NextStep Program - Swissnex

Worldwide internships for graduates of the Swiss vocational baccalaureate

The program aims to bring together innovative and successful companies around the world that are interested in hiring young and talented Swiss graduates for 3- 12 months. The VET candidates have at least 4 years of working experience as part of their vocational and educational training. NextStep enables them to enhance their professional skills with a view to their career path. Furthermore, it enables them to discover highly demanding professional practices, open up to different professional cultures and develop their soft skills.

The Pilot Year 2024-2025

The VET candidates participated in the pilot project going to 4 different destinations: Brazil, India, Japan, and the United States of America.

NextStep 2025-2026

We continue the program in the 4 original destinations (Brazil, India, Japan, and the US) plus a new destination: South Korea.

Perspectives

We expect collaborations with other cantons in the following years and hope to reinforce our Swissnex mission further - to connect Switzerland and the rest of the world to foster exchange in research, education and innovation.

The Swiss VET system enables young people to enter the labor market and ensures that there are enough skilled workers and managers in the future. It has a high labour market relevance and is an integral part of the education system, spanning both upper-secondary and tertiary level.

The Swiss VET system is based on the duality between theory and practice. At upper-secondary level, this duality can be seen in the distribution of training content across different learning locations: classroom instruction takes place at a vocational school (theory) and workplace training takes place at a host company (practice). For some occupations, there is a third learning location, which is designed to complement the other two: these branch courses take place at a branch training centre. At tertiary level, this duality is expressed through a combination of classroom instruction and the previous and current work experience of participants.

The role of Swissnex

As gate-openers, each Swissnex location joining the project endorses both a consulting and connecting role on the project for strategic questions like:

• which economic sector can potentially be interested in participating in the project.
• how to identify interested firms and find the relevant person to contact.
• how to reach important stakeholders in economic chambers, or other institutions at the local destination, in order to ensure the growth of the partner companies’ network.

Furthermore, Swissnex helps the candidates become immersed in the local cultures and creates links between the participants, the cantons, and the involved companies.