Swiss IB scene, how to get in?

Hi,

Working in Zurich in M&A so can offer some pointers below.

1) Most of the M&A scene in CH is in Zürich. To a lesser extent local banks have small M&A teams in Lausanne & Geneva, and the Big4 are active there as well, but it's more limited than in Zurich.

2) Very difficult in Zurich without German, and same thing in Lausanne / Geneva without French. There is a fair number of large multinationals in Zurich where the CorpDev teams will recruit non-German speakers (at least some of them) but for banking it's quite rare to see that. If you do not speak a single Swiss national language it's going to be extremely difficult getting any jobs in Switzerland. PE firms typically don't recruit other than post-IB people, except Partners Group which has an ANL program quite interestingly (don't know if others do that but not to my knowledge). 

3) IB spots will be tricky, but you can also check the Big 4 transaction teams, I have knowledge of at least one case of a non-german speaker there. Could give you a foot in the door. It's very difficult to hit an IB internship first without relevant expereince. Most people I've seen get some kind of no-name internship early in their studies, then get a Big4 internship and finally land an IB internship (or several). Given 90% of Swiss students go through Bachelor + Master (5 years), people build up quite a bit of experience usually (e.g. taking one year between bachelor and master to do 2-3 internships, then leverage that to get a solid IB internship during their master)

4) The 6-months off-cycle internship is a big thing in Switzerland. There are also Summer internships but generally most people I know go through these more long-term internships which are adverstised on the banks' websites same as the others. In any case you will need either to go through an internship + return offer, or be lucky and see an open position for a FT position (and in such case you will need M&A internships on your resume; wouldn't focus too much on this path it's quite unlikely).

5) Which uni are you studying at? If at St. Gallen you need to register for all the on-campus stuff (especially the banking week) where basically all the main players hold events. Companies in Zurich tend to hire generally a lot from St. Gallen (most of the recruiting from MBB / IBs are either strong European unis or St. Gallen)

If you could give more insights into your situation we could give you more ideas (although there are no "tricks" to my knowledge). What is true for every bank in the world is true for CH: without relevant internships you won't land anything. If you have decent internships, good grade average (CH at least 5.0/6.0 and being closer to 5.5 will make things easier), and a decent brand-name (e.g. SG) then you have chances of landing an IB internship. UBS/CS are clearly the most active there. And again, without German it will be a bit tricky for most IB gigs (you would need to be far better than any other german-speaking candidate, which is unlikely)