Jobs

At local.ch we’re looking for a developer in the area of PHP/XSLT development. You will take over work regarding all user-visible aspects with technologies such as PHP, XSLT or Javascript. A job at local.ch gives you a lot of freedom to explore, find good solutions, learn new technologies, bring in your opinions and knowledge. We want a developer who knows how to write clean XHTML and CSS, has experience in client side Javascript and is well-versed in XML. We will gladly teach you XSLT on the job but if you already know to program in XSLT so much the better. ...

(Dieser Artikel steht auch auf Deutsch zur Verfügung). As I wrote a bit more than a week ago, I am giving out a few tips how you can improve your chances in the tech job market. This is mostly targeted to people who are currently in their apprenticeship or maybe at university. I’m far too young an inexperience to know a lot about such things. But I have a few ideas and those I’ll voice. Also I have dealt quite a bit with interns and know which ones I would employe and which ones I wouldn’t. So my first tip: Learn English. A lot of technical documentation is only available in English, especially for new technologies. Books are a case in point. Just look at the books available from O’Reilly in English and in German. Most German ones come out in English first and are only translated to Germany months later - if at all. So, learn to read English. If you want to participate on some software or technology, you will probably subscribe to a mailing list or newsgroup. Again, most of those are in English and where German and English are available, the English list is usually of better quality. So, also learn to write English. And last but not least, you may have to communicate to people over the phone or may want to participate at a conference. For example the Caron Workshops are easily accessible from Switzerland. So, learn to understand and speak English. But how do you start improving your English? Most Swiss my age already studied English at school. So the basic knowledge is in place. To improve reading, just start to read English. Pick up some book that you already have read in German. I started to read John Grisham’s books a few years ago for exactly that reason. You may also want to follow some English weblogs or mailing lists. To improve your understanding, you may subscribe to some English podcasts. ...

It appears that the Swiss job market in the tech sector is not as bad as I thought for some time. If you are a well-qualified individual you should have no problem finding a job - at least in the Web sector. Why do I say this? Well, recently Bitflux had a job opening (now filled), local.ch has also been looking, as is now search.ch. namics has a few job openings as I’m sure have other agencies. All of them have one thing in common which was not always true for our sector: they look for highly skilled workers (though namics also has internships in Baar/Zug and in St. Gallen). A few years ago, companies in our sector were adding people to their workforce like wild and thus had to sacrifice on quality. Now it’s the opposite. I for one believe that is a very welcome change and so do many of my friends. But I also know a few people who profited from the “more liberal” practices during the dot-com boom. Anyway, I’ll add a few articles in the following weeks on how to improve your chances for getting an employment in this area. It won’t be rocket science but I hope I have a few tips to share. Those articles will be available in English and in German. And I suggest you tag job openings on your weblogs with the “jobs” tag. That will allow job seekers to watch the tag (or subscribe to it). Update 1: Forgot, that KAYWA also is looking for talent. Update 2: And Google also is looking. (Via relab.ch). ...