Just wanted to find out how those who are looking for work are fairing it & what the general situation is to prepare for maybe a long-haul winter.

I am seriously gearing-up for a chance to put some money back in the coffers after a lean time looking for a one year old (for a year) whilst working from home. To get out there too & do all the social stuff I miss doing with my workmates!

I am not a perpetual EF daily addict but did notice many members losing their jobs, talking about the prospect of being long-term unemployed, those going through general hard times. Especially for the main bread-winners & those on limited permission - good luck & hope things are going to be easier!

November is here & things are looking up (I think), Basel seems to be a hive of working activity so I've switched my attention to there even though I may have a long commute & had a bit of luck, fingers crossed.

I think the US economy picking up now will have a knock-on effect for CH but maybe not until Feb/March.

yes fingers crossed is rite!!!
Ireland is beginning to pull its head above the water now too, slowly but surely...

Welcome to EF btw

Keep in mind that employment numbers are usually lagging by about 6 months, so it might take some more time before we feel the positive effects.

as someone who is still in the U.S. i can say that while the news maybe saying the economy is picking up work is quite spotty. I am an electrician and am lucky to have various accounts that I am able to do small jobs and keep the coffers filled (barely). I know a lot of people with office jobs and at middle managment positions that were laid off and can't find any work whatsoever, or had to take pay cuts. It is going to take a while before the economy is back to where it was, the freewheeling hey day where every one was buried in credit card debt, with 2-3 houses thinking that they could flip them for a huge profit.

I've seen more activity in the Basel ads as of late.

I'm now focused on finding a job in the UK (I will be moving first of the year), but although there are a lot of jobs advertised, there seem to be so many applicants for them that it is hard to even get an answer

I have been looking both here & in the UK, I just do not want to be unemployed for long & will sacrifice seeing my kids for a year (but every month) if I can get something over there before here.

I noticed that open positions in the UK can vary a lot by region, I have family in SW region & there is very little going on. London has many vacancies which are rapidly filled but the cost of living outweighs any salary below £30,000pa IMHO (& you have to put up with a fair bit of soot up your nose every day)...

...at least with the UK you can get work via temp agencies whilst you search in general if you are lucky. You certainly don't have to wait for a temp job for 4 months or more like here & then it probably doesn't happen.

I am really trying to avoid any situation here in CH of getting fobbed-off, when they know they have nothing for you but make it look like there is - thats one of the reasons I am also looking in the UK & don't get into that situation as it is a real confidence killer.

I have noticed that that the number of posted jobs in jobserve.com over the last couple of weeks (In CH and the UK - for my field of expertise anyway) have been gradually increasing.

Been using this service for over a decade now and it is usually a good barometer of the market climate.

Mind you, there is always the usual lull in December which is only 4 weeks away.

In my company, there is plenty of work, but a freeze on hiring. maybe after the end of the 4th Quarter, all hell will let loose. Fingers crossed for all of you still searching.

Yes, if you don't have many interviews or get a job now, it is very likely it's an unemployed Xmas time..
That's what I think will happen, a sudden burst of confidence & they won't be able to get enough workers when they need them. It has been a bad economical era & depressing for 99% of the people & to leave that far behind I would even predict that everyone will go OTT given the chance.

Agreed with JBrady and Shell. Lot of jobs out there being advertised but also a lot of applicants going for them.
I think when the new budgets are released in January or April then companies will hopefully start to get some headcount budget. There seems to be a need for people to fill jobs just not the budget.

Agree with others- it's a similar situation in my company too. Work is picking up, and although there's still a freeze on hiring, it is likely to be lifted next year. One good thing they've done, at least here in the NZ office, is that instead of making people redundant, a company wide initiative was launched looking at efficiency gains by improving processes, and the savings made as a result will be reinvested as part of next year's budget into new initiatives/products. Our own dept, for example, met the productivity targets despite being two heads down!

The hiring process here in Switzerland can take so long, it is frustrating and you often end up unemployed longer than you'd like.

The problem with temp agencies is stability, something I'm going to need when I first move - unfortunately. I prefer to work contract/temp, gives me more flexibility.

Last year, my contract ended at the end of October, and I found the Swiss job market absolutely dead beginning in mid-November and through until January.

Both are confidence killers, I think - being fobbed off by the misleading agencies here and being ignored there. Urgh. Job hunting, especially when it is a necessity, is terrible!

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I had a similar experience around the same time last year & know exactly what you are saying, it was really dead around this time which is why I did some freelance from home.

I was in the UK quite a bit recently & though the recession looks bad on paper I didn't really feel a sense of despair there. I was offered a job with Sony but salary slightly low for the area I wanted to live in (Hampshire) so I turned it down.

I think in the UK you can at least get plenty of interviews which means you are in a kind of 'practice/ready' mode whereas here interviews are few and far between & after a long frustrating wait you can end up going for a rare one looking exactly how you feel, desperate!