Some hard truths from a German hiring manager (tech)
I stumbled across this sub and was reading some of the posts. This was going to be a reply to a comment, but maybe it’s worth a post. It sounds like so many of you are being sold a dream via social media and instagram reels and that seems so unfair that you give up your lives only to face some really hard challenges to come here and get disappointed.
I know some will get lucky, but with the economy being what it is, and [so many people being laid off](https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/volkswagen-will-offenbar-bis-zu-100-000-stellen-streichen-a-b875d735-19c7-4cc9-9eda-6a7c98e0867d), this is possibly the worst possible time to try.
So to give you a look behind the curtain, this is the way I currently work as a hiring manager when it comes to the CV’s that end up on my desk after being screened.
Any CV’s from people who aren’t already in Germany go directly in deleted items.
People that don’t have any experience of working in Germany, go to the bottom of the pile.
I will prioritize people that have existing work experience here in Germany first and regardless of what your language certificate says, if you can’t converse well in German in the interviews then it’s highly unlikely you’ll be hired.
Out of experience, it’s just less stress, less hassle and less cruel than firing you within Probezeit because you have culture shock and poor German skills. The six months Probezeit is a very magic number in Germany. It is way harder and more expensive to get rid of under-performers after that six months, so we tend to error on the side of caution.
Junior positions are way more about team fit than skills and the team is going to gel faster with a native speaker. We have so many local applicants for junior roles and people that have already completed apprenticeships within the company, that we just don’t need any juniors from abroad.
We now have at least one of the interviews onsite because we’ve had more than one candidate lie and apply from abroad over remote interviews and also more than one candidate that think I can’t tell that they are using ChatGPT in the background to answer questions. I test you out in German and English.
Other hiring managers may do things differently, but I wanted to share my process.
And so it’s explicit from the offset, I’m not (originally) German, and I’ve hired many people who also aren’t German.
The language certification and German work experience will get you into the interview process, but being able to converse in German is a must. I have German colleagues outside of tech in the company that only speak German and you need to be able to communicate with them. We aren’t a JIRA ticket farm like in some other countries.