When could you start?

What the other side actually does with your answer

Whoever invited you has a calendar in front of them with the day marked on which the work lands: a successor, a project, a shift the rest of the team has been carrying for weeks. Your start date is the figure that decides whether the process ends here or whether they keep searching in parallel. Nothing about the question is small talk — it is the most practical thing asked all hour.

What makes it Swiss is the flatness of it. No proof of enthusiasm is expected; a figure that can be planned with is. Saying "immediately" while sitting in an unterminated job creates exactly the suspicion you meant to avoid: either the statement is untrue, or this person treats obligations to a current employer loosely — and next time that employer is this one.

There is a second, quieter purpose. Deriving your date cleanly in one sentence shows you have read your own contract. In a country where notice periods, workload percentages and reference letters all live in that contract, that is a signal in itself. Conversely, "I'd have to check that first" is the one answer nobody should give at the end of a hiring process: the period is written in the paper you signed.

Why the advert almost never settles the date for you

We counted, across the live Swiss adverts in our index, how often the text says anything at all about starting — "immediately", "by agreement", or a named date. Counted per employer, so that one large house with many near-identical adverts cannot tilt the picture, 8.7 per cent of employers say something. With a narrower word list it is 5.1 per cent and with a wide one 10.9. Every variant carries the same statement: around nine employers in ten are silent on the date.

That is not carelessness, it is the local order of things. The date is negotiable, and negotiation happens in the room. Which is exactly why the question comes — and exactly why a prepared answer is worth so much: you fill a gap the employer deliberately left open, instead of confirming a constraint.

For anyone reading Swiss adverts in English, the gap is wider still, and this is the most useful number on the page for you. Among employers advertising in German, 13.4 per cent name a start moment; in French 8.4; in English 1.7. English-language postings in Switzerland — international firms, pharma, finance, research institutes — essentially never tell you when the seat is needed. If you are applying to those, assume the date is yours to state, every time.

Apprenticeships, internships and trainee postings are excluded from the count. They almost always name a start because it hangs off the school year, and leaving them in would distort the picture for experienced-hire roles.

"Immediate start" is a wish, not a schedule

The commonest reason candidates talk their date down is printed in the advert: "immediate start", "as soon as possible", "ab sofort". It reads like a condition. So we measured how long precisely those adverts have already been open, and the picture argues against the panic. About a third of the adverts demanding an immediate start have been online for more than a month, and close to a quarter for more than two. Across a narrow, a middle and a wide word list, and equally when counting per employer rather than per advert, both figures barely move.

Said honestly: those adverts are on average somewhat fresher than the index as a whole, so "immediately" is not pure decoration. But a third of them have been standing longer than any first-year notice period lasts. Naming a date you cannot hold because of that one word solves a problem the employer often does not have in that sharpness.

For the answer this means: take the word seriously, do not outbid it. "You've written immediate start — my earliest is 1 December, and I will ask my current employer whether earlier is possible" answers the question in full and treats their wish as what it is.

One caveat belongs with that number: a single cantonal hospital supplies a good tenth of all adverts demanding an immediate start. That is why the headline figures on this page are counted per employer.

The arithmetic you do before the interview

Your earliest start is four steps, not a feeling. First: how many years of service do you have with your current employer? Second: what period does your contract, or the collective agreement for your sector, set? If neither says anything, Art. 335c para. 1 CO applies — one month in the first year of service, two months from the second to the ninth inclusive, three thereafter. Third: under the same paragraph the notice always expires at the end of a calendar month. Fourth: your earliest first working day is the day after that.

Paragraph 2 of the same article allows those periods to be varied by written individual, standard or collective employment contract; they may be reduced below one month only by a collective agreement and only for the first year of service. So read your contract and any collective agreement before you take the statutory number — which period governs in an individual case, and in what order those sources rank, is a separate question we answer on its own page.

And now the part almost everyone underestimates. Because notice expires at a month end, your date moves in whole months. Suppose you are in your third year of service, so two months' notice. If your resignation reaches your employer on 30 September, the employment ends on 30 November and you start on 1 December. If it reaches them on 1 October, it ends on 31 December and your first day is 1 January. One day late, one whole month later. What counts is the notice reaching the employer, not the date typed on the letter.

This calculation belongs before the interview, not inside it. It takes two minutes and it is the difference between a statement and a guess.

The answer in three parts, with a worked example

A good answer is a date, the rule behind it, and exactly one opening. In that order, because the other side writes the date down and needs the rest only to place it.

The date first: "My earliest start is 1 December." Then the rule, in one sentence: "I'm in my third year of service, so two months' notice to the end of a month, and I'll resign as soon as we're agreed." Then the opening, and only one: "Earlier is possible if my current employer releases me early — I can ask, I can't promise."

Those three sentences do more than they look. They give a date that can be planned with; they show it was calculated rather than guessed; and they demonstrate how you handle a running contract — which the person opposite instinctively applies to themselves. "I can ask, I can't promise" is the most valuable line of the three, because it separates a commitment from an intention without sounding reluctant.

If the follow-up comes — "and if we needed you sooner?" — the structure holds. You name what is in your hands: resigning at once, asking about remaining holiday, compressing the handover. And you name what is not. What is in your hands you can commit to. What is not, you commit to asking about, with a deadline: "I'll ask by Friday and come back with the answer."

Anyone not currently employed has it easier and still often errs: "immediately" is right only when genuinely nothing stands in the way. A move, notice on a flat, a course still running, childcare to arrange — a date two weeks out that holds beats "tomorrow" that does not.

The point at which the date becomes an obligation

While you are negotiating, your date is a statement. Once the employment contract is signed it is the agreed start of the employment relationship — and for that the Code of Obligations has its own article, which application guides practically never mention.

Art. 337d para. 1 CO: where the employee fails to take up his post or leaves it without notice without good cause, the employer is entitled to compensation equal to one-quarter of the employee's monthly salary; in addition, he is entitled to damages for any further losses. Paragraph 2 lets the court reduce that compensation where the employer suffered no loss or a smaller one. Paragraph 3 sets a short deadline: the claim must be asserted within 30 days of the failure to take up the post, failing which it lapses.

This is not a threat; it is why the question is asked so precisely and deserves an equally precise answer. A promised start date in Switzerland is not a courtesy — it is the point at which an employment relationship begins, with a figure attached. Naming a date out of eagerness that your notice period cannot deliver only moves the problem: either you break the promise here, or you break it with your current employer.

The same thought protects you the other way. A date derived cleanly from your notice period cannot be read as hesitation — it is the period speaking, not your motivation.

What can still move the date

Forward, in the normal case, only one person can move it: your current employer. The law gives you no right to leave before the end date; under Art. 335c para. 2 CO the periods may be varied by written agreement, and agreement means both sides. An early release or a termination agreement is therefore something you ask for, never something you can promise across the table to a new employer.

Backwards, three things move it, and all three belong in the conversation when they apply. First, probation at your current job: under Art. 335b para. 1 CO the employment relationship may be terminated at any time during the probation period at seven days' notice, so anyone still in probation is free far sooner than they think. Second, where you live: a move to another canton, notice on a flat, a change of school for children are legitimate grounds for an extra two weeks when named plainly.

Third — and for a large share of the readers of this page, the actual point — admission. The State Secretariat for Migration distinguishes the straightforward labour-market access that nationals of EU and EFTA states enjoy under the free movement agreement from the admission procedure for gainfully employed non-EU/EFTA nationals. If you are coming from a third state, do not name a hard date; name a sequence: "available within four weeks of the permit being issued." That is honest, it can be planned with, and it puts the uncertainty where it belongs — in a procedure neither person at the table can speed up.

If you are registered with an RAV, you report the start of the job to your unemployment fund and to the office, and you settle timing questions there. What applies in your case is what your RAV says, and only your RAV.

The classic mistake, and its two variants

The classic mistake is not naming a late date. It is naming none. "As soon as possible" is the answer that sounds keenest and says least: it forces the other side to do the arithmetic you should have done, and in a country with statutory graduated notice periods it reads as naive rather than motivated.

The first variant is the date that is too early. It comes from wanting to please and does not survive the first check. By contract stage the notice period is in the room, and then the first impression is no longer drive but imprecision — on a statement anyone can verify against a calendar.

The second variant is promising something that is not yours to give: "I'll talk to my boss, I'll sort it." Perhaps you will. You cannot promise it, because it needs a third party's consent. The difference between "I'll ask" and "I'll do" is exactly the difference between a person you can plan around and one you have to chase.

One further observation from practice: explaining your date at length makes it smaller. Two sentences are enough. The notice period is a fact, not an apology — and it applies on both sides of the table, including to the person sitting opposite you.