A selection of English written books to get to know Switzerland better

Knowing all the touristic places, B&B and best restaurants in Switzerland is probably great and is part of the relocation experience in this beautiful country, however our selection focuses, first, on books, which serve a career project purpose.

No job-search or career books either as we value, for its efficiency, the qualitative approach that a personalize support with a career coach or a consultant does bring, but you will discover here a selection of books to better understand the Swiss system, culture and most importantly people:

Beyond Chocolate -understanding Swiss culture, by Margaret Oertig

ISBN  978-3-905252-23-1

Xenophobe's Guide to theSwiss, by Paul Bilton

ISBN 978-1-902825-45-8

Going Local - your guide to Swiss schooling, by Margaret Oertig

ISBN 978-3-905252-25-5

Swiss Watching -inside the land of milk and money, by Diccon Bewes       

ISBN-Nr.: 978-1-85788-548-4

Living and Working in Switzerland, David Hampshire

ISBN: 978-1-909282-63-6

Keep also an eye on the offer of Bergli as they are specialized in publishing books mostly in English, that focus on the cultural diversity, rich history and cultural attitudes and values of the Swiss and international people living in Switzerland.

If you liked this blog, please share this article with your network and register on the blog for email alerts. 

Sandrine van den Oudenhoven
job4U2, "relocation is a project for both"



Related posts:  

Short introduction to Switzerland Economy for Jobseekers
“Dual Career”: A “way of life” in Switzerland?

Studying in Switzerland

The purpose of this post is to provide resources to facilitate your orientation in the Swiss tertiary education world.

In Switzerland, there are 3 types of tertiary education:

•         Traditional Universities (12 universities including EPFL and ETH)
•         Universities of Applied Science and arts
•         Professional training and Education schools.

Additionally, several MBA programs are offered in Switzerland:

Some interesting links:

- Explaining the Swiss tertiary education system, including continuous education:

The swissuniversity.ch page

- An interesting search engine to find the Swiss education offer in the subjects and language of your choice:

See the Swiss universitycontinuing education page.

- Master studies taught entirely in English:

Visit the crus.ch page

- Swiss Learning presents Swiss third degree education offers sorted by establishments

- Rate and ranking of the main Swiss education establishments (in French and German only)

- Swiss university global ranking:

http://www.shanghairanking.com

- Vocation education system in Switzerland explained in English, and information about the vocational education offers for a specific profession (not available in English)

To get a complete picture about the entire Swiss education System, we can recommend the book of Margaret Oertig “Going local, your guide to Swiss schooling”

Should you know some additional interesting sources of information, please share them in the comment section.

Sandrine van den Oudenhoven

job4U2, "Relocation is a project for both"

Job search: Switching priority from applying to networking

Because of the increasing amount of applications per job posting, companies do not have time nor resources to properly review all submitted applications and even tend to avoid posting openings. The trend is to an increasing, so called hidden market, and to a decreasing probability to receive any form of feedback when applying to a job advertisement.

Since the chance to be selected for an interview, when a job advertisement is published is getting smaller, it is making more and more sense to invest the largest part of a job search activity in networking.

 This is the reason why many discussion topics, both on the job4U2 circle on LinkedIn and on the blog, are about networking:

• How do you make sure you follow-up efficiently?
• Networking in Switzerland...when located outside the biggest Swiss cities
• Several references to networking events all across Switzerland
• Which networking event did you recently attend and that you found interesting?
• Growing your network
• Pitching?

The 4U2 programs offered by Swiss based companies in partnership with job4U2 to their employees’ partners are placing networking centrally in the job search process, bringing support, method and practical tools to the partner to accelerate the creation of a comprehensive network in Switzerland.

If you have interesting information and tips to share about networking in Switzerland, or if you are simply interested in gaining more information on this topic:

• Subscribe to the job4U2 blog email alert
• Join the job4U2 circle on LinkedIn ( open only to expat's spouse or partners)

Sandrine van den Oudenhoven

job4U2, "Relocation is a project for both"

Some related posts:

Who is hiding my job market?

The unspoken rules of networking 

Networkingfor expatriate partners