Found a Job: How to Deregister from the RAV Properly

The offer is in, the contract signed — the best moment of any job search. Right after it comes an obligation many people only google once they're unsure: telling the RAV. The good news: deregistering is the easiest administrative act of your entire unemployment. The less good news: drag it out, or let your obligations slide before the start date, and you can still collect benefit suspension days — on the home stretch.

Step 1: Inform your counselor — right away

The rule is unambiguous: once you've found a position, deregister from the RAV promptly. "Promptly" means after signing the contract — not at the next counseling appointment that happened to be scheduled anyway. A short email or call to your counselor is enough to start: company name, workload, start date.

Attach the proof: submit the new employment contract. Your counselor forwards it to the responsible unemployment fund, which settles your daily allowances correctly up to your start date and closes the file cleanly.

Why the hurry? Two reasons. First, you avoid clawbacks: allowances that keep flowing after your job start because nobody knew get reclaimed by the fund. Second, it spares you summons the RAV would otherwise keep sending — counseling appointments, courses, placement proposals you'd still have to respond to.

Step 2: Stay registered until your start date

A point many get wrong: signing the contract doesn't end your unemployment — your first working day does. Days to months can lie between the two, and for that period:

• You stay registered and, with obligations met, remain entitled to daily allowances — up to and including the day before your job starts
• Scheduled appointments still count. A missed counseling appointment shortly before the end is the same breach as in month one — with the same suspension days
• Job-search efforts: don't stop on your own initiative. For the month of the offer, efforts are usually already documented; whether more are expected until your start date — say, when the job begins in two or three months — is handled differently across cantons and counselors. Ask explicitly and get the answer in writing, rather than risking a gap in your proof of efforts in the final month

If there's a long stretch between offer and start, interim earnings can even be worth it — a temporary or part-time engagement that supplements the daily allowances. That's its own chapter with its own rules; your counselor can calculate whether it pays off in your constellation.

Step 3: The formal deregistration

The deregistration itself is unspectacular — the route varies slightly by canton:

In every case, state: last day of unemployment (= day before job start), company, workload. And keep copies — of the contract, the form, the confirmation. If the fund has a question months later, that paper stack is your insurance.

When it goes differently: probation, postponement, backing out

The job ends during the probation period. No drama, but a deadlines topic: re-register immediately — same process as the first time, at the latest on the first day of renewed unemployment. Within your running framework period you generally continue with the remaining daily allowances; the waiting period doesn't restart from zero.

The start date gets postponed. Report the postponement to the RAV as soon as you know — your entitlement extends accordingly, but only if the deregistration hasn't been executed yet and your obligations keep running.

You back out yourself (better offer, change of heart): report that too. As long as you're registered and meeting your obligations, the entitlement stands — concealed changes, by contrast, are the classic route to clawbacks.

Where preparAItor Fits

The deregistration itself is admin — but the road there is application work, and the final month is dense: running applications, open replies, one last proof of efforts. preparAItor keeps the threads together:

• Application Tracker: every running application with status and result — the rejections and open processes that still trickle in after your offer are cleanly documented
• Tracker entries are proof-ready: date, company, contact, status — the last monthly proof becomes copy work instead of reconstruction
• And if probation doesn't hold: your CVs, templates and application history are still there — the restart doesn't begin from zero

Sources

• RAV Zug – FAQ for jobseekers (deregistration on taking up a job)
• arbeit.swiss – eServices and forms for unemployment benefit
• Canton of Zurich – Personal job-search efforts