What is an alternative to hiring an interview coach?

Paid application help and the free routes

None of these is pointless — they solve different problems. The question is which problem you have: a document that does not convince, or a conversation that does not go well.

What an interview coach actually charges here

We looked it up on 24 August 2026 rather than estimating. Laufbahnvision on Weinbergstrasse in Zurich publishes a guide price of 180 francs per hour of counselling excluding VAT, plus 100 francs an hour for research and 50 to 150 francs per test, and starts with a free 30-minute conversation. coaching-job.ch in Affoltern am Albis charges 75 francs for a half hour of interview training and 90 francs in its expert tariff, billed in quarter-hour steps. CV Pics in Thalwil sells an interview training for 230 francs: about 35 minutes of simulation and about 35 minutes of feedback, by video call or on site.

Buy a package rather than an hour and the numbers look different. Nexaria lists three tiers — «Essential» at CHF 390, «Classic» with two hours at CHF 490, and «Advanced» at CHF 890, each including 8.1 per cent VAT. That is not an outlier; it is the normal band in German-speaking Switzerland.

The hourly rate is the wrong number to compare, though. What decides the bill is how many hours a provider thinks you need. Career guidance built around six to nine sessions of 60 minutes lands well over a thousand francs even at 160 an hour, while a single interview rehearsal before a specific appointment is one sitting. Ask how many sessions first and the price second.

The alternative most people never price: your own canton

Article 51 of the Vocational and Professional Education Act obliges every canton to run a career, study and vocational guidance service, and berufsberatung.ch lists all of them, stating plainly that the offer is for young people and adults alike and that everything personal is treated in strict confidence. It is not a school-leavers' service, even though most people assume it is.

The prices are cantonal and far apart. Zurich charges 80 francs for a first session of up to 60 minutes and 170 francs for each further hour, waives the fee for under-20s, for people without an upper-secondary qualification and for social-assistance recipients, and charges nothing at all for a walk-in conversation of up to 15 minutes in its information centre. Bern starts with a free 30-minute LaufbahnKlärung and then charges CHF 120 per 60-minute session. Schaffhausen gives residents up to three hours free and only asks CHF 150 for up to three further hours from the fourth session. Ticino charges 80 francs an hour to working adults who have completed an initial qualification.

Ticino also spells out what that hour covers: for people not currently in work, preparing or improving the application dossier is explicitly part of the service. That is precisely the work a coach charges for elsewhere.

Who is sitting opposite you, and what the law asks of them

This is the difference the price pages do not show. Article 50 of the Act states that career, study and vocational counsellors must hold specialist training recognised by the Confederation. The person you meet at a cantonal biz holds it. Federal law sets no equivalent requirement for the word «coach» — on its own, the title tells you nothing about training.

That is not an accusation against the profession, and it does not make the cantonal office automatically the better choice. Plenty of private providers come out of recruitment, and someone who has personally run hundreds of interviews and issued the rejections often knows more about the room than any qualification conveys. It simply is not measured for you. berufsberatung.ch points to laufbahnswiss.ch as an association of private providers, and states that private offers are chargeable for every target group.

So the useful question before booking is not «are you certified?» but: how many interviews have you run yourself, in which industry, at what level, and in which language?

Registered with the RAV? Then the arithmetic changes

If you are registered with the regional employment centre, do not commission an invoice first. arbeit.swiss states that the RAV assesses whether a labour-market measure is suitable and useful, and that it is responsible for advising you, checking the conditions and assigning you to a suitable offer. Anyone entitled to unemployment benefit in principle also meets the conditions to take part, and you can submit your own request at any time.

There is also a route almost nobody knows about. The canton of Zurich writes on its fee page that unemployed people can be referred to the biz by the RAV — and that in that case the RAV carries the fees. The 170 francs an hour becomes zero, with a counsellor who holds the recognised qualification.

If you are relocating from the United States or the United Kingdom, adjust one expectation here. In those markets interview coaching is an entirely private purchase and there is no public equivalent to fall back on; in Switzerland there is one in every canton, it is confidential, and in several cantons it is cheaper than a single private hour. Checking it first is not a downgrade.

viamia: free from forty, with one condition

viamia is the free professional stocktake for people over 40, run by the Confederation and the cantons through a contact point in your canton of residence.

The condition sits right next to the offer and is easy to read past: it is aimed at people who have no entitlement to comparable services from unemployment insurance, disability insurance or social assistance. If you are unsure, the viamia contact point in your canton will tell you. And viamia is a stocktake, not a rehearsal for Thursday's interview — confusing the two produces a disappointing appointment.

What a coach does that none of these alternatives can

Being honest here means naming the one thing a cantonal hour, a video course and any online tool cannot deliver, and coaching-job.ch describes it precisely on its own site: you send your documents and the job advert in advance, someone prepares an interview in the role of the hiring decision-maker, you turn up as you would for the real thing including what you wear, the conversation is recorded on video, and you then get open feedback based on the recording. A stranger telling you how you come across to a stranger is something only a person can do.

Add three advantages that have nothing to do with quality and everything to do with access: no residence criterion, no proof of anything, no waiting room. If the interview is in four days, the private market is often the only one that can seat you. And the higher the level, the less general preparation helps — for a management role with a real salary negotiation attached, an outside view from someone who has sat on the other side of that table earns back a few hundred francs quickly.

The reverse holds just as firmly: if you are rejected three times after the first round, the problem is rarely your delivery and usually your dossier or your fit — in which case you are paying to train something that is not broken.

When the money is well spent, and when it is not

It is well spent when you were turned down after the final round and nobody can tell you why. When you have relocated and your first Swiss interview at management level is ahead of you, where the tone is more direct and more evidence-driven than you may be used to. When a salary negotiation is coming where one sentence is worth more than the whole fee. Or when you are changing direction and cannot yet tell your own story in two minutes.

It is not well spent when you are 40 or older and have not tried viamia. When you pay tax in Geneva or live in Vaud, where the cantonal review is free. When you are registered with the RAV and have never asked about a measure or a referral to the biz. And when your actual problem is «I do not know what they will ask» — that is a preparation question, not a coaching question, and it costs nothing.

One point applies to both routes. The language of the interview follows the advert, not you. An English-speaking professional applying to a German-language advert in Zug will be interviewed at least partly in German, and a coach who works only in English cannot rehearse that with you. Settle the language before you book.

What we offer, and what it does not replace

Our interview cheatsheet starts where preparation usually stalls. It takes one specific advert and your CV and produces the questions that company and role are likely to ask — behavioural, technical and culture-fit, with short STAR-shaped answer prompts drawn from your own history. It costs nothing but does require an account, and we would rather say that here than bury it.

What it does not do: it cannot hear you, cannot see you, will not contradict you and will not hold you to anything. That is a coach's job, and a document cannot take it over.

For most readers the cheaper order is therefore this. Start with the short conversation or free intake in your own canton — 15 minutes at the Zurich information centre, the 30-minute LaufbahnKlärung in Bern, three free hours in Schaffhausen. Then take our cheatsheet for the specific advert and say the answers out loud, recorded on your phone. Then pay a coach, when one of those steps hits its limit or when this interview is the one that decides.