How do I talk about my current employer in a Swiss job interview?
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In short
Describe conditions, not people. "The unit was restructured twice in three years and the caseload per shift went up" is information. "My manager was out of her depth" is a verdict on someone who is not in the room and cannot answer. The workable test: every sentence about your current employer should be phrased so that you would still say it if the person concerned were listening. That is not politeness — it is the only version that survives a follow-up question and, later, a reference call.
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Start a live practice interviewThe reason is not etiquette but arithmetic on the listener's side. The person across the table does not know your employer and cannot check whether your complaint is fair. What they can assess is how you speak about a job you are leaving, and they will extrapolate it to the day you leave theirs. One dismissive clause therefore costs more than the sharpest accusation earns: it answers no question that was asked, and answers one that nobody asked.
Switzerland adds a second reason that people underestimate. A canton is a much smaller labour market than the room suggests, and inside a single occupation it collapses further. Of the nursing vacancies currently open with us in canton Lucerne, 95.0 per cent come from five advertising organisations, and 75.0 per cent of all open nursing posts in the canton from one hospital group alone. In canton Bern the top five hold 71.3 per cent of open nursing posts, in Basel-Stadt 63.8, in canton Zurich 46.2. The odds that your interviewer knows the person you are describing are not a figure of speech.
Share of the open nursing vacancies in each canton that comes from the five most frequently advertising employers. Count of adverts open on SwissJobs.app on 23 August 2026; adverts are counted, not jobs.
- Facts, not character. Shift density, staff turnover, reorganisations, commute, workload, budget — these are circumstances, and circumstances can be described. "Unprofessional", "chaotic" and "toxic" are ratings that carry no checkable information at all.
- No names, ever. Not managers, not colleagues, and least of all when your interviewer knows the company and volunteers a name first. The moment you nod in agreement is the moment you become the source.
- One sentence, not a section. The question about your current employer is a transition, not a main topic. Spend three minutes on it and you have spent three minutes not talking about the job you actually want.
- Lead with something concrete you built there. "I set up the wound management protocol" outweighs "it was a good time", because it is checkable and because it shows you can draw a balance rather than report a mood.
- Company numbers stay inside. Revenue, margins, client lists and pricing models are not yours to trade. Art. 162 of the Criminal Code makes betraying a manufacturing or trade secret that you are under a statutory or contractual duty not to reveal an offence prosecuted on complaint.
- The duty of loyalty does not pause at reception. Art. 321a para. 1 of the Code of Obligations requires the employee to "loyally safeguard the employer's legitimate interests" — including on the afternoon you are sitting in someone else's meeting room.
- Accusing a person is its own offence. Under Art. 173 no. 1 of the Criminal Code, anyone who, addressing a third party, accuses another of dishonourable conduct or of other conduct liable to damage their reputation is liable on complaint. An interview panel is a third party.
- If you are still employed, say so before you are asked whether your employer knows. "No, so I would ask for discretion until we have an agreement" is a complete answer; left unsaid, the same fact looks like an omission when it surfaces.
How few employers a Swiss occupation in one canton actually has
"Never badmouth your old employer" is usually argued on manners. It also holds arithmetically, and that is the better argument because it can be checked. Count how the open vacancies in one canton distribute across employers and the market shrinks to a small circle almost immediately.
Of the vacancies open with us in canton Lucerne, 56.9 per cent come from the five largest advertisers. In Thurgau it is 50.3 per cent, in canton Fribourg 41.5, in Aargau 38.6, in Bern 32.7 and in Basel-Stadt 31.2. Zurich is the widest market in the country at 26.3 per cent — and even there one advert in four traces back to five addresses.
Inside an occupation the circle narrows rather than widens, which is why the nursing figures above are so blunt. The same pattern shows up wherever a canton has a dominant public employer or hospital group: the employer you are interviewing with and the employer you are leaving are frequently two of a handful of organisations that recruit from the same pool, sit on the same professional bodies and hire each other's people.
For people who moved to Switzerland this is the part that most often gets misjudged. In a large national market, an unflattering remark about a previous employer disappears; in a canton where five organisations account for a third to a half of everything currently advertised, it does not reliably disappear. The reflex that was harmless somewhere else is not automatically harmless here.
One qualification belongs with these shares. We count adverts, not jobs, and a large organisation advertising many posts at once pushes its share up — so the concentration of open adverts is higher than the concentration of employment in the canton. For the question at hand, though, that is exactly the right measure: what matters is how many separate organisations are hiring right now.
Where the limit is law rather than tact
Part of what you could say about a current employer has left the territory of impression management. Two provisions draw a hard line, and both are prosecuted only on complaint — that is, when someone chooses to file one.
The first covers company internals. Art. 162 of the Criminal Code: any person who betrays a manufacturing or trade secret that they are under a statutory or contractual duty not to reveal, or who exploits such a betrayal for their own or another's advantage, is liable on complaint to a custodial sentence not exceeding three years or to a monetary penalty. In an interview this rarely catches your job description; it catches the examples people reach for to prove it — client lists, costings, terms, unreleased product plans.
The second covers people. Art. 173 no. 1 of the Criminal Code makes it an offence, on complaint, to accuse someone in front of a third party of dishonourable conduct or of other conduct liable to damage their reputation, or to disseminate such an accusation. Under no. 2 the accused is not liable if they prove the statement is true, or that they had substantial grounds to hold an honest belief that it was true. An interview is a poor place to be relying on a defence of truth.
Alongside these sits the contractual duty. Art. 321a para. 1 of the Code of Obligations requires the employee to carry out the assigned work with due care and to loyally safeguard the employer's legitimate interests. While your employment is running, that sentence applies to what you say about the company in someone else's meeting room too.
A practical note on sources: the English versions of both statutes on Fedlex are translations published for information, and the German, French and Italian texts are the ones that count. Nothing above turns on a nuance of wording, but if a specific clause of your contract matters to you, read it against one of the three official languages or take advice on it.
The four questions that make you talk about your old employer
"Why do you want to leave?" is the most common and the only one that genuinely asks for a reason. A durable answer points forward and names a feature the new job has and the old one does not — specialism, responsibility, workload, commute, shift pattern. A reason that only points backwards invites a second question immediately.
"What was the management like?" is a trap with a friendly face. It invites a character sketch, which is precisely what you do not want to produce. What can be described is management as a procedure: how often reviews happened, how decisions were reached, how much you were allowed to decide alone. That is an honest answer that accuses nobody, and it tells the panel more about your expectations than any adjective would.
"What was missing for you there?" is where unintended disparagement usually creeps in. Name one thing rather than three, and phrase it as a need rather than a defect: "I wanted to take on more case responsibility, and the structure was cut too narrowly for that" rather than "they wouldn't let me". The second version contains an invisible accusation, and it sticks even when nobody follows up.
"Does your employer know you are applying?" is the one people are least prepared for, although it is the easiest to answer. Saying no is entirely normal and needs only a second half-sentence: ask that the company not be contacted before an offer, and name the referee you can offer instead — a former manager, a client, someone from an earlier post.
There is one more thing worth knowing about who is listening. Among German-language adverts open with us, 16.8 per cent are placed under a name that identifies a recruitment or staffing firm rather than the hiring employer; among English-language adverts it is 0.6 per cent. A handful of large recruitment platforms account for most of that German-language figure, and the name-based count is a floor rather than a full picture — but the direction is clear enough to plan around. In a first conversation you are quite often talking to an intermediary who will summarise you in writing to the employer, and a remark about your current boss travels a good deal better in a written summary than the context you said it in.
Sources
- Swiss Criminal Code, Art. 162 (breach of manufacturing or trade secrecy) and Art. 173 (defamation) — Fedlex, English translation for information
- Swiss Criminal Code — binding German text, Fedlex
- Swiss Code of Obligations, Art. 321a para. 1 (due care and loyalty) — Fedlex, English translation for information
- arbeit.swiss (SECO) — tips on applying for jobs
Related questions
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%
19% posted in the last 7 days · Largest markets: Zürich 18% · Bern 10% · Genève 5% · Basel 5%