swiss education, Swiss German as mother language, allegedly fully integrated and somehow these things regarded as very important, don’t matter much.
Ability to do the job has little to do with any chance to be hired. Hiring is a political choice and therefore an opportunity to collect future favours or improve positioning or at least thwart potential risks or threats. Most of the operational work will get done one way or another and it’s usually not important at all. Making the right alliances is everything
Before I left our CEO had become enamoured with Jack Welch and fell over himself introducing JW’s policies.
One of which was to remove the line manager from the hiring process. Candidates were reviewed/interviewed by existing employees of the same level and HR made the decision based on their recommendations.
You are probably thinking what a disaster and you would be wrong. It was a numerous adjective mess. Half the hires didn’t complete their probationary period, many of the rest actively looking for other employment and left within 18 months.
I have been jobless for a bit more than half the year after graduation with engineering diploma with bells and whistles. My money run out, so I moved to a forgotten pit hole to work on some totally messed up financial software, just to build up my CV, and I still had to borrow money because the job didn’t cover minimal expenses. After 1.5 year, the next job at least paid for my living expenses and a few extra booze, only after another 3 years I finally got a job from which I could afford anything above basic living expenses or start savings a little. Looks like the history repeats, I guess that’s something new for the generation raised in rich families (rich, comparing to the times I happened to make my first steps on this world)
Yeah, my first job had the first year or two increasing my debt (on top of student debt) as living costs > salary. But at least I was on a career path where there was expected salary increases at 3yrs and 5 years down the line, so I wasn’t too concerned.