There are hundreds of thousands of unfilled jobs in Germany. This is not a rumour, it is official data. And still, every day hundreds of educated, skilled people from our part of the world send applications and do not even get a reply. The question is: if they cannot find people, why are our people not being taken?
The answer is different from what most people expect. The problem is usually not that the job was not there. The problem is that, in the eyes of the German system, your degree or your skill does not yet exist at all. The paper is in your hand, but it has no standing in the German office’s computer. And until that standing is settled, your application is a file the HR person closes without reading.
The real door is not the job, it is Anerkennung
Understand this one word and half of Germany’s system opens up. Anerkennung means having your qualification officially recognised — that is, the German state putting it in writing that your degree or your skill is equivalent to which German qualification.
Many professions in Germany are “regulated”. Nursing, medicine, teaching, electrician’s work, and many similar fields. In these you simply cannot work until your qualification has been formally compared. And even in the professions that are not regulated, the recognition document adds so much weight to your application that the difference is plain to see — because the employer does not have to go to the trouble of guessing.
Many people waste years thinking they will find a job first and look at recognition later. The order is usually the other way round. First find out where your paper stands in Germany, then look for a job according to that standing.
anabin — the first step, and it is free
anabin is Germany’s official database holding the classification of universities and degrees from around the world. You can, yourself, on your own phone, without any agent, enter your university’s name and see what its standing is. The H+ rating is a good sign — it means the institution is recognised.
This one task can be done today, right now, in half an hour. And it can save you months of misunderstanding. The person whose university has a good standing in anabin has one plan; the person whose university does not should have a completely different plan. Giving both the same advice is harmful.
ZAB and the Statement of Comparability
The step beyond anabin is ZAB — the central office that assesses foreign education. The document you get from there is called a Statement of Comparability: an official text saying that your degree is equivalent to such-and-such German degree. It carries weight both in a job application and in a visa application. The fee stays within a few hundred euros and the decision can take some months, so this is work to start early.
And those who have no degree but have a trade
Electricians, plumbers, mechanics, welders, nurses — for them the comparison is done by the relevant chamber or body, not by the university route. What often happens is that the comparison finds some gap: a certain part is missing from your training. This is not a refusal. There is an arrangement for it called Anpassungsqualifizierung, that is, supplementary training, through which that gap is filled.
The new law has opened another door which is perhaps the most useful for our people — Anerkennungspartnerschaft. Under this you complete the recognition after reaching Germany, while working. That is, it is no longer compulsory to finish the whole process while sitting abroad. The employer and you take on this responsibility together.
Nursing — the clearest example
If you want to understand how the system works when the demand is real, look at nursing. The shortage of nurses in Germany is not a seasonal matter but a permanent need, and that is why regular large programmes run there bringing in foreign nurses. If the language is at B1 or B2 level and the recognition process is completed, a job is almost certain.
Do note one thing here: in reputable programmes the cost of the language course and the recognition is often borne by the employer. If a recruitment agency is asking a nurse for a heavy fee, that is itself a sign that something is wrong.
Where the jobs are found
The surprising thing is that Germany’s job market is an open book. The jobs that are vacant are written up on public websites, and no middleman is needed to reach them.
- The big portals: StepStone, Indeed.de, LinkedIn, and Xing — which is Germany’s own LinkedIn and is used more in local companies.
- Official: the Jobbörse of the Bundesagentur für Arbeit, and the job board of make-it-in-germany.com, which is made especially for candidates coming from abroad.
- Skilled trades: the boards of the Handwerkskammer, that is, the chamber of crafts, and local companies’ own websites. Mittelstand companies in smaller towns — that is, medium-sized family businesses — are hiring foreign skilled workers relatively quickly.
- IT: the startup scene in Berlin and Munich. This is the one field where the whole job can run in English.
A practical piece of advice: keeping your eyes fixed on the big cities is a common mistake among our people. Competition is toughest there and housing is most expensive there. In smaller towns the employer is more in need, and an employer in need supports you with the paperwork.
The German-style application — half the people are cut here
Read this part especially carefully, because many capable people are rejected simply because their file looks foreign to a German eye. German HR does not use imagination; it looks for an expected order and, if it does not find it, opens the next file.
Lebenslauf, that is, the CV, should be one or two pages, in order, with a photo (this is normal in Germany and is not considered odd), and without long stories. The praise-filled sentences that are the custom in CVs back home only take up empty space there.
Anschreiben, that is, the accompanying letter, should be separate for each company and short. It answers only two questions: why this company, and why me. Sending the same letter to a hundred companies is the most polite way of wasting your time.
Zeugnisse, that is, certificates. The German system is obsessed with documents — the degree, experience letters, training certificates and the recognition papers should all be in the file in order. What you cannot prove does not count there.
And a last point, which is meant to reassure you: do not be surprised if no reply comes. German HR is slow, takes weeks, and often does not even reply to say no. Fifty to a hundred applications are normal. This is not a measure of your failure, it is the speed of that system.
The truth about salaries — and that brutto/netto shock
All the figures below are rough estimates and change with the field, experience and region. There is a difference between eastern and western Germany, and in a big city a large part of the higher salary is eaten by rent.
- The minimum wage is above roughly 12 euros an hour and rises every year — on full-time work that comes to about 2,100 euros a month gross.
- Recognised skilled workers are generally between roughly 2,500 and 3,500 euros; nurses roughly 3,000 to 3,800; truck drivers roughly 2,500 to 3,200.
- Engineers and IT people generally start at roughly 45 to 65 thousand euros a year — and the Blue Card salary thresholds connect at that same point.
Now the thing that hits every newcomer on the first payslip. The amount written in the contract is brutto, that is, gross. The amount that reaches your hand is netto, and the difference between the two is large — tax and social security together take roughly thirty to forty per cent. The joy of seeing three thousand written on the contract often turns to anger on seeing eighteen hundred in the bank.
But we should speak fairly here. That deduction is not wasted — in return you get full healthcare cover, a pension account keeps running, if you lose your job you get unemployment benefit, and the child allowance, that is, Kindergeld, comes separately. The price of the thing for which there is no substitute back home is that deduction. Suppose a member of the household falls ill — that is the moment when people understand what was being bought every month.
Visa routes from abroad
Once you understand recognition and the job, the type of visa settles itself. Broadly there are five routes:
- Recognised qualification with a job offer: this is the ordinary work visa, called the Fachkräfte visa.
- A degree with a high salary: the EU Blue Card — the fastest route towards permanent residence.
- To search without a job offer: the Chancenkarte, that is, the opportunity card. We have a separate full article on this.
- Learning the trade there: Ausbildung, that is, the formal training system. There is a separate article on this too.
- On the basis of experience: in some fields, if you have two or more years of experience and an offer with a suitable salary, a route can open even without a full comparison of the degree.
None of these routes is one for which you need a middleman. The conditions for each are written on an official website.
The first documents after arrival
After reaching Germany there is an order that is costly to depart from. These are the few tasks that come before everything else:
- Anmeldung — registration of your residence, usually within the first two weeks. Nothing else moves without it.
- Tax ID and health insurance — needed from the first day of the job. The tax ID comes by post on its own after registration.
- Bank account — the salary does not come in cash, so this is not optional.
- Language course or Integrationskurs — the sooner you start the better, and several of these are available with a government subsidy.
One plain point about the language. Apart from IT, in almost every field the German language is the measure of both salary and promotion. Of those who go thinking they will learn it once they are there, most are still standing where they started three years later. The person who reaches B1 before travelling gets ahead in the very first year.
Where people get fleeced
The business of “selling contracts” has not spread in Germany as much as in Italy or Britain, but it would be wrong to think there is no fraud at all. The most common form is online: a fake job offer is sent and money is demanded in the name of visa fees, processing charges or “security”. Remember one rule that works almost always — no real German company asks a candidate for money to give them a job.
The second place is recruitment agencies, especially in nursing. As written above, in reputable programmes the employer bears the cost. When an agency demands hundreds of thousands of rupees in advance, there is no harm in asking who the employer is and whether you can speak to them directly. If the answer is vague, end the conversation there.
And the third thing, on which we have written a separate article: the advice to “claim asylum in Germany and work”. For economic cases from the subcontinent this is a dead end. A rejected case also narrows your own legal routes, and this is the damage that is understood last of all.
So what should the order be
If it all has to be said in one sentence, it is this: first check your standing on anabin, then start the recognition process with ZAB or the relevant chamber, work on the language alongside it, and run the job search after that or together with it — not before. The person who follows this order seems slow but arrives; the person who goes in the reverse order seems fast and often stays exactly where they were.
Official websites — verify from here
- Germany’s official portal for people coming from abroad: make-it-in-germany.com
- The federal employment agency and its job search: arbeitsagentur.de
- The database of degrees: anabin
- Official information on professional recognition: anerkennung-in-deutschland.de
This piece is for general information, not legal advice. The salaries and thresholds given above are approximate estimates that keep changing with the field, the region and the year, and Germany’s immigration laws are also amended from time to time. Before submitting any application or giving anyone money, verify for yourself from the official sources given above.
