How to get a job in Munich

A friend contacted me as he knows an English man looking for a job here.

Unfortunately this was during the time of my kidney stone so I was a bit distracted.

Nevertheless I wrote the contact some advice, which I've paraphrased here:

- http://toytowngermany.com/: the main forum for expats in Germany. As well as giving social opportunities there are resources on finding jobs here. OK, I got disenchanted with it but for getting into the expat-in-Munich scene it is very good. Ignore the stupidity and bitchiness though.

- Internations: a "smarter" set than the Toytown crowd, this forum organizes gatherings which are quite good. Except they do turn into cattle markets a bit. Nevertheless, it's part of your networking armoury.

- LinkedIn: enough said

- Xing.com: like LinkedIn but more of a German focus. Also does good real world networking events.

- www.gulp.de: a very good website for IT people in Germany. I found my current job through it.

- Michael Bailey Associate, http://www.mbade.com/: a very good contractor agency

- www.Monster.com: obviously but still good

- www.jobserve.co.uk: also obviously but still good, the first contract I took in Germany was advertised on these two sites

- German: unless you have a gun no-one will to speak to you in German. It is very frustrating. There are lots of courses teaching German but quite a few are considered a joke. Check out Toytown for recommendations.

- Not being able to speak German: don't worry about it. German companies will only recruit fluent German speakers and it will take you a while to get there. Unless they have an international reach in which case the most important language to have is English (at Siemens the operational language in English not German).

- German c.v.(Lebenslauf): I've found that using my usual English c.v. is good enough as I apply to internationally-minded companies.

- International companies: there are loads here but a lot, including my one, have hiring freezes. Which leads me to:

- Süddeutschezeitung: the weekend edition has a jobs and career supplement. Some jobs are in English. But the big thing is it shows you which companies are hiring, and therefore doing relatively well, and therefore might be candidates for speculative applications

- American German Business Club: www.jambit.com/agbc, I'm not American, I'm not German but that is no hindrance to joining (a former, recent president of the Munich club was also British). Not as good as it sounds for networking but still worth a go.

Email

Today's Times has an a list of hints on sending email.

They're taken from a book I may one day buy.

I reckon I could hold a masterclass on emails. Here's a few things I would mentioned, as well as those mentioned in the article:


- one phone call (or better still, face to face chat) saves 10 emails
- emails are read harsher than they're written
- DON'T i.e. at work don't use the worst form of communication humans have ever invented if there's an alternative.

Busines card advice ...

... from The Sunday Times:

"- always write something on a business card before you hand it over to someone. It doesn’t matter whether you add an extra phone number to the one on the card, or jot down the date or the place where you handed it over — if there is something written on the card, people are much more likely to look at it, rather than leaving it on their desks for three months before throwing it in the bin. And yes, it does work."

Might try that out soon.

Searching for jobs in Munich

There's an expat community who make great use of www.toytownmunich.com - an online forum for English-speaking people.

On it someone asked about how a non-German could go about getting jobs in the city. Although others have already written quite a lot about this on the forum I gave some advice based on what I've been doing.

Here's what I wrote:

- use the Monster web site
- try the Jobserve.co.uk web site
- try stepstone.de (might be better for you than it has for me)
- www.mbade.com if you're in IT
- www.satzsoft.de if you're very techie (especially if you know about SAP, sadly I can't even spell it)
- leverage your contacts in Siemens, at least the ones not under police investigation
- get on www.xing.com, rather popular here (but it will only add marginally to your chances, nevertheless it's popular, I've just been put forward for an IT management role because of it)
- read Süddeutsche Zeitung, don't just look at their online job-börse, get the Saturday paper and check out the careers section. If a big multi-national company if recruiting, not even in your area, they may have other openings for you
- get your face around Toytown (e.g. Tuesday drinks, Wednesday curries, Friday drinks etc), a minor but useful networking activity
- ensure you have a German handy* so recruiters can get to you quickly (I'm assuming you live in Germany). Also ensure you can readily check your email. You don't need a Blackberry but being able to deal with your emails at least daily is useful if you're in the market.
- tone-down a bit any guerrilla-marketing approaches you might have used in the UK. Some of them will be appropriate here, for multi-nationals, but the whole place is a bit more conservative.

There is a market here for people with Anglo-Saxon approaches to business (e.g. in IT, project management etc).

It's also a mattter of luck, but remember that the harder you work the luckier you get.


* "handy" is German for mobile-, or cell-, phone but is often used by English-speaking people in the country too.

Interviewing tips

Some more, from Lifehacker.

The comments are good too.

More networking

Last week I went to the American German Business Club in Munich. This is despite not being American or German.

It was very good. Food was excellent, they also had a ready supply of alcohol.

Networking was easy. For example, someone bumped into me and after a while we exchanged business cards.

Yesterday I went to a Xing (formerly openBC) networking event in Munich.

Previous ones have been mixed but last night was good fun. Lots of people there and eventually I got chatting.

A couple of things I've learnt about networking:

• drink, obviously not too much but don't be sober
• hijack a table, preferable a standing table ("Stehtisch" as they're called here) and start talking to the people there.

At Xing a lot of people avoided eye contact. I guess Germans aren't very good networkers, even the ones who know the importance of networking. The tactics above helped.

Oh, and another thing, don't bother wearing a suit, unless you're only comfortable wearing one.

At the American German Business Club very few people were not wearing suits, though everyone was smartly dressed. I was one of them. I found this strangely helped.

After tonight's German lesson I'm going to a nearby pub where I hear there's a Xing Stammtisch (regular table). But only for one drink mind.

Schmoozing

or networking as I call. Guy Kawasaki has some good tips on this.

LinkedIn ...

some advice, found off Lifehacker .