Getting Hired in Germany, Part II

[from Ed Philp]

The Package

German companies want to see “gapless” resumes, meaning that every month since you commenced high school needs to be documented in the resume. Each relevant stage should also be backed up by a Zeugnis (letter of reference, or, more appropriately, evaluation – more on this in a later post) or a certificate of some sort. German employer decider people tend to frown on a summer spent lounging about at a cottage or travelling Spain by omnibus, even if this was your reward for straight-A grades in your degree, or completing a two-year project. That time should be productive – and documented. A drunken month in Greece turns into a “language course”. Hope you saved that certificate of Ouzo-competency from the Palace.

I’m in my early 30s and I have had a successful and diverse educational and employment path. In order to put together the sort of comprehensive documentation a German employer wants to see, my package now comprises over 40 pages: transcripts from 5 universities; letters of reference from various internships and longer-term employers; also a must - my high school grades. Yes, I got a D in typing in grade 12. Satisfied? I was running a small business on the side. My package has ended up being so long that I provide a table of contents – right after the cover page with photo. And no proper German application package is sent without enclosing everything in a stiff, elegant Mappe (a cardboard or plastic folder). My package now costs up to 10 Euros, including copying costs, photo, Mappe and postage.

When a German employer decides that I’m not photogenic enough to work there, or that my high-school typing grades just don’t measure up, they send the entire package back “zu unserer Entlastung” (roughly: “relieving ourselves” – wow – that does not translate well at all). This is great – I might be able to reuse the Mappe or some of the copies, certainly the photo, if it all hasn’t been folded and crumpled by the various mail deliverers in between. In North America, this wouldn’t happen.

But that’s because in North America, we wouldn’t ask for your entire life history on paper before even deciding to grant you an interview. We would want an extremely concise resume detailing your most recent achievements; we could care less who your parents were, or where you went to grade school, and we want to see it as a searchable .pdf document, not a bunch of expensive paper with staples and paperclips that will screw up our photocopiers. In fact, many major North American employers accept only online applications that they can easily screen - and trash. German firms – notionally – are obliged to indirectly subsidize the Deutsche Post to send back the 300 applications they received from unqualified or undesirable candidates. Incidentally, for serious candidates, North American employers will eventually request supporting documents, letters of reference, etc.

The difference is that costs – to both parties – are only incurred after the preliminary screening has taken place. My point here is only that the transaction costs of applying – and, as an employer, processing an application – are much higher here in Germany. Everyone thinks twice, maybe three times, before testing whether a potential employer – employee fit is possible.

(And incidentally, even the final hiring decisions are often made extremely conservatively. I recently watched a hiring decision made in my own present environment – a person with high general marks, but no discernible aptitude or experience in a highly relevant specialized field was hired over a person with somewhat lower general marks, but several years of solid practical experience in, and a demonstrated commitment to this field. The reason? If the hire had turned out to be problematic, the hiring person would have been able to objectively justify the decision made...)

Comments

[Martin.Emmerich]

I have some years experience as a in recruiting team members and worked some time as a recruiter recently. I have some additions to your article.

Since August 2006 we have Allgemeine Gleichbehandlungsgesetz (AGG) (G), which for example makes it impossible to ask an applicant for a photograph. They are still welcome anyhow since we are used to them.
I think sending photographs is good since for an applicant even if he is rejected only for that reason - otherwise he would have been invited for an interview without success. This has nothing to do with "being not photogenic". All employers have some idea of the type of person they are looking for. And of course a good photograph shows what kind of person you are. Every employer has such an idea (in the whole world), he only isn't allowed to tell it anymore. I call that double moral standards. For example due to AGG the potential employer is not allowed to ask for age, although he can deduct it from the diplomas dates.

I placed IT personnel in a lot of different sectors. I also searched jobs for myself in the IT departments of companies in all sectors. From that experience I can say that

• paper applications get unusual. In most job ads e-mail application is explicitly demanded. Big companies switch to recruitment software systems where applicants have to fill in there cv in predefined forms. BTW If they announce not to send back paper applications in the job ad, they don't need to send them back
  
• simultaneously job ads move from paper to online. Newspapers have a big problem in decreasing ad sales (jobs as well as sell-and-buy).
  
• jobs get also primarily searched online, see my blog article.
  
• more and more companies ask explicitly not to send the credentials in the first step
  
• there is a trend towards gaps and "bends" (Knick, Schwenk) in CVs. It's still a good idea to give an explanation for a gap, even if its a half year's travel through europe or even unemployment. Unemployment gaps get more and more common in these times.
  
• there is a trend to use more and more recruitment agents. Only 1/3 of the job ads is by the employer himself
  
• "international style applications" take hold (cover letter, cv, qualification profile, project list if applicable)
  
• of course the qualification must fit. The next most important question stays what kind of person you are and a good application gives an idea of that.
  

The points above fit for bigger companies. Smaller companies are probably more conservative concerning length and elaborateness.
In the IT consulting which is what I'm working in "international style application" is standard.

[steve]

Germany is about 25 years behind the rest of europe and the world when it comes to business management, hiring practices and generally equality of the sexes, races and place of orign.

the best way to get hired in germany, is just to show up with the equilivant of a high school education...this far superceeds their universities degree....germans are just so inadequate and poorly educated.

luckily, im in a high position of authority and responsibility...i enjoy firing germans and replacing them with ausländers...in their own country, they are put on the street and foreigners have their jobs. hey, i will take competence and intelligence and quality of work anyday over a lazy, incompetent, totally inexperienced german any day.

[Sebastian]

Thanks for the added info, both about "benevolent" evaluation and how they require the whole background in other fields than mine - I didn't know that and I agree with you, it's quite stupid.

[Sebastian Koppehel]

I'd urge you to examine the job evaluation, which are not allowed to contain any actual criticism!

That's not true. Briefly, criticism is allowed if it is justified. Unsurprisingly employees are not very fond of being criticised in their performance attestations, so they're relatively likely to challenge what they think is unfounded criticism.

More precisely speaking, we have the unusual situation in Germany that every employer is legally bound to issue a performance evaluation if an employee requests that; and also to produce a truthful and "benevolent" account. Obviously this makes sense. A company might not always want to write an evaluation for a departing employee, so it might be tempted to say: You want an evaluation so badly? - Well, I'm going to give you an evaluation you can't show around anywhere. So, as an employee you're legally entitled not only to the evaluation itself, but also to an evaluation that's correct and complete and doesn't unfairly diminish your chances of getting hired again. People have sued their employers over such things, so as a company you know that the easiest way to stay out of trouble is to only make claims that are provable, and avoid all wording that could remotely be construed to be malevolent.

In general I think that most of the more colourful tales about "secret codes" in job evaluations are essentially urban legends, if only because one would have to assume that there is a secret cabal of personnel managers who are in a shadowy race against business journalists to come up with more and more contrived ways to hide information in harmless-sounding prose. Also, one would have to assume that human ressource departments have such an interest to protect other companies - which will usually be their competition - from hiring rotten apples that they don't mind breaking the law.

[edplhilp]

Sorry Kay and Sebastian - I meant to add the justification for 40 pages: 1 page cover sheet with photo, address and indication of name of company being applied to with contact person. Two pages resume. 1 page summary of relevant legal experience citing cases and deals worked on. Three pages high school transcript. 1 page graduation diploma. Four pages undergrad transcript. 1 page degree diploma. Three pages law school transcript. 1 page degree diploma. Four pages post-grad law degree transcript, including actual diploma. All diplomas relevant, since grades are only stated on official certificates and transcripts only provide grades - not actual proof of completion of degree. Two pages confirmation of enrollment in present academic program; grades to date.

Then: 2 pages of call to the bar as an attorney. Ten pages of reference letters from relevant internships (6 in total - court, law firms, consulting firm). Three reference letters from previous 'real' employers (total of 5 pages). Two pages of reference letter from present employer (Zwischenzeugnis).

I mentioned in one of my posts that I have an extensive educational and employment background. My background certainly requires more paper backup than that of many of my colleagues. Nonetheless, another friend of mine - a German - studied at six universities in completing his law degrees (basic state degree, LL.M., doctorate, License), is qualified in two jurisdictions, and has worked around the globe at five different major law firms. He faces the same problem: if either of us leave something out, we run the risk that a German hiring manager suspects that (a) a degree might not have been completed; (b) grades weren't any good, or (c) reference letter(s) were so awful that we won't provide them. I've seen that suspicion once or twice in practice. It is unfortunately that sort of negative logic and general distrust that tends to color the process - at the beginning - in Germany.

[edphilp]

Kay and Sebastian:

you may well be quite right for a whole series of positions and employers that I haven't yet been exposed to. I certainly hope so.

I have typically applies / worked only within the law, consulting and accounting fields. These places are pretty conservative and traditional when it comes to reviewing candidate packages. In fact - in the same way as Kay mentions "aussagekräftige" Bewerbungsunterlagen, the ads in this field also almost always want "vollständige" Bewerbungsunterlagen. At a previous place of work in Germany not that long ago I did see applicants rejected for failing to include Abiturzeugnisse. These were all people with their legal first state exams...

German employers just seem to generally want the holistic comprehensive package.

Granted, neither in North America nor Germany is the package itself any guarantee that people will actually read the material and be prepared to talk about it intelligently in an interview...

All the best. As for the code phrases, coming right up.

[Sebastian]

Kay is right, I never heard of anyone sending in 40 pages. 3-4 pages including cover letter (yes, with photo), Lebenslauf and maybe a 4th one where you describe special abilities and experience with specific relevance to the job you apply for (which AFAIK is something we have recently imported from the US). Add to that the diploma of your latest/highest degree (so you can't make up your being a Dr. in Philologie and Lochkunde) and maybe the evaluation from your last job - that's 2 or 3 more pages, so you end up with 5-7 letters that should give as well-rounded an impression of you as is possible without having a personal meeting.

Now, if you want to talk about strange German hiring practices, I'd urge you to examine the job evaluation, which are not allowed to contain any actual criticism! That of course only leads to a weird kind of "code" for hiring people ...

[Kay]

In my experience (I don't hire people for regular jobs, but I do decide which interns we pick), German applications aren't supposed to include highschool diplomas/Abiturzeugnisse or anything the like once you've finished some higher form of education.

What you're describing is a bit more what used to be rather than what is. It may still be in some of the older guidebooks, but in real life, all colleagues I've talked to about this agree that it's a little strange to list your school sucesses (or failures) once you proved your abilities by getting, for example, a degree from some university. You may give the name of the school you went to in the overview and that's that. That's why they always use the phrase "aussagekräftige Bewerbungen bitte an..", they want information that is relevant.

The same holds true for the kind of gaps in the resume you mention: Three months travelling through India after getting your degree serve to show you have interests beyond work, most German employers consider that a healthy thing and don't require any further explanation. Now, three years sitting in front of the television watching Star Trek on DVD, that's something else.