Hi there,

I'm on Chômage since 5 weeks, and slowly it starts to gets difficult to apply for an sufficient amount of jobs which are matching my profile/experiences. Not sure if I'm able to get 10-12 application this month together. How did you handle this situation? Did you apply for jobs which you were under oder overqualified? E.g. I don't speak French fluent so I'm concerned to apply for french speaking position.
Furthermore I'm working now part time 50% but obviously still look for 100%. I just don't want to have some cut offs from the chomage if I don't provide enough job applications by end of the month.
Thanks in advance!

My ORP appointed Coach (not the ORP counsellor) gave me some good advise. "The recruiter wants the earth, moon & stars - if you have the rest of the competencies, dont let language stop you from applying"

BTW they will give you french courses if you ask

From what I understand, under the current coronavirus situation they expect fewer applications - check with your advisor what is acceptable - tell them you are having difficulty. Did they send you a list of job sites to look at ? I found some from them that I didn't know about...



Good luck...

Bear in mind it's job-seeking "efforts". That is not merely formal applications; it includes networking, meeting people you know who might have an "in" somewhere that's not formally advertised and so on.

Join the UN career page, there is a oodle full of Jobs, you won’t get one but
you will be easily able to fill your quota

It is a box ticking exercise. Apply for 10-12 jobs that you could do. Doesn't need to be in Switzerland, can be anywhere in the world. ORP are staffed by civil servants who like to tick boxes. If there are 10 requirements and you only got 7, apply, even if the other 3 look like drop dead ones. This is Switzerland after all and you can ask for anything, doesn't matter...

Speaks French/German/Spanish/Greek/Chinese...
Is gay, bi-sexual, don't know willing to experiment...
Is tall, short, fat, thin, unhappy with whatever they are...
Is blond, dark, red haired child... changes on a regular basis...
Is younger than 16, 24, 32, 48...
Is male, female, in transition..
Is a virgin, experienced in the ways of the world, like to have fun
Is good looking, fit, sexy..
Is married, unmarried, single, divorced, widowed, playing the field
Is rich, loaded with money, looking to spend $
Is dump, gullible, made some seriously stupid financial mistakes in the past
Is good at sales, a tad dishonest, can tell small white lies, has no scruples

Feel free to add some more unlikely requirements ...

Ping your RAV advisor and explain the situation, if they agree they will reduce the number of applications required.

Under qualified is fine, they will write you a very nice rejection letter you can show to the RAV, I think my most bizarre was for head of Basel Kanton Hospital

In my field (IT, MSSQL) the number of available job postings has dropped from 100% to 20% (ie. 80% less available jobs) currently, meanwhile there are probably much more applicants for these jobs as well.

I hope, we will get 5x more Rahmenfrist and 5x times more Taggeld, just to be fair to the market situation. But I am afraid of that I am completely wrong...

Would someone, who just recently registered on RAV, get even a little extension of the Rahmenfrist or the Taggeld?

You get 400 work days, that is plenty.

i filled in an "indeed "search application , where by once filled and completed, you go on the jobs page, and just tick the ones that are suitable or near suitable, and it is automatically applied for, it is just box ticking for the rav,

I also used indeed while unemployed. It makes sending job applications very quick and easy.

Question - if you're only at 50% can they force you to go higher? I thought they couldnt make you? e.g. Im now 80% for my kids health reasons - could they make me work 100%?

Good question. I am not sure but I imagine that they could.

No.

Once I signed up at the RAV... had worked 80% but wanted to go down to 60. At registration I told them I wanted to work 60% in the future, and was only interested in finding a 60% position. They had to check but it was no problem. ALK would lower,be based on the 60% salary, but i would not need to accept 80% work.

Got 60% job offer though almost immediately, even before I was unemployed...

I explained my situation here a few years ago:

https://www.englishforum.ch/3188599-post55.html

In addition to local job offers what I did:

- You can apply abroad. I applied to many jobs abroad (I was flexible geographically), so that is fine. My counsellor spoke English so applying to job offers in English in London (for instance) was fine for her.

- As "eng_ch" has said before, it is not only about clicking "Apply". You can show efforts to "network". For instance I would make a list of companies/people I approached (cold emails) in addition to job offers. I imagine that now that there must be much few job offers, this is a good tactic. It shows that even in a slowdown market you are trying to get ahead.

Basically what they don't want is that just lay on the coach 24/7.

As much as people love to criticise the ORP/RAV, at least my counsellor was quite cool. She always told me how proactive I was getting to companies / applying to jobs that could be a good fit. Maybe it was just to help me. Or maybe it is just because many people just do the minimum to "tick the boxes" and I indeed did much more.