Chef interview questions, derived from Swiss adverts

The order below is the order of your preparation. Each point needs a situation from your own work — not the claim that you can do it, but an occasion when you did.

For Chef: EFZ / apprenticeship in 44% of adverts, German in 43%, Resilience / flexibility in 31%. That is what gets asked, usually without the question sounding like it.

German appears in 87% of adverts, and 93% of those want fluent or native level. French follows with 7%. Expect the conversation to be held in German.

The roles are advertised above all in Zurich (7%), Bern (6%), Lucerne (5%), Thurgau (2%).

The odd thing about kitchen applications is that the interview is often the smaller half. In Swiss gastronomy a paid trial shift — one to three days, called Probearbeiten — is the norm, and that is where the decision is actually made. Prepare for both, but if you have to choose between a perfect answer and clean mise en place, choose the mise en place.

Two questions come up almost every time and appear in no guide. First: how many covers have you run? Say "a lot" and you have lost; say "180 on a Saturday night, à la carte, three of us on the station" and you have won the conversation. Second, the question about season and availability — hospitality contracts in tourist regions are often seasonal, and knowing that is itself an answer.

On language: German is required at a fluent or native level in 93% of the chef adverts measured. That is strict for a job where three languages often run at once on the line. The explanation is mundane — the German is for talking to the service team and to suppliers, not for talking at the stove.

One practical note for anyone arriving from outside Switzerland: kitchens here run on the Swiss apprenticeship system, and the EFZ appears in 44% of adverts. A foreign culinary qualification is not a dead end, but you will be asked to place it against the EFZ, so know in advance which Swiss level yours corresponds to.

The adverts are not spread evenly across Switzerland. For Chef, Zurich leads with 7% of adverts, followed by Bern (6%) and Lucerne (5%).

That means two things for the interview. First, anyone willing to commute into one of the stronger cantons negotiates from a better position. Second, the question about your journey to work is not small talk in Switzerland but a real test — a commute over an hour is read as a resignation risk, and raising it yourself takes the sting out of the subject.

Currently advertising are Coop, Two Spice, Tertianum, among others. Looking into the company before the interview pays off more than another list of questions — the choice in this occupation is wider than most people assume.

Practically all Chef roles are advertised as full-time. Anyone looking for part-time should raise it early: in this occupation it is the exception, and a no later in the process costs both sides time.

A last point often missed for Chef: EFZ / apprenticeship appears in 44% of adverts, while Teamwork appears in only 12%. That ranking is also the order in which your examples should be ready — the most frequent requirement is near certain to come up, the rarest may not come up at all.