What is an alternative to a paper folder for the RAV meeting?

What to bring to the RAV meeting

Nobody needs a bound application folder. What counts is the evidence — and the RAV wants it in a particular form, not a handsome one.

Job-Room eServices (arbeit.swiss)

The public employment service's own portal carries three RAV eServices: «Efforts to find work», «Incapacity to work» and «Documents for jobseeking». The first replaces the form and the third replaces the folder — you upload the dossier, references and letters as PDFs and your adviser has them in front of them before the meeting. This entry sits first rather than ours for a simple reason: here there is nothing to choose.

Price: free, in all four national languages plus English. The account only exists after registration; arbeit.swiss puts it plainly — online submission of the «Proof of efforts undertaken to find work» form is among the functions available only to jobseekers who «have signed on with the RAV and registered for Job-Room».

Best for: anyone drawing benefit. Article 26(2) of the ordinance sets the deadline at the fifth day of the following month, after which efforts are no longer taken into account. Basel-Stadt's user guide adds the detail that decides whether people miss it: efforts entered in the eService are transmitted to the RAV automatically between the 5th and the 6th of the month. Entering them is the submission — there is no separate send button, and no catching up on the 7th.

The limitation: it is a form and filing system, not job-search help. Nobody there reads your letter back to you. The rules are tight, too: PDF only, at most 5 MB per file going to the RAV and 10 MB for those going to the unemployment fund, whole documents rather than single pages, separated by document type. Photographing a reference page by page fails on exactly that. And without a registration in your canton of residence, the eServices do not exist for you at all.

The form «Proof of efforts undertaken to find work»

The paper everyone means — and it has worked without paper for years. arbeit.swiss publishes the form as a PDF; you fill it in on screen and send it to your adviser if you have no Job-Room account or the portal is down.

Price: free. It exists in German, French and Italian — not in English, which is the first thing an English-speaking reader runs into here.

Best for: anyone without Job-Room access, the first weeks after registering while the account is still being set up, and as a fallback at the start of the month. It is also the only route that needs no login.

The limitation: it acknowledges nothing. The eService shows you that an entry exists; an email shows you only that you pressed send. The deadline is unchanged, and whether your RAV accepts email at all or wants the form on paper is cantonal practice — ask in advance, not on the 5th.

SwissJobs.app

We are a Swiss job board and a dossier tool in the same account, and for this question the second half is what matters. Starting from an open advert, we produce a CV and a letter written against that specific advert, finished as a PDF. That happens to be exactly the format Job-Room wants: you upload the result instead of printing, punching and filing it. The interface and the finished documents exist in German, French, Italian and English — which matters if you are applying across language regions, because the language an advert is written in decides who can apply.

Price: searching and reading adverts costs nothing and needs no account, and the application list is included in the free account. What is paid for is the dossier tooling: seven days free, then CHF 15 a month or CHF 95 a year.

Best for: people answering Swiss adverts continuously who want a dossier built for each advert rather than a template with the company name swapped out — and who do not want to type the same details three times, once when saving the advert, once when writing, once for the proof of efforts.

The limitation, and it is fundamental: we submit nothing. We have no connection to the RAV, we cannot see your control period and we cannot meet a deadline for you — we are a convenience layer over a procedure that runs without us. Three gaps hurt specifically here: no export as a file, no print view, and without an account and a connection you cannot see your list. If you want to print something for your adviser or send a table, a spreadsheet serves you better.

Adobe Scan

The phone camera as a document scanner: Arbeitszeugnisse, diplomas and rejection letters become straight, de-skewed PDF pages with text recognition instead of crooked photographs full of shadow. This is the step at which paper folders actually disappear.

Price: the download is free, on iOS and Android; Adobe states on the Play Store listing that the app can be downloaded free of charge. In-app purchases sit above that.

Best for: building the electronic dossier once. Scan every reference properly now and the folder never comes back — not even for a spell of unemployment ten years from now.

The limitation: the free tier recognises text on five pages, the subscription raises the limit «from 5 to 100 pages» in Adobe's own description, and combining several scans into one document is listed explicitly under in-app purchase. That is precisely the function Job-Room's «whole documents, not single pages» rule demands. And if you know Microsoft Lens from older advice: Microsoft removed the app from the stores on 9 February 2026, and new scans have been impossible since 9 March 2026. Microsoft points to the OneDrive app and the Copilot app instead.

Smallpdf

A PDF toolbox in the browser: merge, compress, rotate, delete pages. For this question it is the missing link — eight separate scans become one document, and an oversized file drops under the 5 MB ceiling. The company is based in Zurich and advertises «Built in Switzerland» on its own pricing page.

Price: there is a free tier that Smallpdf itself describes as offering «Limited document downloads». The Pro tier is a subscription whose amount only appears once you have chosen country and billing period — check it on the pricing page before you click.

Best for: the last step before uploading, and for anyone who does not want to install software.

The limitation: files travel to third-party servers to be processed. For an Arbeitszeugnis that names a salary and a reason for leaving, that is a deliberate decision rather than a detail. If you would rather not, the same job runs offline: macOS Preview and most PDF applications merge pages too, without anything leaving the machine.

Proton Drive and Infomaniak kDrive

Two Swiss stores, both from Geneva, for having the dossier on your phone at the meeting without carrying anything. Proton Drive encrypts end to end and states on its own pricing page that not even Proton can view or edit your files. Infomaniak offers kDrive, and alongside it SwissTransfer, which sends individual files with no account at all.

Price: Proton Drive's free tier gives 5 GB, which is far more than every reference of an entire career as PDFs. kDrive Solo costs CHF 5.54 a month, or CHF 4.99 paid annually, with 3 TB for one person and a 30-day trial. SwissTransfer is free and sends files up to 50 GB.

Best for: anyone who cares where the data sits. With references that state a salary, or a medical certificate, that is a concrete point rather than a feeling — and it is one of the few areas where a Swiss provider offers something an international one does not easily match.

The limitation: storage is not application tracking. No appointments, no list, no status column, no reminder on the 3rd of the month. And kDrive has no free tier, only a trial: 3 TB for an application dossier is absurd, and you are paying for space you will never touch.

The paper folder

The honest entry, because sometimes it is still the right answer. It needs no login, no network and no battery, it works when the portal is under load on the 5th of the month, and it can be opened and leafed through by two people during the meeting. On a phone screen that is not the same thing, and anyone who has ever leaned over a handset with someone else knows it.

Price: a ring binder and the cost of printing.

Best for: meetings where the documents are genuinely picked up and handled; people without a scanner at home who would rather not go via the camera; and anyone who prefers to meet the duty to keep evidence physically.

The limitation: on its own it discharges no obligation whatsoever. Zurich wants the documents electronically as well, and the proof counts only once filed. A folder you show in the meeting is a courtesy to your adviser — not compliance with the deadline.

Which one to pick

Registered with the RAV: the Job-Room eServices, compulsorily, plus the form as a fallback if the portal fails. Want to run the dossier without paper: Adobe Scan to digitise, Smallpdf or an installed application to merge under 5 MB, Proton Drive free or kDrive from CHF 4.99 a month to store. Applying to Swiss adverts continuously and want a dossier fitted to each advert rather than a template: then us, seven days free and CHF 15 a month after that. And if your adviser explicitly asks for paper, bring paper — that is not a step backwards, it is an agreement.

Two sentences survive whichever tool you choose: filing goes through Job-Room or the cantonal form and nowhere else, and the deadline is the fifth day of the following month.