"As the world becomes increasingly global, I want flexibility in my choice of career."

“I am the only Swiss national in the poly-e-fair team”, says Jill Weckherlin, who is majoring in sociology while studying business management as a minor subject in her eighth semester at the University of Zurich. “We are an international team with members from countries including Canada, North America, Germany, India and Russia”, she adds. Work on tying up loose ends from the poly-e-fair, which took place on 31 March, will continue until the end of April: 30 companies and around 1000 students took part this year. Jill believes that the huge amount of positive feedback from attendees proves that the event was a success.
She is currently producing analyses and surveys for the companies who took part and is preparing checklists for next year. The work has given her new confidence in her problem-solving skills. “I learnt to think my way into various topics with surprising speed. We worked everything out within the team without any major coaching input. We always succeeded in finding new methods and workarounds whenever we encountered problems in our work,” she says. It was only at the outset that she found working from home tough because she first had to learn how to organise the work.

Impressed by the team spirit and international character

“The team spirit was phenomenal”, says Jill Weckherlin, who also learnt to communicate in English across various cultures. As the only student from the University of Zurich, it was also a valuable experience for her to work on this project with ETH students. A huge number of English-speaking students attended the careers fair. She loved the international flair.
Jill Weckherlin is generally very interested in international matters. For example, she spent a semester in Seoul between August 2020 and February 2021 as part of an exchange program. South Korea was the only country in Asia where this was possible during the pandemic. “Living and studying in this rapidly expanding capital city was a fascinating and unique experience,” says Jill, who is very interested in opposites. “Of course, you can see that in my choice of subjects,” she says with a laugh. The differences between generations, between tradition and modern were something she became acutely aware of in South Korea with its rapidly growing economy: on the one hand, you have the grandparent generation, who lived through the Korean war. On the other hand, the young generation, who do not want to know about the war, live in a fast-paced world and have a love of social media where status and beauty are everything. “In contrast, learning and efficient studying have a very different significance in South Korea,” she adds. And this is something she sometimes misses in Switzerland.

Plans for the future?

After working for the poly-e-fair, Jill Weckherlin now wants to travel with her family to Korea before her Bachelor’s exams in the summer. She has a work placement with an investment firm starting in the autumn and would love to study for her Master's in Australia. Hong Kong is another possible destination. She wants to work on her English and Spanish and add Chinese to her linguistic skills set. And where does Jill Weckherlin see herself in ten years? “It is very likely that I will be in Switzerland,” she says. “Preferably working in an international team for an organisation like the UN or at EDA, which focuses on international issues. I may even have set up my own company.” She does not like to commit: “At 24 years of age, I do not need to know precisely what my future career path will look like,” stresses Jill. She has found that new exciting things just seem to crop up again and again. “As the world becomes increasingly global, I want flexibility in my choice of career”, she says. Jill is also not prepared to say whether she will be at poly-e-fair again next year. “Working in this international team and honing my social and project management skills is certainly a boost to my future career path,” she says with conviction.