Hi everyone, I’m looking for some genuine career advice because I’ve reached a point where I’m not quite sure what I’m doing wrong. I have around 8 years of professional experience, mainly in the Swiss luxury industry, including watches and cosmetics. I’m currently working for a major Swiss watch company in the french speaking part, where my role has become quite broad and commercial. Among other things: I lead our second-hand / pre-owned sales unit and its development, including the commercial and operational side. I’m regularly client-facing, including with collectors, VIP clients, brand ambassadors, journalists, collectors, private investors, business partners and other external stakeholders. I manage international commercial projects and initiatives that have generated or contributed to several million CHF in business/revenue. I work across Sales, Marketing, Product, CRM, logistics and management, often coordinating many stakeholders at the same time. I manage projects involving high-value assets, international logistics, insurance, contractual requirements and sensitive documentation. I’ve worked extensively on CRM and customer data, particularly Salesforce and HubSpot, including process implementation and user adoption. I’ve identified and redesigned inefficient business processes; one initiative reduced project/GTM timelines by around 25%. I have experience in customer analytics, commercial analysis, pricing, segmentation and business development. Earlier in my career, I worked in cosmetics, where I helped implement CRM and commercial processes, managed 30+ partners and contributed to strong revenue/customer-value growth. I’m comfortable presenting, negotiating, selling, networking and dealing with demanding people. I actually enjoy it. Salary is not good, organisation culture is not good as well, but I would be okay with it, if my partner wasn’t in ZH or if at least I could do some home office. Therefore trying to move to German-speaking Switzerland, ideally Zürich or Winterthur, but I’m also very open to Olten and other locations. The problem: I can’t seem to make the transition. I’ve been looking at insurance, banking, financial services, B2B sales, business development, account management, CRM/customer analytics, operations and project management. I’m absolutely willing to change industry and learn something completely new. In fact, I’m open to doing the kind of job that isn’t particularly glamorous or that other people don’t necessarily want. Give me difficult clients, a complicated portfolio, an operational mess, a process nobody wants to fix, targets to hit, or a subject I have to learn from scratch — I genuinely don’t mind. I’m someone who likes to work and likes to achieve things. I’m motivated by results. I like building a strong network, creating business, solving problems and being able to look back after a year and say: this is measurably better because I was there. I don’t particularly care about staying in luxury, and I’m not attached to a fancy title. My main constraint is that, given my experience and education, I’m looking for something around CHF 120k+ rather than restarting my career at junior level. What I’m struggling with is switching industries in the current market I guess. My network is also much stronger in the French-speaking/luxury/watchmaking side of Switzerland than it is around Zürich/Winterthur/Olten, which probably doesn’t help. So I’d genuinely appreciate some outside perspective: If you saw this profile, where would you position me in German-speaking Switzerland? Am I targeting the wrong jobs? Is CHF 120k unrealistic for an industry switch? Are there industries or functions where my combination of sales/client management + project management + CRM/data + international experience would actually be valuable? And perhaps most importantly: which jobs or industries in the Zürich/Winterthur/Olten area struggle to find good people and would be willing to take someone who doesn’t have the perfect industry background but is willing to learn? I’m not looking for reassurance — if something in my approach is wrong, I’d genuinely rather hear it. By the way, I’m a swiss woman, 32yo. Academically, I have a background in Economics/Statistics, an MBA, a specialisation in Business Analytics, and a CAPM, and I’m about to get the AWS AI Business Specialist Certificate. I also worked in three languages: French: native English: fluent/professional German: B2/professional working level (could go back to my former C1 easily with a bit of practice) Swiss German: I understand, but I only speak at apéros :) Thank you for the help, greatly appreciated 🫡 submitted by /u/ZealousidealUnit8939
Originally posted by u/ZealousidealUnit8939 on r/Switzerland