Over 50 and job hunting in Switzerland

Decision 1: what date your framework period opens on

Almost nobody is told this is a decision. The SECO leaflet for insured persons says it plainly: the insured person tells the unemployment fund on which date the framework period for benefits should be opened. The earliest possible date is the first day of unemployment, and no earlier than the day you register with the RAV — but a later date can be requested.

Why it matters after 50: for people who become unemployed within the last four years before the AHV reference age, the framework period is extended to the end of the month before the pension begins, capped at four years. On top of that, anyone who can show at least twelve months of contributions in the two years before the framework period opens is entitled to 120 additional daily allowances. Both hang on the opening date — a date you report.

The same document states the cost of waiting, which is why this is not a decision to take alone: until the period opens you receive no unemployment benefit, you work off no waiting days or penalty days, and you may lose contribution months. Fewer countable months can lower your maximum number of daily allowances and, through the insured earnings, the size of each one. The maximum depends on whether you can show twelve, eighteen or twenty-two months of contributions in the preceding two years.

In practice: ask the unemployment fund to calculate your contribution period before you name a date, and have both the RAV and the fund talk you through the two options. This is the one point on this page where a week's delay either costs or earns real money, depending on how your months fall.

Decision 2: what happens to your pension fund

This clock starts on your last working day, not when you register with the RAV. If your employer gave notice and you were at least 58 at the end of the employment relationship, Art. 47a BVG allows you to remain insured with your existing pension fund until you start a new job, or at the latest until retirement age. People who choose this receive an old-age pension at the end, and can decide whether to pay savings contributions on top of the mandatory part and keep building the capital.

If you do not stay, you are compulsorily insured through the Substitute Occupational Benefit Institution while drawing unemployment benefit — but only against disability and death, not for old age. The savings process does not continue by itself. It can be continued voluntarily, and the request has to reach the institution within three months of leaving your fund. The capital saved so far can be transferred separately, voluntarily and with no time limit.

Neither option is universally better: it depends on the contributions you would carry alone and on your fund's rules. What matters is that both have deadlines and only one of them happens without you doing anything. Write to your fund in the first week and ask for the contribution, the rules and the registration deadline.

Decision 3: which adverts you aim at

The reflex is the problem here. People searching after 50 read adverts as an exam and screen themselves out. The data argues the other way. Across the open adverts on SwissJobs.app, 5.1 per cent state a number of years of experience at all. Where one appears, five years is the most common value, and only 14.9 per cent of those adverts ask for ten or more.

The split by advert language is sharper, and it matters most to readers arriving from outside Switzerland. English-language adverts in Switzerland state a number of years 15.5 per cent of the time; German-language ones 0.8 per cent. Quantifying experience in years is largely an imported convention that travels with English-language postings. If you arrive with the 'X years of experience' habit from a UK or US market, you are measuring yourself against a bar that the local German-language advert almost never sets.

What Swiss adverts measure instead is tasks, tools, qualifications and languages — stated as CEFR levels, not as 'fluent'. Those are the dated fields, and they are where an application really ages. So the checkable step before you send is not disguising your age; it is matching the advert's own vocabulary: the tools it names, the language level it asks for, the qualification, the workload.

Two figures for choosing roles: 5.4 per cent of adverts are explicitly part-time and 16.5 per cent state no Pensum (workload percentage) at all. If you want a reduced workload you will rarely find it in the title — but most adverts have not committed to a figure either, and that is negotiating room rather than a closed door.

Decision 4: how thirty years fit into a Swiss dossier

The document itself barely changes, and that is covered in detail elsewhere: keep every position, cut the lines per position, write the last ten years or so in full and list what came before as a short block of earlier roles. This page does not repeat it.

The decision that belongs here is a different one: which advert you check the dossier against. A CV covering thirty years is always too general for one specific posting — not too long, too unspecific. Matching the document against the advert's own text is the work that changes outcomes, and it has to be redone for each application.

One thing not to do: raise your age in the text. A sentence like 'still flexible despite my age' answers a question the advert never asked, and asking it is how it enters the room.

A note for readers relocating: Swiss applications expect an Arbeitszeugnis (the employer reference letter) for each position, a photo is conventional rather than discouraged, and non-Swiss applicants state their permit. After thirty years that is a thick set of references — attach the recent ones, list the rest.

Decision 5: where you apply, and at what rhythm

The shape of the Swiss market argues against a large-employer-only strategy. Of the employers with open adverts on SwissJobs.app, 46.3 per cent have exactly one open position; at the other end, the top one per cent of employers account for 27.5 per cent of all adverts. The market is a small number of large addresses and a very long tail of SMEs hiring one person — and in that tail, the person deciding usually reads the whole dossier.

On rhythm: the median open advert is 31 days old, and 25.0 per cent are two weeks old or less. A quarter of the market turns over every fortnight, which argues for a fixed weekly round rather than one large monthly push.

If you are registered with the RAV, the formal side applies as well: job-search efforts only count when they are submitted through the Job-Room eService or on the official form at your RAV. A private list — including ours — is a collection point in front of that, never a substitute for it. The number of efforts required is set by your canton.

Decision 6: what applies if the allowances end before the pension

This is the question people postpone, and it has three answers. You can draw the AHV pension early, which reduces it permanently. You can wait for the ordinary reference age. Or, if your entitlement runs out from 60, there are bridging benefits.

The conditions are set out in leaflet 5.03 of the AHV/IV information office: the entitlement must run out in the month you turn 60 or later; at least 20 years insured with the Swiss AHV, including at least five years after your 50th birthday, with a certain level of earnings; assets of no more than CHF 50'000 for a single person or CHF 100'000 for a married couple, with owner-occupied property not counted; and residence and actual stay in Switzerland, the EU or EFTA. Anyone whose entitlement runs out before their 60th birthday has no claim — which is what makes decision 1 matter in hindsight.

Bridging benefits are means-tested, financed by the Confederation and paid by the cantons, and are claimed at the body responsible where you live, normally the cantonal compensation office. They do not arrive automatically.

One point specific to English-speaking readers: the official leaflets behind all of this exist in German, French and Italian. The English pages of arbeit.swiss link to the German edition of the SECO documents, so an English-only search will find summaries rather than the source. If your German is not up to it, take the leaflet to the RAV appointment and have them walk through it.

This week, concretely: have the unemployment fund calculate your contribution period before you name a framework-period date; write to your pension fund about Art. 47a and its deadlines; and set the first weekly round of applications on adverts posted within the last two weeks.