What that really means is that they need to have a job ad open for 3 months that they didn't hire someone else into before they can justify hiring a non-EU citizen. It helps if you're doing something specialized or have some intersection of skills for the justification, but it isn't insurmountable, just hard enough so that they only get the people who really want it.

Do you know an American or Canadian who was hired this way? Or is this speculation?

Me, twice (I changed jobs). However what I do is fairly specialized, so I'm not surprised they weren't able to find someone qualified in 3 months.

The other part of making it hard is so that the employer doesn't undertake the effort unless they really need the person and can't do with a local. I know the company made an exception for me, as they did for one other employee, but for the most part their policy is not to hire non-Swiss/EU citizens due to the administrative burden.

Thanks for setting me straight! I'll give it another shot after I've chosen a handle for my T-shape. I'm probably a bit too generalized to pull this off right now.