Do you have other applications running?

Why this is a scheduling question in a Swiss interview

The person who invited you has a vacancy and a date attached to it: a project starting, someone leaving, a team that has been short for weeks. Asking about your other applications is the shortest route to the quantity they are missing — your availability, and the risk that you sign somewhere else first.

What makes Switzerland particular is that this date is rarely a matter of choice. Art. 335c of the Code of Obligations scales the notice period by years of service — one month in the first year, two up to and including the ninth, three after that — and it always expires at a month end. Contracts can vary it, but in practice only upwards, unless a collective agreement shortens it for the first year of service. An employed candidate can almost never start "immediately", and both sides know it.

That produces the arithmetic running in the other person’s head. If you owe two months and another process decides next week, this employer is either fast or out. If the other processes are still at first-interview stage, their timetable relaxes on the spot. Neither statement hurts you: both simply order the calendar, and the calendar is the part of the process the employer can actually control.

The second purpose is quieter and easily missed: the answer shows the shape of your search. "Two others, both in accounts receivable, one in this canton and one just across the border of it" describes a targeted search. "I have things running everywhere" describes none. At this point the other side is not listening for how sought-after you are, but for whether this application belongs to a line or is an accident.

Why "no, only with you" lands badly here

The denial is meant to signal commitment and does the opposite. It is usually implausible — someone looking for a job applies for jobs — and it hands the other side the picture you least want: a candidate with no alternative, whose availability is unlimited and who will accept any condition.

It also ignores that the person opposite is doing exactly the same thing. No employer runs a selection with a single candidate. The question is therefore not a test of exclusivity but a status check between two parties who are both keeping options open. In that frame a calm yes is the normal adult answer and costs nothing.

It is different only when "no" is true. Then it is not a weakness but a statement about your search — and it needs one sentence of context so that it does not read as passivity. What that sentence looks like is further down.

If you are registered with the RAV, other applications are a legal duty

For a large share of the people sitting in a Swiss interview, the answer to this question is settled in advance by law. Art. 17 para. 1 of the Unemployment Insurance Act requires an insured person claiming benefits to undertake, with the help of the competent employment office, everything that can reasonably be expected of them to avoid or shorten unemployment. In the German original: they are obliged in particular to look for work, if necessary outside their previous occupation, and they must be able to prove those efforts.

The duty does not begin on the first day without a job; it begins as soon as unemployment is foreseeable. Someone interviewing during their notice period therefore has other applications running because they must — not because they are undecided. That is exactly why a "no" is doubly bad here: it contradicts an obligation the person is demonstrably under.

In practice, say it in passing and without apology. "I am registered with the RAV and applying continuously; two processes are further along at the moment" is a complete and unassailable answer. It explains the number without the number sounding like desperation, and it moves the conversation back to the date. How many efforts your canton expects and how they are recorded is a separate matter — that belongs with your RAV office, not in the interview.

One note for readers arriving from abroad: the RAV is the regional employment office, the ORP in French-speaking Switzerland and the URC in Ticino. Registration brings duties as well as benefits, and Swiss interviewers know the system well enough that talking around it convinces nobody.

With an agency it is a different question — and names help you there

When a recruitment consultant asks, they are rarely asking about availability alone. They are asking where your dossier already is. The reason is concrete: if the same application reaches one employer twice — once directly from you, once through the agency — an awkward question about the placement fee appears on the employer’s side, and the candidacy is regularly the first thing dropped.

In that setting the specific answer is in your interest. "Those two houses already have my dossier directly, please do not send it there" is not a concession; it is the sentence that prevents the double submission. What an agency cannot demand of you is exclusivity: under the Recruitment Services Act, an arrangement that stops you approaching another agency is void — running several routes at once is designed into the system, not merely tolerated.

Keep the distinction as one rule: with an employer you answer the question about your stage, with an agency the question about addresses. Swap them and you give the employer names that are none of their business and the agency information it cannot work with.

The answer in three parts, with a worked example

Part one: the scale, roughly. "A couple", "two", "three live processes" — an order of magnitude, not a statistic. Part two: the stage of the furthest one, because that is the only part that touches the other side’s timetable. Part three: your possible start as a date, worked out from your notice period and the end of the month. Then stop. The most common avoidable weakness is not a wrong figure but a fourth sentence.

A worked example for a backend engineer currently employed in Zurich, in the fourth year of service: "Yes, two others, both in similar teams. One is at second interview and expects to decide at the end of the month. Either way, the earliest I could start with you is the first of the month after next — I have two months’ notice to a month end." Three sentences, all checkable, none of them a threat.

Notice what the example does not do. It names no employer. It claims no offer that is not one yet — "at second interview" is a different fact from "I have an offer in writing". And it does not rank the other processes: no "but you are my first choice", which nobody believes, and no "the others are less interesting", which the same person will expect to hear about this job tomorrow.

A second example, for someone relocating from outside Switzerland: "Yes, two processes here, both at first-interview stage. Realistically I could start about ten weeks after a signed contract — that is the notice I owe plus the permit and registration steps, and the permit step is the one I cannot speed up." The honest constraint is more useful to the employer than any claim about demand for you.

The follow-up that almost always comes: "how far along are you there?"

A second question follows the first, and it is the real one. The other side wants to know when they could lose you. Stage words carry it completely: first interview held, second interview scheduled, references requested, draft contract received. Each of those tells the other side how much time they have without a single name being spoken.

If you genuinely have an offer with a deadline, state the date factually and once: "there is a deadline there on Friday." That is information the other side needs, and it moves timetables for real. What does not move them is an offer you invent or a deadline you make up to create urgency — at best it produces a rejection on scheduling grounds, at worst you later explain why the deadline passed and you are still available.

If you have no offer, say so just as calmly: "nothing has been decided anywhere." The question is then answered, and you have taken nothing away from the conversation. A process that wants you does not accelerate because you invented pressure; it accelerates because it has a date on which it could lose you.

When they ask you to withdraw the other applications

One follow-up goes considerably further than the original question, and it usually arrives just before an offer: "if we agree — will you withdraw the other applications?" What is being asked for is exclusivity, before the other side has put anything binding on the table. Agree too quickly and you carry the risk alone.

The clean answer separates the two steps instead of merging them: "as soon as I have your offer in writing — start date, workload and salary — I will withdraw from the others, the same day." That is not a delaying tactic but the usual sequence, and it is legible to the other side because it mirrors their own behaviour: an employer also turns the other candidates down only once something is signed.

What matters then is that you keep it. Staying in play after signing, and pulling out three weeks later, makes you unpopular in a market where the HR people of one industry know each other. And the withdrawal itself is one line: thank you for the interest, a post has been found, please close the process — nothing more is needed, and nothing more is expected.

The classic mistakes, in order of frequency

The first is the denial as a compliment. It is meant to show loyalty and instead paints someone with no alternatives — availability becomes a given and the negotiating position is gone before salary has even been mentioned.

The second is the list of names. It looks candid and is not: it discloses other processes that are none of this employer’s business, and it creates a comparison you do not control. For filling this post, the stage of your process is the complete answer; everything past that is yours.

The third is the invented competing offer. It is the one answer to this question that becomes checkable later — at the latest when the offer arrives and you accept it without hesitating, despite the supposedly better one elsewhere.

The fourth is the number as a boast. "I have a dozen applications out right now" does not answer the question; it describes scattering. In a market where the same function is cut very differently from one employer to the next, a large number reads as an absence of selection rather than as demand.

The fifth is the premature yes. At the end of a good conversation nobody wants to spoil the moment, so something that sounds like agreement slips out. But under Art. 320 para. 1 of the Code of Obligations an individual employment contract needs no particular form, so a verbal yes is not a polite nothing — it can already be the agreement itself. With other processes still running, the sentence to use is: "I will come back to you with a firm answer by tomorrow midday."

If you genuinely have nothing else running

Then say so, and attach the reason that turns an absence into a decision. "No, not at the moment. I apply very selectively, and this is the first advert in weeks with the combination of subject area and workload I am looking for." That is not an excuse but a statement about your criteria, and it connects well in a Swiss interview: the other side hears that you read what their advert actually says.

If you are still employed, the second half of the sentence matters more: that you are not fleeing something but moving because of this post. If you are registered with the RAV, the denial is awkward for a different reason — not because it hurts in the room, but because it sits against a duty that applies to you. The honest version there is: applications running yes, none further along at the moment.

Either way the rule is the same as for a yes: one statement, one reason, stop. Explaining your situation instead of stating it turns a status question into a topic, and that is the only route by which this question can actually do damage.

Applying from abroad: the part of the answer that carries real weight

If you are interviewing from outside Switzerland, the honest timetable is worth more than anything you could say about other suitors. Between a signed contract and a first working day sit the residence and work permit, the registration at the commune and, depending on the canton, a wait that nobody in the room can shorten. Employers who hire internationally know this; those who rarely do underestimate it, and a candidate who lays it out precisely is doing them a favour.

Say which step sets the date rather than only naming the date: "the notice I owe is one month, the permit step is the uncertain one." That converts a vague "a few months" into something an employer can plan around, and it is the same currency the question was asked in.

One local habit worth knowing: Swiss employment relationships almost always end at the end of a calendar month rather than on an arbitrary date, and start dates are usually the first of a month. Putting your possible start on the first, with the reason, speaks the calendar this market plans in — and turns the question about your other applications into something settled in two sentences.