Path2Work becomes UNHCR Partner in Switzerland

Anyone building a new life in a foreign country demonstrates determination, adaptability, and perseverance—qualities that are highly valued in the job market. Many refugees bring diverse language skills and strong professional qualifications to the table. Nevertheless, finding a job is often difficult. In Switzerland, only about half of refugees are employed after five years.

Yet experience from various industries and countries shows that people with refugee backgrounds are often particularly motivated and loyal employees. They want to contribute to society, bring fresh perspectives, and fill gaps caused by labour shortages. By hiring refugees, companies not only contribute to integration but also benefit from discovering untapped potential.

This is where Path2Work comes in: The nine-language job platform connects refugees in Switzerland with companies and job openings that are a good fit for them. Through Path2Work, they can present themselves to employers via a skills-based profile, search for jobs independently, and involve their personal job coach in their job search via the platform.

Through the Employer Platform, companies receive AI-powered, tailored recommendations of refugee candidates who match their open positions, along with all the necessary information to facilitate a straightforward hiring process. They can also search through thousands of profiles to find candidates with specific skills and language proficiency. This gives companies free access to a previously hidden pool of talent with refugee backgrounds.

Path2Work thus builds an important bridge between refugees and companies. ‘Path2Work connects people who are looking for the same thing. That is an enormous help and sets the platform apart from others,’ says Amine Diare Conde, who lives in Switzerland and once came to the country as a refugee himself. Conde, who is originally from Guinea, is known from the documentary ‘Amine – Ein Held auf Bewährung’ and has been fighting hunger in Switzerland with his organization ‘Essen für Alle’ (‘Food for All’) since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. ‘As a refugee in a new country, you are confronted with many challenges—a new culture, a new language, financial pressure, and a lack of social networks,’ says Conde. ‘Path2Work gives you a sense of independence and the opportunity to take action yourself.’

Path2Work is the eleventh national platform in Europe to join the UNHCR’s Refugee Employment Platform (REP) initiative. The REP initiative was developed to connect companies with job candidates with refugee backgrounds. ‘The way Path2Work facilitates this connection—through state-of-the-art technology and innovative, skills-based profiling approaches for precise job matching—while leveraging existing integration measures by Swiss authorities and civil society, strikes at the heart of REP’s mission: building bridges between refugees, the private sector, and national systems, so that local economies and societies can fully harness the skills and potential of refugees,’ says Susanne Klink, Senior Development Officer at UNHCR.

Path2Work was developed by ETH Zurich and the University of Lausanne and is supported by the Migros Pioneer Fund. The platform is continuously expanding its collaboration with companies, cantons, integration service providers, and organizations working with refugees to further advance labour market integration.

For more information, please contact:

Path2Work: Philipp Bächtold, [email protected], +41 76 336 73 83

UNHCR: David Lüthi, [email protected], +41 22 739 84 51