The Geneva Financial Center encourages and supports the banks in their endeavour to recruit young apprentices and wishes to improve the image of the apprenticeship track, which is one of the keys to the Swiss economy’s success. The portal dedicated to initial training gives you an overview of initial training in Geneva and enables you to define your career path.
The most popular option remains initial vocational training. For 42% of the young people concerned this takes the form of dual initial vocational training and for 4% initial vocational training at school. Unfortunately, Geneva and Vaud are the only cantons where the majority of students start general education (Collège, Ecole de culture générale) at upper secondary level. Yet apprenticeships are an important gateway to the world of banking: overall, more than 90% of apprenticeships lead to a permanent job.
There are a number of obstacles to the creation of apprenticeship places, including the size or infrastructure of the institution and the investment in time and human resources. Consequently, in order to create more apprenticeships in the banking sector, it is recommended that the criteria that institutions must meet in order to take on an apprentice be made more flexible, and that the administrative procedures be simplified.
With the aim of putting in place measures to facilitate the creation of apprenticeship positions, the FGPF intends to act as an intermediary between the financial centre and the government, and to intensify its links with the DIP and OFPC.
Since 2016, the GFC has been presenting the banking sector, its professions and its training courses directly in schools. In collaboration with "GO Apprentissage", a pilot project initiated by the Confederation and supported by the partners in vocational training, representatives of banking establishments meet pupils in years 10 and 11 of Geneva's Cycles d'orientation. The aim is to motivate young people to choose banking as a career option by showing them the range of banking professions and giving them the opportunity to talk to apprentices.
