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Job search in Germany as a product manager and more. Part 3/5. What you need to do before you start sending out CVs

Post cycle navigation: 1/5 , 2/5 , 3/5, 4/5 , 5/5 .

Your actions in finding a job depend on the goals that you pursue. For example, you firmly want to get on Facebook as an account manager for working with small and medium-sized businesses. In this case, you begin to read numerous literature on the topic “How to get to work on Facebook”, follow the tips from it, build your networking in such a way as to get a referral for a dream job.

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If, as in my case, the search range is slightly wider, then preparation for a job search comes down to:

  • Review and assessment of the job market;
  • Preparation of materials that will present you: LinkedIn profile, resume, and, possibly, recommendations and certificates.

What are we looking for?


The first question that arises is: what kind of vacancy in what kind of company can you really apply for? The report will often not be obvious even in a cosmopolitan IT. I will give my example as demonstrating several problems at once. To begin with, I intended to look for work in three directions:

  • Business development;
  • Project management;
  • Product management.

For each position, I had a certain experience and achievements. Somewhere more, somewhere less. To begin with, you should understand how my skills will compete with the requirements of the market. As a result of the study of vacancies, it turned out that:

  • . , (, , ). , DACH , . : 300+ .
  • . - (, , ). enterprise , PRINCE2 .

So I decided to focus on the product topic - despite the fact that I had the least experience here. I already wrote about the high demand for product specialists , but behind the abundance of vacancies there is also a great variability of both position names and alleged competencies. The keywords for the search were product manager / owner / lead, scrum master (in fact, the role of the project manager in agile) can also fit in here. In general, in the last weeks of the search, markers differed significantly from the original ones.

What to expect?


Before starting the preparation of materials that will present you, let's see what roles they address on the side of the employer.

The average series of interviews consists of the following steps:

  1. (: 200 ). cover letter. 6 , , . , ( — ), . — .
  2. (: 20 ). , . — , — , . — soft skills: . . , — , . , , , . .
  3. Test task (competition: 15 people per place). As a rule, a certain use case, which must be completed in a limited (3-4 hours) time or a conditionally limited period (from a couple of days to a week). Main skills: professional hard skills and communication (why? More on that later).
  4. Interview with a potential immediate boss (competition: 10 people per place), lasts an hour and a half. Here you need all of the above skills, except for connections.
  5. Interview with the founder (competition: 2 people per place), CEO, department head or other big boss, with whom you will not directly interact daily, but who does not care who works for him in the company. It is often informal and can take place, for example, at lunch.

Accordingly, this is how the attention of the roles on the side of the employer is distributed to your materials:
materialrecruiterhiring managerthe founder
summarystrongstrongweakly
cover letterstrongmoderatelyweakly
LinkedIn profileweaklymoderatelyweakly
recommendationsweaklyweaklyweakly
testno waystrongweakly
This classification is subjective, ready to discuss it. So, after we have decided on the recipients for each of the documents, let's start working on them.

LinkedIn


The LinkedIn profile does not play a primary role in screening, but may be important in the final stages of the interview — for example, when choosing one of several candidates after a successful interview with the team. Nevertheless, I mention him even earlier than the resume, because It can take a considerable time to prepare a good looking profile, if only because it is a social network, which means that someone must be in your contacts. In addition, filling out a profile is a good preparation for writing a resume. LinkedIn goes for details, which means that there is no need to reduce information about yourself to a minimum aimed at the “6 seconds” recruiter. Therefore, my key advice is here: write down all the relevant information that may be of interest to the employer. Important: LinkedIn is watched by decision makers, your future bosses.Look at what you write with their eyes.

Also try to get some recommendations in the section of the same name. Do not hesitate to ask for recommendations from colleagues, management and contractors, including former ones. Invite yourself to write the text of the recommendation and also leave feedback on teamwork in return.

As for the other details, there are quite a lot of tips on designing a Linkedin profile on the Internet for job search. I will not copy from here, except for a critical remark from Vastrik , whose effectiveness I have seen: with your current location in your profile, expose the city (country) of job search. This makes you visible to recruiters in active search.

Phone


If you are starting to look for work in Germany while not in the country, it is advisable to get a virtual German telephone number. Recruiters in half the cases screen by phone, and sometimes they can just call to find out some details. Creating the appearance of being in the country increases your chances of screening.

Skype provides the service, however, for this you need to provide a real German address when ordering. I don’t know how critical this is in the case of Germany, but earlier in my work I had to order rooms for the USA, Hong Kong and Japan, using the first available addresses from the Internet. Everything worked perfectly.

Summary


As can be seen from the table above, the resume is a critical document for two employers at once. But the recruiter and the potential leader are looking for different information in it, and your resume should be of interest to both.

As with LinkedIn, there are a lot of guides on the Internet on how to get the perfect resume. There you can find dozens of templates for its design. Therefore, the main problem that we have to solve when preparing a resume is to bring it to a concise, understandable and attractive form for the employer by trial and error. Below I will summarize the main principles that I came to through 3 iterations of a radical revision of my CV.

  1. , , . , . , 12, . : , . (, ). .

    : 20 ? 2 , , . - 2/3. :
    • : , , .
    • ( ) 7.5 , , . CV . : . , , — ( ) .
    • , , . , - ( , ) cover letter.

    , . , , . , : , . — , — . . , CV , , — «, ».
  2. : 2-3 , . . , ( ), . .
  3. About the personal. In Europe, a resume photograph is not considered a crime. For all the time I only once met a vacancy with a clear indication NOT to send a photo. But in a dozen other cases, the photo was among the necessary documents for downloading. In general, I am for a photograph in CV, this is the only picture in it that works on the memorability of your candidacy. Age has also met repeatedly as a required field - indicate, do not be shy. Family, children - for the manager this is a confirmation of soft skills, so if there is - indicate if "actively searching" or "everything is complicated" - keep silent.

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Certificates and recommendations


By such are meant:

  • Various certificates in areas relevant to vacancies (for example, tracks from the Scrum Alliance );
  • Recommendations from previous employers;
  • Recommendations from partners, customers and other contractors.

In short, it's better when they are. This adds some virtual points to you at the screening stage; may play some role in the later stages. But if they are not there is nothing to worry about. An exception is an indication in the vacancy text of mandatory or highly desirable certification.

In the next post, we will dwell on the procedure for working on a particular selected vacancy .

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