Graduates: which future, which boss?

Thousands of students from the University of Geneva, L’Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), the University of Lausanne and the many hotel schools in the area graduate each year, but where do they go? The results of the recent Swiss Student Survey have identified which companies graduates view as the top employers, taking into consideration factors such as company sustainability and work-life balance. Business graduates rated Nestlé number one, followed by Google, UBS, Credit Suisse and Ernst & Young, while natural sciences students voted Novartis top, tailed by Roche, CERN, Nestlé and Google.

Top employers for IT and Engineering graduates also included Google, while Law graduates favoured Nestlé. FORUM, the annual EPFL careers fair, which attracts over 5,000 visitors, hosts many international and national companies that wish to attract the best graduate talent. In addition to the ubiquitous presence of the likes of Swisscom, Roche and SBB, FORUM also invites and promotes many SMEs and SMBs. Whether the smaller companies are successful is another question. Dana Christen, a recent graduate in Computational Science and Engineering from EPFL commented “Even though I didn’t have a particular preference for a large or a small company, the potential of R & D and the idea of joining a small and dynamic team appealed to me at once.”