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by peteretep
3697 days ago
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If you're interested in hiring German developers on your team, leading with the fact you're not looking for someone with Doctor Professor in their title, you don't need apostilled copies of every certificate since kindergarten, and you don't need codified reference letters for every job will expand your market considerably. I've placed several Germans in London development positions now, many of whom were surprised when I told them how little I wanted other than for them to answer some technical questions and to see if they got on with the team. As the German market loses solid people to markets which aren't so incredibly uptight, the German market will change. |
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The sad part is that (except for the Siemens/Telekom/SAP class of companies), companies don't really care that much for all the paperwork - although there's typically some interest in academic credentials.
I often recommend people to fiercely cut down on their application and resume (unless the job ad has specific requirements):
HR doesn't want to read your 5 page treatise on why you're suited to a job they don't know exactly but of which they know that you don't either. They have 500 more cover letters to attend to, no time to read up on your childhood trauma that shaped you into the perfect worker bee.
They also don't care about more than the last 3 years of education (and only if they happened within the last 5 years, otherwise your job history should mostly speak for you).
Sadly, the keyword filter is as strong here as elsewhere (no 5 years of Swift experience? pass), so it's useful to stuff the resume with them (but tabular please, no prose - HR ain't got no time for that). Add academic credentials ("2013: B.A. in Bullshitting at the Agrarian Academy of Bauernhausen, specialization: the qualities of cow manure").
Write a cover letter that shows that you're in reasonable command of friendly, professional German (or English if the position allows for that), and that you read the job ad. Finally add some bait for the hiring manager that indicates why you might be a good fit, should your application get past the HR screen.
HR will be happy to see a no-nonsense candidate that matches the keywords. Everything else is just part of the lottery anyway.
(to add: as soon as you're playing by the HR rules, be it in your reference letter, or in resume design, you're judged by it. Once you obviously deviate from that but without creating extra work for HR, you're likely judged for content only. If they take offense at the deviation, that's probably a pretty huge red flag for the company as a whole simply because it reflects on the type of people they did or did not hire.)