Does a speculative application count?

Where the supplement rule comes from

The sentence people half-remember is not in the act and not in the ordinance. It is in the Info-Service «Arbeitslosigkeit», the guide SECO publishes for insured persons, in the answer to the question about your obligations. The passage first sets out the duty to mitigate: you must do everything that can reasonably be expected of you, you must look for work in a targeted way and already before unemployment begins, as a rule in the form of an ordinary application, if necessary outside your own occupation. Then comes the qualifier about applications made without a concrete vacancy.

Read carefully, that qualifier is about proportion. «Can only serve as a supplement» presupposes something being supplemented — it does not say the effort is disregarded. The French and Italian editions of the same guide say the same thing in their own words, and both are gentler than the German: a complementary means, considered in a complementary way.

What none of the three editions supplies is a number. No federal text sets a maximum share of speculative applications per control period. That is not an oversight; the directive deliberately leaves both the number and the type of efforts to the assessment of the competent office, which is where any ratio that applies to you is actually agreed.

This matters for how you should read advice you find elsewhere. «Speculative applications don't count» is a compression of the supplement rule, and it compresses out the part that decides your case.

What the law actually asks for

The operative provision is one sentence long. Article 26 paragraph 1 of the unemployment insurance ordinance: the insured person must seek work in a targeted way, as a rule in the form of an ordinary application. Two requirements, both about your conduct. Nothing about the origin of the position, and no mention anywhere in the article of an advert, a reference number or a portal.

The act above it is equally silent. Article 17 paragraph 1 of the unemployment insurance act requires you to do everything that can reasonably be expected to avoid or shorten unemployment, in particular to look for work, if necessary outside your previous occupation, and ends with the short clause that carries the whole evidentiary burden: you must be able to prove your efforts. The thing to be proven is the effort, not the vacancy it responded to.

The multilingual versions settle what «ordinary application» means. The French text asks the insured to target their job search «selon les méthodes de postulation ordinaires» — by the usual application methods. The Italian asks for efforts «di regola sotto forma di domande d'impiego ordinarie» — as a rule in the form of ordinary applications. A complete dossier addressed to a named person is an ordinary application method, and was one long before job portals existed.

So the legal picture is narrower than the question suggests. No rule rejects an application made without an advert. There is a guidance practice that classes it as supplementary, and a discretion that judges the individual case.

The same office, two different tones

Read the guide, then open the application-tips page on arbeit.swiss, and you find the same federal service saying something noticeably warmer. The page carries a section headed «Speculative applications», and it opens: «Alongside applications in response to advertised jobs, a speculative application can also be worthwhile. According to experts, jobs are frequently filled via speculative applications.»

The same section confirms these are one and the same thing: «These are not made on the basis of a specific job advertisement and are also called blind applications.» So it is not that one kind is encouraged and another tolerated. It is one act, recommended by the service's own job-search advice and limited by the service's own benefit guide.

The tension resolves once you see what each document governs. The guide describes the proof — what has to be verifiable at the end of the month and in what proportion. The advice page describes the search — what actually leads to a hire. Both can be right at once, and both are. What is supplementary for the record can be the main road to a job.

For a jobseeker registered with the RAV, that removes the anxiety but not the arithmetic. Send speculative applications because the federal employment service itself says they work. Keep enough advert-based applications alongside them that the supplement rule is satisfied on its own terms.

Where speculative applications actually fail

Not on the missing advert. They fail on quality, and margin number B315 of the SECO directive is unusually specific about it. It opens by stating that what matters in personal job-search efforts is not only quantity but also quality, then gives examples — and the last of them describes the failure mode of a bad speculative application exactly: efforts are to be regarded as insufficient where the insured person does apply, but drafts the letters so superficially and rudimentarily that they cannot be called serious applications.

That is precisely the shape of a mass mailing: no addressee, no connection to work that exists at that company, sent in series. The opposite shape — one named person, one named function, one reason — takes more effort than most replies to an advert, and is correspondingly stronger when the office assesses the month.

A second example in the same margin number shows how far the standard reaches: relying exclusively on a placement agency is not a sufficient personal effort. Registering with an agency is a real act, it goes on the record, and standing alone it does not satisfy the duty. Same pattern, same logic — and the clearest available guide to what «only as a supplement» is meant to achieve.

How much is enough is then a matter of discretion. Margin number B316 grants the competent office a certain margin of appreciation, requires it to weigh all the circumstances of the individual case, and names the factors that move the standard: the labour market, age, education, geographical mobility, language barriers. In a narrow field with few advertised roles that discretion tilts towards the speculative application on its own, without anyone changing the rule.

The column that decides how your entry reads

The official proof form asks for a job title on every line. For a reply to an advert that field copies itself. For a speculative application it is the one field you have to decide yourself — and the common mistake is to write «speculative application» in it.

It is a mistake because it answers a different question. The column asks what work you applied for, not by what route. «Accounts receivable clerk, 80 per cent» is an answer. «Speculative application» is a label, and it makes a serious effort read like a placeholder.

This is also the strongest argument for the short phone call before the letter. It produces the name for the contact column, it often reveals whether anything is planned in that area at all, and it converts an application into the air into an application for a specific job. That is the same distinction B315 draws between serious and rudimentary — made one step earlier, while you can still act on it.

What the advert stock says about the invisible part of the market

The question only arises because employers are invisible most of the time. Our own index lets us measure how invisible. On 23 August 2026 we grouped every advert open that day by employer and, for each employer with at least two adverts, measured the longest gap between two postings.

For 26.2 per cent of those employers the longest gap is under a week — the near-continuous advertisers. For 31.9 per cent it falls between a week and a month, for 27.8 per cent between one and two months, and for 14.1 per cent it is two months or more. The median longest gap is 23 days. Put the other way: 41.9 per cent of these employers were silent for a full month at least once, while demonstrably still hiring.

The present-tense view says the same. For 29.4 per cent of all employers in the open stock the most recent advert is more than thirty days old, and for 17.1 per cent more than sixty. Meanwhile the stock as a whole turns over quickly: half of all open adverts are younger than three weeks and 58.3 per cent were published within the last thirty days. Reacting only to what is advertised does not show you the market — it shows you a narrow, constantly rotating window into it.

One more figure explains why waiting for the next advert is often the worse bet. 24.4 per cent of open adverts belong to a job title the same employer has advertised more than once in the same stock. Roughly one open role in four is recurring rather than one-off, and a recurring need does not begin on the day it is published. It exists beforehand — and during that stretch the only person who reaches it is the one who writes first.

The ratio nobody writes down

That leaves the practical question: how many of your monthly efforts may be speculative? The federal level does not answer it, and the cantons answer it differently — which is consistent, since the number and type of efforts sit with the competent office in any case.

Some cantons go further than the federal guide. The general information sheet of the Ticino employment office lists, among the conditions for the job search, that you should also become active «with a serious strategy of spontaneous applications, targeted and consistent with your potential», alongside replying to advertised roles. Fribourg, for its part, names «offres spontanées» among the evidence to bring to the first counselling interview.

Both point the same way. The thing that needs explaining is not a speculative application; it is a job search drawing on a single source. The federal guide caps the share, cantonal practice asks for the share, and the overlap is a search that does both.

The binding answer still comes from where your proof is assessed. Ask at your counselling interview whether a ratio applies to your search field, and have the answer recorded. What is agreed and minuted gets assessed on those terms at the end of the month; what you merely assumed gets assessed too — just without you in the room.