How much German is required for an IB SA/Analyst role in Zurich?

Hi all,

I’m looking to pivot to the Zurich IB scene during and after my masters at either UZH/St Gallen. My past internships is pretty solid and was in both AM and IB, and I come from a European target so hopefully can go pretty far in terms of interviews.

I was wondering what the general consensus is with regards to German proficiency working in IB in Switzerland. I speak to a conversational level right now and by the time I’m recruiting will (hopefully) have the skill to speak in the professional world, albeit not Swiss German. Would this realistically hold me back in terms of moving up the ladder in Zurich, or even getting my foot in the door?

 

bump. how did you find german in terms of difficulty? i'll have to choose within some months either to re-study french (i have a french speaking brackground) or german (of which i know nothing). i'd like to move to switzerland in a couple years but not dead-set on zurich. 

 

To be honest German is easy assuming you’re English native lol, a lot of similarities in terms of grammars and sentence structure. Geneva has good opps as well but I haven’t looked into it too much because of the French barrier

 

Interesting thanks a lot. Let’s say someone’s recruiting with fluent Swiss German, which banks are the top recruiters for Zurich after graduation, excluding the ones you mentioned?

 

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