What questions should I ask the employer?

Why the reverse questions carry more weight here

Every interview ends the same way: "Do you have any questions for us?" It is read as a courtesy and it is in fact the only point in the process where you get to close the information gap you walked in with. The person across the table has read your full file — CV, reference letters, motivation letter, often a phone screen as well. You have read an advert.

How thin that advert is can be measured. About a quarter of the adverts live on our site carry no continuous description at all, only a title, a location and an employer. Among the rest, the English-language ones mention training in 6.4% of cases, remote or hybrid work in 5.7%, pay in 4.2%, holidays in 0.4% and the pension in 0.1%. Team size appears in 0.1%, the reporting line in 0.2%, the interview process itself in none of them we can find.

That is not a complaint about employers. An advert is an advertisement, not an offer, and it is written to sell the role rather than describe it. But it explains why "no, I have no questions" is the most expensive sentence in the whole interview. You would be committing years of your working life on the strength of two paragraphs of marketing copy.

Three to five questions is the right volume. Fewer reads as indifference; more turns the closing minutes into an interrogation. Write them down and bring the sheet of paper. In Switzerland that is read as preparation, not as weakness.

The questions the advert already answered

One class of question actively damages you, because it proves you skimmed. Across the adverts live on our site, 72.8% record which languages are required and 90.9% record whether the role is full time, part time, an internship or a fixed-term assignment. Ask about either and you have spent a question buying information you already had.

For English speakers there is a specific trap in the other direction. Swiss employers frequently state the workload as a percentage in the job title itself — the famous "(80–100%)" bracket. That convention appears in 29.1% of German-language titles but only 9.1% of English-language ones. So the number that a German-speaking candidate can simply read off the title is genuinely missing from most English adverts, and asking about it is not lazy, it is necessary.

The useful form is precise. Where a range is given: "You advertise 80 to 100 percent — what do you actually expect for this role, and can the workload be adjusted later?" Where nothing is given: "Is this a full-time role at 100 percent, and is a reduced workload possible after the first year?" Both show you understand how Swiss workloads are contracted.

The same applies to language. Not "do I need German?" — the advert usually says — but "the advert asks for German and English; which language does the team work in day to day, and which do meetings with internal stakeholders run in?" No advert answers the second half.

The four Swiss money questions

This is the part international interview advice gets wrong for Switzerland, because it assumes statutory minimums that do not exist here in the same form. The Code of Obligations repeatedly sets a default and then allows an agreement to depart from it. The interview is where you find out which version applies to you.

Overtime. Art. 321c CO says the employer may, with your agreement, compensate overtime with time off of at least equal duration. Where that does not happen and nothing else has been agreed in writing or fixed by a standard or collective agreement, the employer owes salary plus a supplement of at least a quarter. The phrase "agreed in writing" is why so many Swiss contracts state that overtime is covered by the salary. Ask which regime the contract uses.

Salary during illness. Art. 324a CO requires continued payment for a limited period once the employment has lasted, or was entered into for, more than three months — three weeks in the first year of service, an appropriately longer period afterwards. The Code does not require an employer to buy daily sickness benefit insurance. Where such insurance exists and covers at least four fifths of the salary, the employer owes nothing (Art. 324b CO), and during a waiting period the employer owes at least four fifths. Whether the cover exists, how long it runs and who pays the premium is one of the most valuable answers you can get.

Thirteenth month salary and bonus. Art. 322d CO is blunt: you have a claim to a special payment if it was agreed. So the question is not "is there a thirteenth?" but "is the thirteenth month written into the contract, and is the bonus formula-based or discretionary?"

Pension and holidays. Art. 66 LOB requires the employer contribution to be at least equal to the total employee contributions — a floor that good employers beat, sometimes substantially. Art. 8 LOB fixes the mandatory insured band at CHF 26’460 to CHF 90’720 of annual salary; plans that insure beyond it are worth real money to you. And Art. 329a CO sets holidays at a minimum of four weeks, five up to the completed twentieth year of age. Anything above four weeks is voluntary — and mentioned in 0.4% of English-language adverts.

Permits, relocation and the questions only foreign candidates need

If you are applying from abroad or on a permit, three questions belong in the second conversation rather than the first, and none of them are answered by an advert. Who files the permit application and who pays the fees. What the start date depends on — many Swiss offers are conditional on the permit, and the sequencing between resignation abroad, permit and start date is on you unless someone says otherwise. And whether the employer has done this before for your nationality.

A fourth question is about where you would actually live. Swiss adverts state a place of work but rarely a commute expectation, and cantonal boundaries matter for tax and for cross-border commuters. "Is the place of work fixed, or is there more than one site?" is a plain factual question with real consequences.

A fifth, easy to forget: whether the role is covered by a collective labour agreement. That appears in 0.1% of Swiss advert descriptions, but in construction, hospitality, cleaning, security and parts of retail it determines minimum wages, holidays, supplements and notice periods. Ask which agreement applies rather than whether one does.

None of these questions make you look difficult. They make you look like someone who has moved country before and knows what has to be true before a start date can hold.

Who is on the other side of the table

About 12.1% of the adverts live on our site run under the name of an agency, a recruitment consultancy or a hiring platform rather than the company you would actually work for, and one single platform accounts for most of that share. In those conversations the first question is different: who is the employer, who would I sign the contract with, and is this a temporary placement or a permanent position?

The size of the advertiser shifts the useful questions too. 37.6% of all live adverts come from employers running fifty or more openings at once, and a quarter from employers running more than a hundred. There the process is standardised, and the questions that pay off are about onboarding, internal mobility and how many people already hold the same title.

At the other end, 7% of adverts come from employers with a single opening. There you are usually talking to the person who would manage you, or who owns the company, and the productive questions are different again: who did this work before, what happens when you are away for three weeks, and whether the role is a replacement or newly created. Not one advert description in our index states which of those it is.

Neither situation is better. They simply need different lists, and you can tell which one you are in before you walk through the door.

How long has the role been open?

The median advert live on our site is nineteen days old. English-language adverts are markedly older: their median is thirty-seven days, 36.4% have been running more than sixty days and 22.6% more than ninety. English-language roles in Switzerland stay open longer, which is worth knowing before you assume you are one of fifty applicants.

The question is easy to ask politely: "How long have you been recruiting for this role, and what has been missing in the conversations so far?" The second half is the valuable one. The answer is a set of instructions for the rest of the process, and if you can demonstrate the missing thing in the same meeting, you have converted a reverse question into an argument.

It is also negotiating information. An employer three months into a search has fewer alternatives than the interview manner suggests. That does not license demands, but it should change the posture you bring to the salary conversation.

What not to ask, and how to close

Do not ask anything the advert answers, anything five minutes on the company website answers, or — in a first interview — anything that sounds like insurance against the work itself: holiday scheduling, remote days, earliest possible finish. Those are legitimate topics, but they belong to the stage where the company already wants you.

You are also entitled to push back when the questions to you go too far. Art. 328b CO permits an employer to process data about you only insofar as it concerns your suitability for the employment or is necessary for performing the contract. That is a workable test for questions about family planning, health or politics, and a polite "what would you use that for?" is a legitimate response.

Close with two sentences that almost always work. The first: "Is there anything in my profile that gives you pause?" It lets you answer the objection in the room instead of reading it in a rejection email. The second is the timeline question. Ending with a clear next step is precisely the impression you want to leave.