How to Find a Job in Germany as a Foreigner
The job search as it actually works here, from the first application to the interview. Five steps, in the order they happen.
What this guide covers
- Whether you can work in Germany at all, in four situations, with the tool that settles yours
- Where the jobs really are, and why searching only in English shows you a fraction of them
- The German application: the CV, the cover letter and the certificates, without the jargon
- How to apply so that people reply: fresh jobs, a weekly rhythm, and one message to a human
- The interview: what German interviewers expect and the questions that always come
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Check that you can work here before you send anything
Every German employer asks the same first question about a foreign candidate: can we legally hire you? Know your answer in one sentence before you apply. Four situations cover most people.
EU, EEA or Swiss passport
No permit, no visa, no salary floor. Apply directly; the employer needs nothing from the authorities.
You finished a degree or an Ausbildung in Germany
You get an 18-month permit to find a job, with any job allowed while you look. It cannot be extended, so the clock matters more than the paperwork.
You have an offer and a recognised degree
From €50,700 gross a year (2026) the Blue Card is the strongest permit Germany issues; €45,934 does it in a shortage occupation or within three years of graduating. Below that, the skilled-worker permit carries the same job.
No offer yet, searching from abroad
The Chancenkarte lets you search from inside Germany for a year, working 20 hours a week, if you hold a recognised qualification, German A1 or English B2, and six points on its scale.
Two minutes on the visa checker settles your case across all nine routes, with what each one needs and where it leads. No offer yet? Count your Chancenkarte points first.
Not legal advice. The figures come from the statutes linked at the bottom, checked in September 2026; the consulate and the Ausländerbehörde (immigration office) decide each case.
The boards with the most vacancies list in German. Search there, not only in English.
- Tech and research hire in English. Almost everything else runs in German, and the German boards carry most of the market.
- Search with the German job title even for English-speaking roles: "Softwareentwickler" finds postings that "Software Engineer" never shows, and the reverse is true inside international companies.
- Set an alert on every board you use. The people who get read applied in the first days a job was live.
| Channel | What it gives you | Language | Go |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bundesagentur für Arbeit (the federal job board) | Free, the largest single board in the country, and where employers who hire from abroad post. Search it in German with the German job title. | German | Open the board |
| StepStone, Indeed and the big commercial boards | The most vacancies, listed in German. Set an email alert for your title so the fresh postings reach you on day one. | German, some English | Every board, checked |
| Company career pages | Mid-size German companies fill many roles from their own "Karriere" page and never post them on a board. Pick twenty employers in your field and check them weekly. | German | Employers hiring in English |
| LinkedIn, and a message to a person | The Apply button is the weakest part of LinkedIn. A short note to the recruiter or the team lead gets more replies; four messages that work are written out for you. | English | The four messages |
| Recruitment agencies | Paid by the employer, never by you: a fee request is the sign of a fake. Worth it for mid-size employers that never advertise abroad. | Mixed | Agencies by country |
Every board on that page was opened and checked, and you can filter for English-speaking roles and boards that flag visa sponsorship.
Three documents, one PDF, and a format employers here have read for decades
- A German application is a CV, a cover letter and your certificates, sent as one PDF in that order. Employers call the bundle a Bewerbungsmappe (application folder); you just need to send it as one file.
- The CV carries almost all the weight. Get it into the German format first; the cover letter and the certificates support it.
The CV (Lebenslauf)
A dated table, not a story.
Newest first, month and year
Education and jobs as dated rows, one to two pages. Any gap longer than a few months gets one honest line ("job search", "family", "language course"), never a blank.
Put a photo on it
Legally optional, in practice expected: a plain, well-lit head-and-shoulders shot in interview clothes on a neutral background. Not a selfie, not a holiday crop.
Facts, not adjectives
Job title, employer, city, dates, and two or three lines of what you did with a number where you have one. Leave out "motivated team player" and the signature and date at the bottom; nobody reads either.
The cover letter (Anschreiben)
One page, and only one thing matters.
Answer the job description
Take the three or four requirements from the posting and show, one by one, where you meet each of them with something you have done. That is the whole letter; the rest is a greeting and a closing line.
Skip the biography
Employers already have your CV. A letter that retells it, or opens with how much you admire the company, gets skimmed and forgotten.
Name the role and the reference number
In the subject line and the first sentence, exactly as the posting writes them, so the letter lands in the right pile on the first read.
Certificates and references (Zeugnisse)
The part most foreign applicants leave out.
Degree certificate and transcript
Scanned, with a certified translation if they are in neither German nor English.
Reference letters from past employers
German employers expect a written reference from each previous job (in Germany every employee gets one on leaving). A short signed letter from a former manager at home does the same work.
Language and professional certificates
Goethe or telc certificates, and any professional licence. Free certificates that genuinely strengthen a CV are listed on their own page.
Fresh jobs, a weekly rhythm, and one message to a human
Most people apply in bursts: fifty applications in a bad week, then nothing for a month while they wait. The people who get interviews do the opposite. Here is the rhythm that works, from experience on both sides of the desk.
Apply while the job is fresh
Send your application in the first few days a posting is live. Recruiters read in the order applications arrive, and a role that has been up for three weeks usually has its shortlist already. Alerts on the boards make this automatic.
Apply every week, not every month
Set a number you can keep, say five tailored applications a week, and hold it for months. A steady rhythm beats bursts because you are always in somebody's fresh pile, and it keeps the search from taking over your life.
Track every application
One sheet: date, company, role, where you found it, the contact, the status and a follow-up date. After the tenth application you will not remember who you wrote to, and the follow-up is where the replies come from.
Tailor the top third, keep the rest
For each posting, rewrite the CV headline, the first bullet under your current job and the cover letter's three matches. Leave the rest alone. Tailoring the whole document for every job is how people burn out by week three.
Write to one person
Find the recruiter or the team lead on LinkedIn and send a short, specific note after you apply: which role, one line on why you fit, one question. It moves your file from the pile to a name. The four messages that get answered are written out for you.
Follow up once, then let it go
Two to four weeks of silence is normal here, and a rejection arrives as a standard letter that says nothing about you. One polite follow-up after two weeks is fine; more is not. If nothing comes back across dozens of applications, the format or the route is the problem, not your worth.
Punctual to the minute, formal until told otherwise, and prepared for the questions that always come
What German interviewers expect
- Be there, or on the call, five minutes early. Ten minutes late is the interview over before it starts.
- Use the formal "Sie" until the interviewer switches to "du". In an English interview the same rule shows up as a formal tone; first names come when they offer them.
- Show real interest. Ask about the team, the product and what the first three months look like; the questions you bring say more about you than most of your answers.
- Let your personality through. By the time you are in the room the CV has done its job, and people hire the colleague they want to sit next to: be direct, be warm, and say what you actually think.
- Know the company's products and the exact posting. "Why us" is asked in earnest, and a vague answer costs more here than elsewhere.
The questions that always come
"Erzählen Sie etwas über sich." (Tell us about yourself.)
Two minutes, chronological, ending at why you are in this room. Rehearse it out loud until it is boring to you.
"Why Germany, and why now?"
They are checking whether you will still be here in three years. Give a reason tied to your life, not to the country's reputation.
"Can we hire you?"
The visa question, asked in earnest. One sentence with your route and its condition: "Blue Card, my degree is listed in anabin, the floor is €50,700." Step 1 gives you the sentence.
"What is your salary expectation?"
A gross annual figure, not a range that starts at your walk-away number. Look the role up on the salary benchmark first, then name a number a little above the median.
"When could you start?" and "Do you have questions for us?"
Give a real date including the notice period at home. Then ask two questions you actually want answered; none reads as no interest.
After the offer
Ask for the contract in writing before you resign anything at home, and read the probation and notice lines before you sign. The visa follows the contract, and the first payslip will look nothing like the offer. Each of those has its own page.
Six things that cost people the job
The same handful, over and over, in the applications we see.
- Applying for months before checking whether the job could sponsor you at all.
- Sending the English résumé unchanged: skills first, no dates, no photo.
- One cover letter for every job, with the company name swapped.
- Searching only in English, on LinkedIn only, and concluding there are no jobs.
- Applying to postings that are three weeks old, then to nothing for a month.
- Reading a standard rejection letter as a verdict on yourself, and stopping.
Guide by
Abdullah
Creator of Ankommo · Based in Germany
I moved to Germany and built Ankommo to help others navigate the same process I went through. We offer 1-on-1 video consultations on visas, Ausbildung applications, citizenship requirements and settling in.
Book a 1-on-1 consultationFrequently asked questions
- Can I find a job in Germany without speaking German?
- In tech, research and some international companies, yes: those teams hire in English. Almost everything else runs in German, and most job ads outside those fields ask for B1 or B2. The permits rarely care (the Blue Card and the skilled-worker permit have no language condition; the Chancenkarte accepts English B2 instead of German A1), but permanent residence asks for B1 on every route, so start the language alongside the search rather than after it.
- Should my German CV have a photo?
- Yes. Legally it is optional (the General Equal Treatment Act means no employer may require one), and in practice a German CV without a photo still stands out for the wrong reason. Use a plain, well-lit head-and-shoulders shot in the clothes you would wear to the interview, on a neutral background. No selfies, no holiday crops.
- How many applications should I send?
- There is no magic number, and a hundred identical applications perform worse than twenty tailored ones. What works is a rhythm: a fixed number of applications every week, each one matched to its posting, tracked in a simple sheet with a follow-up date. The rhythm matters more than the total, because fresh postings get read and old ones already have a shortlist.
- Why do I never hear back?
- German hiring is slow and formal. Two to four weeks of silence after an application is normal, a rejection (Absage) arrives as a standard letter that says nothing personal, and many companies reply only to the people they shortlist. One polite follow-up after about two weeks is fine; more than that is not. If you hear nothing across dozens of applications, the CV format or the route is usually the problem, not you.
- How long does a job search in Germany take?
- Nobody publishes a reliable figure, and anyone quoting an average is guessing. What the law fixes is how long you may search once you are here: 18 months after a German degree or Ausbildung (no extension), and up to a year on a Chancenkarte. Start applying before you land; the search does not need you to be in the country, and consulate and appointment waits eat into every clock.
- Do I need a job offer before I can come to Germany?
- No. With a state-recognised degree or a two-year vocational qualification, German A1 or English B2, and six points on the scale, the Chancenkarte lets you live in Germany for up to a year to search, working 20 hours a week meanwhile. Citizens of Australia, Canada, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, the UK and the USA can enter without a visa and apply inside Germany within 90 days. The visa checker walks through every route.
Sources
Every figure on this page comes from one of these; the advice comes from doing it. A statute link lands on the paragraph itself.
Statutes, read on gesetze-im-internet.de
- § 2 FreizügG/EUEU, EEA and Swiss citizens need no permit
- § 18g AufenthGthe EU Blue Card
- § 20 AufenthG18-month search permit after a German degree or Ausbildung, no extension
- § 20a AufenthGthe Chancenkarte: one year, 20 hours a week, A1 German or English B2
- § 41 AufenthVeight passports enter visa-free and apply inside within 90 days
- § 1 AGGno employer may require a photo, a birth date or a nationality
- § 109 GewOthe written reference letter every employee in Germany is owed on leaving
Official pages the figures were read from
Related guides and tools
Job Boards in Europe
Every board opened and checked, filterable by language and by who flags sponsorship.
German CV Builder
The German format with a gap check, a photo slot and a PDF export, free.
Working in Germany
Contracts, tax classes and the payslip decoder for the job you land.
Career Support
Your CV rebuilt to German standard, or a practice interview before the real one.
This guide, as a plan you tick off
A free Ankommo account turns it into the Work in Germany journey: the route, the application, the search and the offer as steps in order, with the tools built into each one and your progress kept.
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