The art of German job applications...incl application picture..

G´day,

And a special happy "Hello" to my exclusive congregation: Emm, Josara, Julia, Cord, Andrew and Scott. This will be another educative blog entry on the differences beween Oz and Germany.

Dear readers, todays topic: job applications

The Australian style (for those who are not familiar with it). The job application in Australia consists of a coverletter and your CV and that´s it. At the bottom of the CV potential employers can find the contact details of your references. That´s it.

There are no work certificates of former jobs, there is no photo and as personal information you put your address, phone # and e-mail address. If the potential employer is interested, they will invite you for an interview and then, well, if you made an impact, they will (maybe) contact your references and ask how you´ve done in your former jobs. And then you get the job...or you don´t.

I personally consider this a very sensible and effective way to match employers and employees. I mean, why the fuck would you send a picture of yourself with your CV? Either they are interested and they will have a chance to see you during the interview or they are not interested, so why should they know how you look? And why should you send certificates of your former jobs? I mean, who the fuck will read page after page after page? If a potential employer wants to know how you performed, they can give your former employer a call and have a nice chat...So all in all, I think the Australian system is simple and does the job.

Now let´s have a look at the German system of applications. Over here an application consists of

1. Coverletter

2. A folder (called "application folder" and there are certain standards, you can´t just buy a simple folder as that implies that you don´t put enough efford into your application)

3. An application picture (there are also certain conventions, more on this later)

4. Your CV (with your date of birth, marital status, children and sometimes even your religion)

5. A performance profile

6. Certificates of your former jobs, university, school (s), kindergarden and everything you can imagine

All this paper results in applications that can reach a size up to one inch! And there is a whole industry of experts who teach applicants the science of how to do it right. And it is a science. I guess there are at least 500 books on how to write an application, tipps and tricks for the interview and how to successfully survive an assessment centre. And all the experts are agreed on one fact: the decision maker will spend something between 30 seconds and 2 minutes to each application map.

First they will look at the "first impression at the whole", meaning that if you have chosen a cheap application map, you get already sorted into the drawer "not enough effort/is not really keen" (5 seconds). Second thing that draws the attention is the photo (another 5 seconds), application photos must meet certain criteria. Even though they are roughly passport/id-card picture shaped, it´s a special format (x cm by x cm), if you use a passport photo (which is way cheaper), you get sorted in the afore mentioned drawer too. If you photo doesn´t deliver "likeable", "friendly", "active", "open", "professional" and a whole bunch of other positive advectives which have slipped my mind just now, the decision maker will read your cover letter and cv (which are the important part in my book) with an already slightly negative preoccupation.

Well, I tried the Australian way first and thought I could get away with it but Blow-cake (which would be the literal translation for "Pustekuchen!" which is a very accurate expression for let´s say "not a chance" or "no such luck" or poppycock) as all I got in response was, "yes, interesting, could you please send us your full application?", so I couldn´t dodge playing by German rules. This is my application photo (39,90 Euro). And I don´t want ANY negative comments! You are allowed to laugh though...

The decision maker will then glance over your CV and check if you have all the certificates for the jobs you mentioned before. Then they´ll read the coverletter but as it is well known to those who know it well, i.e. the HR-guy and the applicants who´ve done the courses and/or read the books, it´s a "bla bla" anyway. You can only score negative points here, for example for inability of German language, typos or other lapses. It´s just expected that you know the right wording and are able to write them correctly.

A last note: work certificates...

The German labour law states that a former employee is entiteled to a "benevolent" work certificate. So no former boss is allowed to write something negative even if the former employee has behaved like an asshole. As a result over the years a "code" for work certifcates has evolved. The following example is a little over simplified but basically if a certificate states that someone was "industrious, honest and punctually" means he was lazy, stole and was never on time. Because being industious, honest and punctually is self evident for a German employee so in a "normal" certificate you wouldn´t even mention it, honestly. There are books over books on this code and it evolves from year to year. It´s ridiculous. So what would happen if an Australian employer would write a certificate in plain common language and you would go to Germany and you´d apply for a job can only be imaged. HR-people here are not used to plain language, it confuses them. So if you think about coming here and apply for jobs, contact me before hand and I´ll write something down for you...

That´s all for today, those of you who are in OZ, be fucking glad about it and have a beer on me to wish me luck! Take care and cya