Vacation over!

In our hectic occidental life, we are not used to stop doing what we usually do, i.e. work (and shop by judging on the popularity of shopping mall)! My break lasted for more than 4 months, in which I did enjoyed playing with the kids, reading more books than the last 4 year, biking around 1000km (although it was late in the year) and did various other things we usually don't have time doing during our short 2 days weekend break (BTW, yes I must confess I also did work during this break!). I guess it looked fun, since my wife got jealous and decided to take a break with us as well!

But it seems we are well programmed to live our active life which is not difficult to understand considering that we are brought up to it at very early stages (when I see those 4-5months old at aycare, sigh!). So after a while I was quite motivated to go back to work, but first I needed to find one.

Although I have my own consulting company, contracts don’t come so easily when you are a foreigner in a foreign country. I’ve worked in Lausanne before, but mostly involved in job at the backend, i.e. the RDBMS. My experience acquired within my consulting firm helped me broaden my knowledge in the J2EE environment and improve my ability as a consultant. This is the sort of skills I want to exploit in my new job.

So that means starting all over again and look for jobs the normal way, i.e. sending resumes, meeting new people and company and go through interview. Not the most fun, however I decided to take it seriously. The thing is, in my previous two jobs, I did not bother much about sending resumes and going through interviews. Actually I targeted only a single company, went through the normal hiring process and got lucky enough to get the job I was interested in.

So before leaving Canada, I actually checked the job market, identified a few potential firms/jobs and send them a link with my online resume. I started with about 5 or 6 of them, from which there were middle man ("intermédiaire"). I though that this would be enough as a first step and I could find additional target once arrived here. I must say the job market for my skills is well active in Switzerland, because this initial sending lead to an impressive list of follow-up:

-6 interviews
-1 psychometry test
-1 technical test
-3 phone interviews, etc… and 4 job proposal!!

p.s. Don’t underestimate the effect of the middle-man which can have a multiplicative effect.

Comparing this with my first job interview at Lausanne, for which I felt I was being sold a job rather than the opposite, I must say that things are more professional and most firms take recruitment very seriously. I've been through very high-level technical interview, challenging test, and very precise questions requiring thought-out answers and leaving not much place to subjectivity.

This took me quite some time and energy but I’m happy to have dedicated this effort because at the end this pays off and offered me the luxury to choose a job that meets most of my criteria (in order of importance):
1- type of work involved
2- type of technology involved
3- advantages like salary, vacation (of course!)
4- location of work
5- type of work environment


I’m happy to announce that I have accepted a job as a consultant for SWORD. This job will give me the opportunity to see former colleagues (because the first contract is at Orange), work not too far from home (Geneva looked cool but the commuting would be a bit too long, at least until they finally open the new metro M2 line at Lausanne), and I'm given the opportunity to exploit two of my expertise BI and J2EE!


Martin