Recruiting in Germany

5 ways to find employees

Many foreign entrepreneurs who have opened a business in Germany struggle with finding competent staff for their companies. Doing business in a foreign country can be challenging as it is, and finding reliable employees with sufficient qualifications and skills might become an even bigger issue, especially if you don’t know where to start: where to find employees and what options you have.

In this article we are going to tell you about recruiting in Germany: where you can look for staff in Germany and what the advantages and disadvantages of these possible options are. So if you’d like to get some recruiting tips, please keep reading.

Our company, Nexus-Europe GmbH, helps foreigners start and develop their own successful business in Germany and move to Germany through business immigration or the EU Blue Card.

Please note that this article is not sponsored or endorsed by any of the mentioned organizations. The information is intended for informational purposes only.

Watch out video on recruiting in Germany:

Ways of recruiting in Germany: pros and cons

Here are the ways to look for personnel for your German company:
 

1. Online portals

Job portals in Germany are the first thing that comes to mind. There are several big German and international portals that can be used for both finding jobs and recruiting in Germany. For example: Indeed, Stepstone, Jobware, Monster.de. The pros of using such portals are that there are many of them and a big variety of candidates can be found there. You can also personally evaluate potential candidates and find those who meet all of the criteria for your open position. However this might be considered a downside at the same time: looking through dozens or even hundreds of resumes is time-consuming, and many of the applicants will be unsuitable for the job. Also, publishing a job ad is quite expensive. For example, the minimal package on Stepstone is for 30 days and costs almost 1300 euro. The minimal package on Jobware costs almost 1000 euro and prices on Monster.de start from almost 900 euro.

Of course, the price of the ad shouldn’t be the only decisive factor when choosing a website to post your job offering for recruiting in Germany. You should also find out how big the database of candidates of the website is and if they provide job offers and candidates in all possible fields or only in a specific field (e.g. jobs for IT specialists or part-time jobs for students). You should also pay attention to what services exactly are offered as a part of the package: how long the ad will be up, if and when the ad will be refreshed, if you are going to have access to the resume database or only to the resumes of the candidates who’ve applied for the job etc.
 

2. Social networks

Social networks are another good way to look for personnel. The international professional network LinkedIn and the German professional network Xing are very popular in this regard. A lot of specialists look for jobs and new opportunities there, so it makes sense to consider posting your job offering there. Moreover, you’ll be able to look for candidates yourself using keywords. LinkedIn also provides recommendations that can be quite useful, and Xing offers the so-called Talent Manager service that includes useful tools helping employers search for suitable candidates. However this service is not free of charge, just as posting job listings themselves. Moreover on LinkedIn, the job ad posting system is quite complicated in regard to payment conditions, so it might be by trial and error until you find the optimal budget and the most suitable option for you.

Social networks such as Facebook, Twitter or Instagram can also be used for posting vacancies and might attract potential candidates in the process of recruiting in Germany.
 

3. Recruiting agencies

Hiring recruitment companies in Germany is a good way to let professional recruiters handle the whole process of creating the job ad correctly, effectively posting it on chosen resources, selecting suitable candidates and even having initial interviews to sort the best ones out. However, as a rule, services of recruitment companies in Germany cost 20-30% from the annual salary of the employee. It can easily exceed 10 000 euro per middle level position. Also if you are a person who prefers to stay in the loop with all things happening, it might interfere with the process and create unnecessary annoyance on both sides.

4. Website of the company

This option is quite obvious. The easiest thing to do when recruiting in Germany is posting your job offering on your own website. However in this case you should keep in mind that the selection of candidates will be limited to those who intentionally looked for a specific job title or your specific company.
 

5. Federal Employment Agency

The Federal Employment Agency also offers the opportunity to post vacancies and you to look for potential candidates. However, from our experience, many highly qualified specialists are not registered in their system and prefer to look for jobs on other portals, so the choice might be quite limited, and those candidates who you do find might turn out to be not the ones you were looking for.
 

Now you know what ways there are to look for employees when recruiting in Germany.

Our company, Nexus-Europe GmbH, will help you establish and develop your own successful business in Germany of any scale, including finding solutions for effective personnel search. We closely work with German government organizations, and if your project is beneficial for Germany, we can assist you with obtaining the German residence permit through business as well as with participation in government programs, incentives, financing, technology transfer.