What is HR actually looking for in the first interview?

Round one screens conditions, round two screens competence

Where a company has an HR function, the division of labour is stable: HR establishes whether a hire can happen at all, the department establishes whether it should. That is why the first interview can feel oddly generic. You are asked what you have done, why you want to move, what you expect to earn and when you could start — and comparatively little about how you would solve a concrete problem.

This is not superficiality, it is sequencing. HR carries the risk of passing on a candidate who fails on a condition that was visible early: a language level that does not hold up when spoken, a workload that does not fit the budget, a start date three months after the department needed someone, a salary expectation outside the band, a permit situation nobody clarified. Every one of those costs a specialist an hour if it surfaces late.

The practical consequence: in this round you rarely win on depth, but you regularly lose on an open condition. The good news is that the list is short and knowable in advance.

The permit line, and why it comes up early

For anyone without a Swiss or EU/EFTA passport, the permit is a condition the employer cannot resolve alone — it involves cantonal authorities and, for third-country nationals, quotas. HR therefore asks about it early and plainly: what status you hold today, whether you are already resident, and whether the company would need to apply for something.

The useful answer states your situation in one line — 'EU citizen, B permit, resident in Zurich' or 'currently outside Switzerland, would need a permit' — rather than leaving it to be inferred. Ambiguity here is what turns an otherwise good candidacy into a maybe, because HR cannot write 'maybe' into an internal recommendation.

The same applies to the commute. Switzerland is small, but a workplace an hour and a half away with a family in another canton is a retention risk in the employer's eyes, and they will ask about it. Saying where you live and how you would get there is not private information you are giving away; it is a question you can answer better than the person guessing.

The language of the room is not the language of the advert

A language requirement is the most frequently recorded condition in our index, and the only one that can be verified in the interview without a single document. That is why it gets tested, announced or not. A switch mid-conversation is not a trick; it is the most obvious way to check a line on a CV.

In German-speaking Switzerland there is a second layer that appears in no advert: High German is the language of documents, Swiss German the language of the team. HR will normally speak High German with a newcomer, but may switch briefly to see how you react. The answer that works is an account rather than a claim: what you understand, what you can speak, and what you expect to reach in how many months.

There is also the register question. Swiss workplaces vary between the formal Sie and the informal du, and the advert usually signals which one the company uses. Follow the advert, and follow your counterpart if they switch. It is a small thing that reads as attention to detail in a market where attention to detail is the point.

Pensum, notice period, start date: the three numbers

The Pensum is a workload expressed in per cent — 100 per cent is full time, 80 per cent is four days. It is not a niche arrangement here: German-language adverts print it in 33.0 per cent of titles, and where a range appears (80–100 per cent), the exact figure is still open and will be decided partly in this conversation. English-language adverts state it far less often, at 7.9 per cent, which is why arriving candidates are so often surprised to be asked about it.

The notice period is the second number. Swiss contracts state one, it commonly runs to the end of a calendar month, and it decides your earliest start date. Compute the date once before the interview instead of estimating it in the room. Naming a date does not read as inflexible; it reads as someone who takes a running contract seriously, which is exactly the signal an employer wants about their own future contract.

The third number is the salary. It sits with you because it is almost never published: 0.8 per cent of the English-language descriptions we hold contain a salary figure. Decide your number in advance, in Swiss francs, gross per year, and know whether it includes a thirteenth month's salary — which is customary here and changes the monthly figure without changing the annual one.

The documents a Swiss employer expects to see — and the ones you may not have

A Swiss application dossier is thicker than a CV. It normally carries the Arbeitszeugnis, an employer reference written at the end of each job, describing tasks, performance and conduct. Employees can request one at any time, so most Swiss candidates have a stack of them, and HR is used to reading the file rather than asking about it.

If you come from a market where these do not exist, say so plainly rather than hoping the question does not come. 'In my country employers issue confirmations of employment, not evaluative references — I have two managers who agreed to speak to you' is a complete answer, and it converts a missing document into a named contact.

Which leads to the rule that protects you: an employer may only approach third parties, including your current employer, with your consent. 'Gladly, once we are further along' is a normal and lawful reply if your present job should not yet know. And a former employer may pass on your performance and conduct, but not the terms of your contract, because that would considerably weaken your position as a candidate.

What HR is not allowed to weigh

The boundary is narrower than most candidates assume, and knowing it makes the conversation easier rather than more adversarial. Employers may only ask for the information and documents needed to determine whether an applicant meets the requirements for the job and is suited to the business.

In practice: questions about education, previous employment and professional goals are generally allowed. Questions about financial circumstances, debts, existing medical conditions or pregnancy are only allowed where the post to be filled gives special reasons. Questions about family background, membership of associations such as a trade union, religion or philosophical and political beliefs are only allowed where they are genuinely relevant to the company's stated ideology — which applies to very few employers.

If a question has no visible connection to the job, you can simply ask what it is aiming at. That is not confrontation; it is the question the other side should be able to answer about its own process. This is an explanation of the rules, not legal advice.

If you are relocating: what changes at the border

Candidates arriving from the EU now bring an expectation that Switzerland does not meet. Under the EU pay transparency directive, applicants have the right to receive from the prospective employer the starting pay for the position or its range, provided for example in the published vacancy notice or before the interview — and employers are prohibited from asking applicants about their pay progression in current or previous employment. Member states were required to bring those rules into force by 7 June 2026.

Switzerland is not a member state, and that right does not apply here. There is no published band to anchor to, and the first number in the room is usually yours. What does exist is the data protection rule above, which limits questions about your current income to cases where the post gives special reasons — a narrower protection, arrived at by a different route.

The second difference is structural. Where collective agreements set pay grids, the first interview places you in an existing scale. In Switzerland it is more often an individual agreement, with sector collective agreements where they exist but without the country-wide grid many arrivals assume is there.

The advert is the employer applying to you

SECO's SME Portal, the federal government's guidance for Swiss employers, puts it unusually directly: when a company publishes an advertisement, it is 'applying' to potential applicants. The same page lists what should be in it — for the company, name, service, size, ownership and future prospects; for the position, the hierarchical level, remit and level of independence, possibilities for development, management style and the reasons for the advertisement; plus how to apply and a contact person. And it adds that the more important the position, the more detailed the advertisement should be.

Hold that list against the advert you were invited on, and your questions write themselves. Why is the role open — growth, succession, or did someone leave? Who would I report to, and how do they lead? What development is realistic in two years? These are not interview tactics; they are the contents the federal guidance recommends to employers in the first place.

Ask them in round one rather than saving them. HR can answer process questions, and asking them signals that you are assessing the job rather than only hoping to be selected — which, in a market where employers compete for candidates in several fields at once, is read as confidence rather than presumption.

Where this answer stops

Not every first interview is an HR interview. In a small company the owner is often at the table, and the split between conditions and competence disappears: both are tested in one meeting and a decision can follow the same day. Where a recruitment agency runs the first conversation, the opposite holds — conditions are screened especially hard, and questions about the future team often cannot be answered at all.

The figures here describe our own index of open Swiss adverts, not the entire market, and they describe what employers disclose before an interview rather than how any individual HR manager decides. What every version of the round has in common is the order: conditions first, competence second, comparison with the other candidates last.