How do I handle an unfair question in a Swiss job interview?

Unfair is a much wider category than unlawful

Most questions that feel unfair are perfectly legal. A question becomes inadmissible when it has no bearing on the post. Art. 328b of the Code of Obligations lets an employer handle data about an employee "only to the extent that such data concern the employee's suitability for his job or are necessary for the performance of the employment contract". The data protection authority applies the same limit to the hiring stage: employers "may only ask an applicant for the information and documents needed to determine whether the applicant meets the requirements for the job".

That leaves a large class of questions that are lawful and still unpleasant. A brusque tone, relentless follow-ups, a comparison with candidates you have never met, a task with no solution, a question that assumes the flaw it is asking about — all of these bear on suitability, and no statute rules them out. Against those, the remedy is technique, not law.

For the room itself the three-way sort matters more than the legal label. An inadmissible question has no anchor in the post, so you can redirect it or leave it unanswered. A hard but lawful question does have an anchor, and it deserves an answer — just not the one the tone is inviting. And the clumsy question is the most common case of all: a genuine requirement, phrased as an intrusion.

This means you never have to decide, mid-sentence, whether something is unlawful. One question to yourself is enough: which requirement of this job could be hiding behind that? If you can name one, answer it. If you cannot, that absence is itself the useful piece of information — for you, and for what you say next.

For international candidates, the anchor test does extra work

Applicants who did not grow up here often cannot tell whether a question is a Swiss convention or an overstep. Age, marital status and a photograph appear on plenty of local CVs by habit, which makes it easy to assume that questions about them are normal too. The anchor test cuts through that without any cultural knowledge: check the advert, look for the condition, and answer the condition.

Two Swiss specifics are worth knowing. First, an interview may legitimately test a language you were not expecting: our index shows employers stating a professional-level requirement far more often than a conversational one, so a switch mid-interview may well be the job speaking rather than a trick. Second, permits and eligibility to work are conditions of the contract, so questions in that direction usually do have an anchor — unlike questions about your origin, which the data protection authority allows only where the company's own ideological character makes them unavoidable.

The pattern that should still give you pause is the one where a personal question arrives with no condition behind it and no answer to "what do you need that for?" That combination is not a cultural difference. It is the same overstep it would be anywhere.

It is also worth separating the interviewer from the employer. Many first conversations in Switzerland run through an intermediary, and the Recruitment Act binds placement agencies specifically: under Art. 7 para. 3 they may handle data on job seekers "only in so far as and for as long as such data are necessary for the placement" and must keep it confidential. If an agency asks for something that will not travel to the client, you are entitled to know why it is being collected.

What the adverts actually commit to

Counting the posts open on our side gives the size of the gap. A hard availability or mobility condition — shift work, night duty, weekend or public-holiday duty, on-call, travel, or a driving licence — appears in 2.4 per cent of adverts. Broken out: driving licence 1.4 per cent, shift work 0.5 per cent, physical demands 0.5 per cent, travel 0.3 per cent, night duty 0.2 per cent, weekend or holiday duty 0.1 per cent, on-call 0.1 per cent. A workload percentage appears in the title of 21.9 per cent, and 1.2 per cent are advertised explicitly as part-time.

None of this says the conditions do not exist. It says they are usually unwritten — and therefore that a question about your private life can seldom point back to anything you were told in advance. Saying so in the room costs nothing: "the advert does not mention that — what does the rota actually look like?" is a question about the job, asked in the register of someone who read the advert carefully.

How often an anchor exists depends heavily on the field, and that is the most useful number here. In logistics and transport 13.9 per cent of adverts name such a condition; in construction and the trades 8.3 per cent; in nursing and care 6.3 per cent; in hospitality 2.9 per cent. In IT it is 1.7 per cent, in commercial and administrative roles 0.9 per cent, and in retail 0.7 per cent.

Read that as a preparation instruction rather than a complaint. If you are interviewing for a care or logistics role, prepare a clean answer on availability, because the requirement may genuinely be there and may simply not have been written down. If you are interviewing for an office role and the availability question arrives anyway, you are being asked something with no published basis — which is exactly when the redirect earns its keep.

The redirect, sentence by sentence

The redirect has two halves in a fixed order. First you answer the requirement the question is aiming at. Only then do you ask your own question. Reverse the order and it reads as a refusal; keep it and it reads as someone who came prepared.

To "do you have young children?": "On availability — I can commit to the hours in the advert, early starts included. How does the rota work across a month?" The question has now been answered as far as it concerns the job, and no further.

To "what are you earning now?": "For this role my expectation is X, based on the scope for Y and Z. What band has been set for the post?" To "why should we take you over someone else?": "I have not seen the other applications. On your three main requirements I can give you one example each — shall we start with the first?"

To the loaded question: "The grade was what it was because I was working alongside the course. The modules that matter for this role are A and B, and there I was in the top third." One sentence of correction, one of substance, then onwards.

What these have in common is that none of them makes a claim about the interviewer's motives. "You are not allowed to ask that" may be correct and still changes the subject from your competence to the law. The redirect keeps the conversation on the post — which is the ground you are strongest on.

Afterwards: write it down, then judge it

Write down the wording the same day, as exactly as you can recall it, with the date, the place, who was in the room and what was being discussed when the question came. Memory for phrasing fades within days, and the difference between "are you pregnant?" and "is your availability secure over the next year?" is precisely the difference that would matter later.

Then separate two judgements. What does the question tell you about the job? An availability question from an employer whose advert says nothing about a rota tells you something about the rota that the text left out, and belongs on your list for the second round. And what does it tell you about how the place is run? A single clumsy sentence is a single clumsy sentence. A run of them is a pattern.

On the legal side, the substantive rules are federal and identical in every canton — the Code of Obligations, the Gender Equality Act and the Data Protection Act — while the route to a remedy is organised cantonally. The Gender Equality Act requires every canton to run a conciliation body that can be approached free of charge; its name and location differ from canton to canton. What applies to your case is a matter for legal advice that can see the file, not for a page on the internet.

And then there is the decision only you can make: whether to stay in the process. An unfair interview is not a verdict on you. It is a sample of the working day at that employer — one you did not ask for, and can still use.