Interviews

How to pass the expert interview (Fachgespräch) in Switzerland — seven steps

Updated: 5 September 2026

In short

The Fachgespräch — the expert interview — is the round where HR steps aside and the department head takes over, usually with a future colleague in the room. Seven steps carry you through it: find out which format is actually scheduled; place your qualification on the Swiss education ladder; describe your current work so a specialist can check it; show depth rather than years of service; prepare for the language switch that often arrives here; keep every figure identical across all rounds; and treat certificates and any work sample as part of the conversation itself.

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The step people arriving in Switzerland skip most often is the second one, and the adverts explain why. In a count of the adverts open on our site on 5 September 2026, only about one in five names a formal qualification at all — 19.7 per cent of those carrying a short description. Where one is named, 54.8 per cent name a university of applied sciences, a university or ETH, 38.7 per cent the federal VET diploma (EFZ), 16.0 per cent a professional education institution (HF) and 5.3 per cent a Federal Professional Examination certificate. The silence of the other four fifths does not mean the question never comes. It comes in this round, out loud, and it asks about the level.

Two further figures explain why this round needs a different preparation from the first. Only 7.8 per cent of adverts state a length of experience at all and 3.6 per cent give a number of years, so how deep your experience runs is settled in the conversation rather than fixed in the text. And of the English-language adverts that name any language requirement, 32.9 per cent also require a national language — German at professional level in 64.1 per cent of those cases. The expert round is therefore often the round in which the language changes, because the department works differently from the way the advert was written.

Which level the advert names, when it names one at all

Share of the adverts open on 5 September 2026 that name a formal qualification at all. The total exceeds one hundred because 13.6 per cent of them name two levels side by side. Apprenticeships, internships and trainee programmes are excluded.

A formal qualification is named in 19.7 per cent of adverts carrying a short description; 13.6 per cent of those name two levels side by side.
French-language adverts name the level far more often than German-language ones: 30.2 against 18.3 per cent, with Italian at 15.0 and English at 13.3 per cent.
Which level is asked for depends on the field: 28.0 per cent of nursing adverts name a professional education institution (HF), 32.6 per cent of construction adverts the EFZ, and 14.7 per cent of IT adverts a higher education degree.
A length of experience appears in 7.8 per cent of adverts; an explicit number of years in only 3.6 per cent.
A driving licence is required in 3.8 per cent of adverts and a certificate or authorisation in 5.4 per cent — points that are checked in the expert round, not discussed.
Of the English-language adverts stating a language requirement, 25.8 per cent also require German and 11.7 per cent French; 66.9 per cent need English alone.
Where those English-language adverts do require German, it is at professional level in 64.1 per cent of cases and at native level in 6.9 per cent.

Step 1: Find out what the word actually refers to

In Switzerland a Fachgespräch is not a loose word for "second meeting". It names an examination format from professional education, and professional education here is a whole track of its own: SERI describes it as covering the Federal Professional Examination and the Advanced Federal Professional Examination together with study programmes at professional education institutions, forming the tertiary level alongside the universities. The person across the table has very likely sat one — and runs the conversation the same way: something you have actually done is opened up and followed down to the reasoning behind it.

In practice, when you confirm the appointment, ask about the format and not only the time and the participants. A conversation, a case exercise, a short presentation, a work sample on site — those are four different preparations, and which one is meant is almost never written in the invitation. One line in your reply is enough, and asking reads as forward-thinking rather than demanding.

Keep the two rounds apart in your head. The HR interview checks the frame: Pensum (workload in per cent), availability, salary band, permit status, the shape of your career. The expert round checks the work itself and is led by someone who does the job daily. Answers that were sufficient in the first round will not carry here, because every statement draws a follow-up question — not out of suspicion, but because that is the exercise.

Step 2: Place your qualification on the Swiss ladder

The Swiss ladder has four rungs, and specialists here think in them. At the base, initial vocational education and training leading to the federal VET diploma, the EFZ. Above it, professional education: the Federal Professional Examination leading to a federal certificate (Fachausweis), the Advanced Federal Professional Examination, and the programmes at professional education institutions, known as HF. Beside those, the higher education sector: universities of applied sciences, universities, ETH. SERI describes professional education as giving holders of a federal VET diploma or an equivalent upper-secondary qualification "the opportunity to specialise and deepen their knowledge" — exactly the movement a department head looks for in a CV.

If you trained abroad, do this placement yourself before anyone asks. SERI runs two procedures through the same portal: recognition and a level certificate. Recognition is required in order to practise certain professions, and which body is responsible depends on your qualification — for health, construction and teaching occupations it is frequently not SERI but another authority. If your profession is not regulated, nobody requires a procedure at all; then you are the one who has to name the level in the room.

The sentence you need is short: qualification, country, length, and the Swiss rung it sits on. "A three-year college diploma from the UK, which sits roughly at the level of a Swiss HF" closes a question that otherwise eats ten minutes. If a procedure is running, give its status and the date. And do not guess upwards: a rung claimed too high is spotted immediately in this round, because the person opposite knows the qualification they work with every day.

Step 3: Describe your current work so it can be checked

The self-introduction from the HR round will not carry here. What the specialist opposite needs is four coordinates: what comes in to you, what goes out, how much of it in an ordinary week, and where your own decision stops. Two minutes, spoken like a handover to the person covering for you — not like an application. Starting that way saves the conversation its first four follow-up questions and earns you the interesting ones instead.

The limit of your decision-making authority is the most important of the four and the one almost everyone leaves out. "Up to this amount I decide, above it goes to the division head" or "I sign off the release, the client signs off the acceptance" says more about your responsibility than any list of duties. It also answers in advance what the expert round is really testing: whether you know where your craft sits inside an organisation.

On the Swiss expectation about tone: sober and without superlatives, but precise about your own share. Restraint is normal here, yet saying "we" out of restraint where "I" is the accurate word makes your work impossible to check — and the next question is guaranteed to be "and your part in it?". State the scope exactly, even when it is small. A modest mandate described cleanly is stronger in this round than a large one that falls apart at the first follow-up.

Step 4: Show depth, not years of service

Only 7.8 per cent of adverts state any length of experience, and only 3.6 per cent name a number of years. That is good news for anyone dreading a comparison of dates, and a task for everyone else: because the text fixes nothing, the expert round decides what "enough experience" means — and it decides it on a process, not on a calendar.

So take a single workflow from your field and walk it end to end, from the trigger to the handover, including the places where it goes wrong. The exception is the real test: the standard case is in every manual, while the exception is known only to someone who has lived through it. What do you do when the delivery arrives incomplete, the finding does not match the image, the entry will not balance, the client wants something different after sign-off? Answer one of those from your own experience and the question about years is already settled.

If it comes anyway, answer with a number and a boundary in the same sentence: "Four years, two of them carrying my own cases" or "three years, but only in outpatient care". That is not modesty, it is precision, and precision is the currency of this round. If you have fewer years than asked for, give the density instead — how many cases, of what kind, at what level of responsibility. Two years in an emergency department is a different stock of experience from two years in a quiet unit, and you are allowed to say so.

Step 5: Prepare for the language switch

The language of the advert is not necessarily the language of the department. Of the English-language adverts that name a language requirement at all, 32.9 per cent also require a national language: 25.8 per cent German, 11.7 per cent French, 1.4 per cent Italian. And where German is required it is professional level in 64.1 per cent of cases and native level in 6.9 per cent. In such processes the HR interview often still runs in English; the expert round runs where the team actually works.

So ask before the appointment which language the technical part will be held in, and expect the answer "mixed". It is not a trap and not a loyalty test, it is a piece of organisational information that people hand over when you ask for it. In German-speaking Switzerland there is a second layer: a round can open in Swiss German and continue in standard German. You may ask about that too, and the request is treated as ordinary.

What you have to prepare for the switch is not your whole trade but three building blocks in the second language: your function, your scope, your most recent piece of work. Together they are less than five minutes of text, and they cover precisely the points where a mid-conversation switch otherwise stalls. If a term escapes you, the useful response is a technical description of the thing rather than an apology — the people in the room use the same word in two languages every day.

Step 6: Keep every figure identical across the rounds

Swiss selection processes rarely finish in one sitting, and the notes travel between rounds. What you told HR about Pensum, availability, salary expectation and permit status is in front of the department head — and your technical answers travel back to HR. Divergences between two rounds are noticed reliably, and they weigh more heavily than a gap in knowledge, because they touch reliability rather than ability.

Take the same sheet into every round: the four framing figures, the dates of your positions, and the job titles exactly as they appear in your dossier. That last one is where the unnecessary contradictions are born — a role that reads "administrator" in the CV and "team lead" in the conversation produces a follow-up nobody needed. And if something has changed since the first round, say so before anyone finds it: "In the first interview I said end of October; realistically it would now be 1 December."

The same holds for the documents. The work references in your dossier — the Arbeitszeugnisse, the written employer references that are standard in a Swiss application — are the only papers somebody else wrote about your work; the functions and dates in them should match what you say. Not because anyone compares line by line, but because the specialist is reading the same career you are describing and will stumble over discrepancies that have long stopped registering with you.

Step 7: Treat certificates and work samples as part of the conversation

Part of the technical requirement set is not negotiable but verifiable. A driving licence is required in 3.8 per cent of adverts and a certificate or authorisation in 5.4 per cent — in those cases the question in the expert round is not a question but a check. arbeit.swiss advises assembling diplomas and certificates into a single PDF for the dossier anyway; take the two or three that actually open the door for this role along with you as well. For a regulated profession, the recognition decision or the status of the procedure belongs in that set.

In the trades, hospitality, care and retail the expert round often ends not in the meeting room but in a work sample or a trial day on site. Clarify beforehand what is being assessed, how long it lasts and under what conditions it happens — the answers also tell you what the employer regards as professionally important. Trial days have their own rules, including on payment and insurance; settle those with the employer before you agree to one.

And reverse the direction at the end. The expert round is the only appointment with someone who genuinely knows the work, so ask about the work rather than the culture: what the team is building right now, which part of it has to be finished in the next few months, and which piece of the job is not in the advert. Those answers decide more good choices than anything you said about yourself in the preceding hour.

The market figures come from our own count of the adverts open on our site on 5 September 2026. Apprenticeships, internships and trainee programmes are excluded by title; of the remaining adverts, 93.6 per cent carry a short description, and only those are counted for qualifications, experience statements and certificates. Counting uses fixed word lists in four languages: an advert counts as naming something when the term appears in its short description or its title. Because the short description is shorter than the employer’s own job description, every share is a lower bound; what is robust is the comparison between advert languages and between occupational fields, where the same shortening applies to both sides. Fields are assigned from the job title and can overlap. The language figures reflect the language and level demanded in the advert, not the language of the interview. The description of the education levels and the recognition procedures follows SERI; which body is responsible for your qualification depends on the qualification itself. Notes on trial days and certificates are not legal advice; in an individual case your contract, any collective agreement and the competent authority decide.

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Sources

What our job index says about the Swiss market

Computed live from our own index, not quoted from a study. Shares only, as of today.

Language the advert is written in

Deutsch: 60%
English: 23%
Français: 13%
Italiano: 3%

Of adverts that state a language requirement, the share asking for

Deutsch: 70%
English: 43%
Français: 21%
Italiano: 3%

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