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Job search in Germany as a product manager and more. Part 4/5. Work with a vacancy

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

So, with the help of this or that jobboard you have found a vacancy. Job search in Germany, as I already wrote, is a resource-intensive occupation. I do not recommend engaging in thoughtless fan mailing of identical template resumes with template cover letters. I have a suspicion that ATS such mailings are minus in the ratings. The same applies to candidates whose applications have been reviewed but rejected by several companies in a short period. However, I repeat, this is only an assumption and, possibly, my paranoia.

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Below I will give a checklist so that the position will be processed in the shortest possible time and with maximum efficiency for the given terms.

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  5. Prepare the semantic core of the vacancy. Reading the text of the vacancy, the brain automatically picks out the theses that are of interest and can easily skip the concepts that are worth repeating several times, which are worth paying attention to. We approach the issue in the same way mechanically: we feed the text of the vacancy (more precisely, the sections "introduction", "description", "requirements" and "about the company") to a service building a tag cloud, for example TagCrowd . Voila! You see a job through the eyes of a car. It would be nice if your resume and cover letter looked like this.

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After all of the above steps are done, you can start customizing your resume and writing a cover letter.

Customization Resume


Since the resume template has already been prepared , we sharpen it for a specific vacancy.

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    Owner with interdisciplinary teams (incl. legal & marketing) management experience, tech background and strong analytic skills raised in high-paced agile environment.
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cover letter


A necessary element of the package of documents when applying for a vacancy in Western culture. It causes the greatest difficulties in preparation because - but what to write about? Nevertheless, there is a resume. That's all, but not all. The main task of CV is to show your relevance to the vacancy. The task of cover letter is to show that you are the best candidate. This is especially true in the presence of 200+ competitors.

Cover letter is 80% self-PR and 20% empathy for the employer. Both that and another in the Russian-speaking working environment are not accepted, so first you have to fill your hand. Volume - from half a page, but not more than a page.

As a result of writing hundreds of cover letters, I came to a certain template, from which I retreated only in cases of special inspiration. Here is its structure with an example of a letter for an online store:
partsexample
Greeting, performance, hookHello ContactName and CompanyName team,
Nice to e-meet you. As the manager with both e-commerce development and operations experience, I’m very interested in your opening. These are the most relevant products I worked on last years:
  • Personalization mobile ecosystems for brands, retailers and financial institutions.
  • Suite of websites and mobile apps for top national insurance company.
Now I’m looking for joining the international team behind the product suitable to apply my experience. It seems CompanyName is that company as you have the similar final goal: bring physical product to audience the digital way. Please find below how my skills match your requirements:
Relevant skills highlights
  • Last 7 years I worked in fast-growing startup being responsible for both internal (project management) and external (business development) communication, supporting the team growth from 3 to 600+ employees.
  • Being an executive and minor co-founder, I'm able to see and consider business needs and opportunities, both tactical and strategic on the top of technical specifications.
  • Bachelor degree of Informatics with 10 years of web software engineering background.
  • English is my main business communication language for more than decade.
References, a guide to action, farewellYou can see the short summary on my career in CV and I'll kindly provide more details on interview. I'm located in Berlin, but ready to relocate and start working ASAP.
I look forward to hearing from you, ApplicantName
Key points here:

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That's all, prepared documents can be uploaded to ATS. However, I would not recommend doing it right away. It is better to postpone them for a while so that later, immediately before sending, again re-read for errors. Oddly enough, in the reused text, they tend not to be scrubbed, but rather accumulate.

Along with the downloaded documents, be prepared for the fact that at one of the last steps of submitting a resume you will need to answer a number of mandatory questions, of which two are most common: notice period and salary expectations.

Notice periodThe notice of resignation from work in Germany is prescribed in the contract and is usually three months. In this sense, a job seeker from Russia has an advantage because preparation of documents and moving to Germany take from one to two months. On the other hand, the employer initially sets himself up for a longer wait, so this month the benefits are uncritical.

Salary expectations Seriously hoping to get a particular position, it makes sense to focus on the salary that the employer really can offer you. How to recognize her? In the case of more or less noticeable companies, Glassdoor services and its German clone Kununu come to the rescue, the brainchild of Hamburg holding New Work, which also owns the already mentioned Xing. Both services collect information on salaries at specific positions of specific companies on an anonymous basis. If your position on these resources is not available - compare other company salaries with similar positions in other companies. In extreme cases, use reports like this or this . The salary level in Germany differs depending on the land and the size of the settlement. Most expensive Bavaria.

In conclusion, a couple of general questions:

  • Is it possible to apply for several vacancies in one company? Yes, if the vacancies are of the same profile, this will not raise questions. Mention this in the cover letter.
  • Can I apply to the same company after a refusal? As a rule, yes, after cooldown in half a year - regardless of whether the profiles of vacancies coincide or not. If there is no failure, you can file earlier.

Both cases have been verified by me at Amazon. First I went to the project manager, then, after a month, without receiving an answer - to several positions in bizdev at once. An invitation to an interview came in 40 days (!) On the weekend (!!) on Christmas holidays (!!!).

In the last, final part of a series of posts I will talk about test tasks and interviews .

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