A Job Search and Finding Guide in Germany
Hello dear, those who want to find a job in Europe, those who want to get away from Turkey, those who do not know where to start and those who have a lot of question bubbles in their minds!
Hello!
A short summary for those who read our articles for the first time. We, Asya and Umut, are a couple who quit our job and moved to Franfurt two years ago for her master’s degree! One of us is an architect and the other is a law graduate.. When we first started our blog, we were a couple who didn’t have the slightest idea what to do after grad school.. During this time, we sometimes shared our troubles, sometimes we shared your troubles, and we went less and far, we finished our masters and 1 month ago we moved to Munich to work!
We have been in Munich for 1 month as of July 2017. As a blog that works full-time and travels in free time, learns as I write, and has a lot to learn and travel, we continue on our way! We would like to thank everyone who has read our graduate story and reached us so far.
This time we wrote our job finding story, hope it will help and guide someone!
Our Process of Finding a Job in Germany
When we decided to stay in Germany and look for a job, we were anticipating what would tire us the most.
Umut architect because his profession was valid in every country and he could apply to any country with a good portfolio. Since I was a law graduate, it was not possible for me to do my own profession, that is, as a lawyer, in Germany.. Of course, I could have worked as a legal advisor (Legal Counsel), but it was not possible for me to work as a lawyer (attorney) in the system.. First I had to admit that. In other words, I had to accept that I would not do a job that I had studied for 4 years and which was my dream at the time, and that I would have to turn to other fields and act accordingly.. I thought and decided; I wanted to stay in Germany and the important thing for me was to work, be a part of production and continue to improve myself.. I didn’t have to do law. In fact, even when we returned to Turkey, I did not want to practice law because you all know the legal system in Turkey.. We said that the spoon of the one who returns from rice should be broken and we started the applications!
We made the applications when we were in Germany, but you can do it from Turkey as well.. What we wrote below will also apply to you.
Visa Status
If you find a job in Germany with a gross annual of 52,000 Euros (39,000 in some cases), ‘Blue Card’ You apply for a visa called and your visa comes out for a long time. The nice thing about this is that the same visa is issued to your spouse and your spouse has also earned a work permit without having a job yet.
If your annual salary is below this amount, you get a work permit and your spouse is given a work permit according to your work permit type, or In the worst case, a residence permit is given and he can come here and look for a job.
We decided not to start without explaining this situation, which has puzzled many people!
Additional note 1:
The difference between Blue Card and Work Permit is as follows; If you meet the Blue Card criteria, you go with your documents and get your work permit from the Foreigners Office.. If you do not comply, you hand over your documents to the foreigners office and they send them to another authority called ‘ArbeitsAgentür’.. This is the second authority that approves your visa. Generally, the first work permit comes out for 1 year and you extend it once a year by making an appointment.
Additional note 2:
I want to find a job when I come to a German language school and go to a language school If you say that, provided that the exceptions do not break the rule, here is how: You are enrolled in an intensive course for at least 6 months and you pay the fee, when your visa comes out, you also have a part-time work permit for 6 months with that visa.. You can also find a permanent job during this period, but in this case, you need to return to Turkey and convert to a work visa.
You can also refer to our article about language schools and language school visas.
Application Documents for Jobs in Germany
There are two important documents you need to prepare before starting job applications. Your CV and Cover Letter, that is, the cover letter you write for applications. Instead of a cover letter, we’ll refer to it as a Cover Letter because we assume you’ll be applying in English, and the concept of ‘Cover Letter’ didn’t seem to support the ‘Cover Letter’.
You may not always have a lot of work experience, you must have a very good GPA. may not be and you may not have very good references. If you ask us, the most important thing is that you can always stand out from traditional methods and express yourself with confidence.. Think about it, the average time a manager spends on CVs is 15 seconds, and the important thing is to do a good job for that 15 seconds!
We did a little research on the do’s and don’ts to prepare a CV and Cover Letter and came up with our own opinion. We have also prepared suggestions.
Here’s our point of view, CV and Cover Letter Preparation Tactics and Things to Avoid
1-) Your CV and Cover Letter will of course be entirely in English (or if you know the language of the country you are applying to, it will be in that language). Ok ok this was very simple, we didn’t write it!
2-) Do not send your CV and Cover Letter as a Word File unless otherwise stated, Pdf throw as. It looks more beautiful and professional.
3-) Do not start a topic as my hobbies, because if you are not a Professor, Academician, you have more than 20 years of experience and pages of articles, your CV should not exceed 1 page. and you have much more important things to fit on that 1 page.
4-) If you are applying to America, they immediately eliminate CVs with photos.. An American friend said this and when we searched the internet, we read that it was true.. In other words, if you are applying to America, do not have a photo on your CV.
5-) You should not write an e-mail address from adolescence in the e-mail address section of the contact information, it should look professional!
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6-) Any work experience including internships is important and put a one sentence explanation under each experience.. It is very important to be short and clear.
7-) Unless your GPA is really good, don’t write at all.. For example, our averages were very low and you cannot find our average in any of our CVs!
It is impossible for CVs prepared with traditional methods to reflect you, and such CVs appear in front of employers every minute.. It is best to spend some time and prepare a CV that is completely your own.
9-) Grammar and grammatical errors are a huge minus, so pay attention to them!
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10-) It’s very normal that people our age (20-30 years old) don’t specialize in much. There are a few things we know well, highlighting them and highlighting them seems much more professional than writing too many irrelevant things.
And here is http://www.umutesenkal.com/cv-hazirlama-guide/ Umut Esenkal has a CV preparation guide, you can check it out.
What we wrote for the CV is actually valid for the Cover Letter as well, and the most important thing for us when writing a Cover Letter is to talk about your skills and character rather than your work experience.. Talking about how this work process feeds you, which areas it leads and what it adds to you professionally, not what you did during your X years of work experience.. It is very important that you tell us what you want as volunteer projects, seminars, an article you wrote, even if it is a small one, and your position.. As we said, you may not have many years of experience, but thanks to this article you wrote, you can write that you are a quick learner, a good listener, and that you love your job and do it successfully! These are all pluses!
And lastly, it is very important that you write the name of the company you are applying for in your Cover Letter and that you write to the authorized person in front of you.. If you started out as Dear Madam/Sir and always referred to the company as ‘your company’, they will think that your Cover Letter is preprinted and you sent the same letter to all positions.. So even if the content of the article is the same; for each company, update the name of the company in the part where you mention the company, and replace ‘dear Madam/Sir’ with ‘ dear Mrs / Mr.. Don’t forget to refer to it as X’ and your Cover Letter should not exceed one page!
We had one Cover Letter text and we only changed the name of the position, the name of the company and the name of the official we sent in the text according to the name of the position.. Of course, some positions did not fit the text we prepared, then we would add a sentence or two and remove a sentence or two.. We don’t have to write a separate cover letter for each position, right?
Additional note 1:Other application documents are usually your diplomas, grade point averages and their translations.. If you need to have your diploma and other certificates translated, we have it translated from this site and we are happy.
We are skipping this part by giving a few details about LinkedIn without boring you right away!
If you open your profile on LinkedIn, recruiters of companies called ‘recruiter’ are referred to as ‘head hunter’, they can access your profile.
If you also approve the ‘let recruiters know you’re open to offers’ section in the ‘Job Seeking’ section on LinkedIn, it will be much easier for our headhunters to find you!
Our There are two more things that we haven’t read anywhere and that we think are true.. First; While you are looking for a job, there will always be places on your LinkedIn profile that you don’t like and want to change, turn off the feature of notifying your connections for every slight change.. Well, we don’t know the reason either, but wouldn’t it be better if everyone didn’t get the notification that ‘he changed this on his X profile’?
Secondly, as you know, it can be seen whose profile you are looking at on LinkedIn.. Turn this feature off so you can browse people’s profiles and get inspired(!) Also, you can easily tamper with the profiles of the recruiters who reach you!
‘endorse’ your skills on LinkedIn< We don't know how much attention is given to the part you have written, but you should definitely ask a few of your friends to give a hand, after all, it doesn't hurt anyone.
I guess that’s all our LinkedIn recommendations, how you fill in the rest is up to you, the rest is freedom.
The Sites We Use for Job Applications in Germany
Yes, now that the application documents are ready, you can switch to ‘do you want to eat’ mode and start applying!
We acted a bit traditionally while applying and started from the most well-known sites first.. These were LinkedIn and ‘monster.de’-, which was very popular especially in Germany.
In addition to these, we discovered something new and even in Turkey. Another site to help with job searches is Jooble. We leave its link here.
Although there are more suitable job postings for law and finance students on these two sites, we believe that architecture offices are a little more ‘old school’ and mostly We noticed that they opened job postings on their own site.. That’s why Umut made most of his applications by searching the cities one by one in Google ‘Architect position in Frankfurt’ and applying from the sites he came across.
As a result, the job he chose at the moment was the first It was the architecture office to which he sent his portfolio for the first time in March, by opening a LinkedIn account, searching for an architect position randomly, and pressing the ‘apply’ button for the first time.. In fact, he found the job he wanted months ago, but it took us 3 months to realize.. Sometimes there are surprises like this in life…
What were we saying, yes sites! As a result, the sites we use for reference are LinkedIn, ‘monster.de’, ‘glassdoor.co.uk’ and ‘reed.co became .uk’. Of course, you mostly find job postings from these sites and the site directs you to the company’s own site.. Here, it is necessary to continue to apply resolutely and resolutely, to enter the same information dozens of times on different companies’ websites.. We already said don’t give up! Believe me, there were times when we were so overwhelmed when looking for a job, hated to apply and wanted to go back, but then we remembered the times when we said ‘break the spoon of the one who returns from rice’ and we didn’t give up!
The others of Glassdoor different, on the site you can also read the comments about the company you will apply for, the average salaries and the interview experiences of people, and this helped us a lot before the interviews.. You need to be a member to access all the information on the site, but membership is free.. All you have to do is share any job or interview experience.
Additional note: If you are looking for an internship or praktikum, you can also use the site meinpraktikum.de, there are too many ads on the site!
The more filters you use while searching for positions on these sites, the more suitable the positions you searched for.. For example, you want to apply for ‘Account Manager’ positions and you searched on LinkedIn, if you filter them according to your work experience, you will avoid applying for positions that are not suitable for you.. As you can see in the image below, when you search for the ‘Account Manager’ position in Germany, you see that job postings are divided into different positions such as ‘Mid-Senior Level – Associate – Entry Level – Internship’.. If you’re a recent graduate, you can save time by eliminating Mid-Senior from the options.
Let’s enter a ‘motivational note’ right here.. In one of the job interviews I went to, I openly said to the woman, ‘My features do not match with the advertisement you put, I have a lot less than what you want in the advertisement’, and the woman told me that ‘most of the job postings are for ‘dream candidate’ and most of the time she He also said that they hired candidates who did not meet the demands in the job posting.. In other words, you don’t need to fit the criteria in the job posting exactly, apply and try your luck.
While a friend of ours was looking for a job in Frankfurt, he was a fresh graduate of architecture at the time, ‘at least 5 years of experience, German as a mother tongue and EU. He applied for a ‘citizenship’ position with zero German and Turkish citizenship and without even a work permit and was accepted! He has been working happily for 2 years. Don’t say it’s impossible, it won’t happen.
Interviews
As we approach step by step finding a job, we have to talk about the most annoying part of this job, interviews!
Although the number and form may vary depending on the position you are applying for, most of the time, you need to make at least 2 interviews during the evaluation process of your application.. The first response to you is 90 percent of the head hunters we call ‘recruiter’, they want to set up a phone call with you and ask what day and time you are available! When you receive such an e-mail, of course, you can be happy enough, but try not to make an appointment for the same day or the next day.. Put at least 2 days in between so that you have time to prepare for the interview and research the company thoroughly.
Let’s write a bunch of questions that are always asked, based entirely on our own experiences and phone interviews;
‘Tell us briefly. Tell me about yourself. Why this position? Have you worked in a similar position before? Why our company? Where do you see yourself in the future? How did you overcome a problem you faced at your previous job? What are the strengths and weaknesses of your character? What is your expectation from this job? What is your salary expectation? …”
Although the questions vary depending on the type of job and the company, in the phone interviews we have done so far, most of these questions have been asked in every phone call, and in the first phone calls, not many questions are asked about the basics of the job.. If you think that the caller is human resources or the recruiter, this is very normal, because he probably doesn’t know the essence of the job either..
A suggestion; Before the interview, be sure to read what previous interviewees wrote on Glassdoor.. They often ask similar questions in similar positions.
While we were preparing for these phone calls, we usually took small notes in front of us and looked at the notes where we were stuck.. Sometimes, they may want to have the first call on Skype rather than on the phone, then you can try pasting the notes on the edge of the computer screen.. If you do this, be careful not to lose eye contact on the camera and look like you are reading from a paper, it will instantly go wrong!
Also, after making the phone call, you can send a polite thank you e-mail.. ‘‘Mr.. X, Thank you for your interview and talking my application further, I look forward for the next steps” will suffice. ! What happens now?
The second interview is usually with ‘your supervisor, tutor, manager, etc.’ with whom you will work one-on-one’. This meeting is usually on Skype or face to face.. We already know what to do if Skype happens. If face-to-face, they set a common date and call you to the company.
If you’re coming from Turkey to a foreign country, such as Germany for a job interview, 99 percent of you need to pay for your flight ticket and they need to pay your hotel for at least 1 night stay. Make sure to ask this question, don’t think, ‘Let them hire you, if necessary, I’ll pay my ticket’, if you ask, you will be even more valuable! Of course, we don’t think we need to say this at the Hilton (or don’t stay at a more luxurious hotel) just because they pay for your hotel anyway!. When going for face-to-face interviews, remember to be stylish but not overdo it.. Believe me, especially in Germany, almost no one wears blow-dry and exaggerated make-up.. Naturalness is at the forefront everywhere and the more ‘natural chic’ you are, the more confident you look.. In an interview where I went face to face, the woman who was going to interview me appeared in pajamas and I was shocked.. Imagine that you are waiting for someone to come in front of you with heels, and instead of you, someone dressed in pajamas + a cleaning bun appears before you! At that moment, I did not give a damn, but when I saw that no one was looking for a woman, I was once again sure that the Germans did not have a perception of ‘elegance’.
One final additional note; We don’t know how in the rest of Europe but there is a strange ‘timing perception’ in Germany. If your interview is at 10, it’s best to ring the bells at 9:59.. Arriving 10 minutes early is also perceived as a kind of ‘timelessness’ most of the time.. Once in Frankfurt, our host called to eat and we went 10 minutes early, he did not let us in, we waited outside for 9 minutes.. Yeah, they’re weird…
I guess that’s all we have to say about face-to-face interviews. And then there are the troublesome ‘Assessment‘s!
When you apply for a job, sometimes right after you submit your application, sometimes after the process has progressed, you will receive an ‘online assessment’ They can send the tests they call . These tests are usually not business related, but rather consist of logic tests that have shapes in them and that you come across in IQ tests or questions to understand your character.. If you have tests similar to logic tests, you can get support from someone who you think understands these things well.. They say you can do it alone, but we don’t know if anyone does it ‘alone’.
As you can see, the job application process abroad is a long process that sometimes takes a long time, but when you want it enough, it ends happily! Imagine how hard it is to find a house in a new city, but no one stays homeless, so is the process of finding a job, if you want it enough and do your best, it will definitely happen.. It is very important for you to apply to the right places at the right times.. Just trust yourself.
Some professions are very lucky in this regard in Europe.. In particular, the process is much easier for IT, software engineers, architects, electrical and electronics engineers, doctors, dentists because there is a great need for these professions due to the lack of young population in Europe.. If you are in this category, believe me, you are in luck! The poorest ones, on the other hand, seem like us law graduates.. You are both looking for a job and everyone around you is looking at you as ‘what would you do abroad?’. Finding the job you want can sometimes take time and it’s not easy, but as we always say, there is light at the end of the tunnel! Me too, when I was close to giving up, I always got the good news. So, we shouldn’t think that it won’t happen!
Finally, let’s talk about the first thing that will come to mind of those who have passed all these stages and been accepted from jobs!
Is it difficult to be a foreigner in a new country, in a city? ? not in our opinion. So much to learn, so much to experience. Is it embarrassing to speak a smack? In our opinion, no. We can even say that a slit-eye German and brown hair-eye combination makes us feel like an exotic fruit.. Sometimes it’s good not to understand what people are talking about, you don’t hear what they don’t want to hear.
A German friend of ours said; “You are lucky to be anything.. Most of us are always cut from the same cloth. We are modern educated French (Germans). we all look alike. We got information from the same book.. We are limited by the same fears and prejudices. We are a couple.. We’re even equal in thinking we’re unique. But you.. you come from another root. You are different! You’re part of millennial traditions, qualities.”
For a while, we’ve been thinking and feeling this way too.. When we think like this, we do not think and feel that we are approached with prejudice.. So don’t get close. In our opinion, this is the first condition of adapting to a new country.
Our next article will be about our story of finding a house in Munich (it would be tragicomic) and business life in Germany.
Stay tuned!
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