For the Germany-USA Career Center main site, please click here www.germany-usa.com!
Welcome to the blog of the Germany-USA Career Center! We provide search, personnel and career services for American and German companies and individuals in the US and in Germany. More about this blog here.
That’s at least how one could, very lightly, summarize a recent story in Germany’s WELT ONLINE, the Web version of the influential daily newspaper Die WELT. Read more…
Every European and American who runs a business on either side of the pond needs to understand where and how the legal and cultural systems are at odds. The book “Conducting Transatlantic Business – Basic Legal Distinctions in the US and Europe” by August G. Minke aims to help European and American businesses and their business partners understand each other’s business law. It provides insights to better understand the differences by putting the law in a cultural context. Read more…
from the Germany-USA Career Center job board:
Our client, with headquarters in Munich / Germany, is a global player in the field of camshaft drives, chains and system parts for automotive engines. For its U.S. operations in Troy, Michigan the company is looking for a
Design Engineer
The Design Engineer reports to the General Manager of the U.S. subsidiary.
Profile / Responsibilities:
• The Design Engineer is the first technical contact person for US customers. In this role, the Design Engineer collects the technical specification and requirements from the customer, filters for most important subjects, and communicates the technical requirements to the company’s headquarter in Munich / Germany.
• Following initial job training, the Design Engineer is able to solve basic chain drive issues without guidance, and to guide the customer during the concept phase of a new project. The Design Engineer is able to react to simple design changes, and creates first technical concepts, with minimal guidance from Munich.
• This includes all automotive industry customers in USA.
• The Design Engineer gives basic assistance in chain drive development to existing, and especially to new customers. In this role, the Design Engineer develops relationships with the development departments of the company’s customers, and identifies new project opportunities.
• The Design Engineer accompanies the customer development teams from first request to SOP, being contact person for technical questions regarding design, calculation and testing, and coordinates activities with the company’s German headquarters in Munich.
• Performance or Organization of the following (examples): Detailed design studies, product specifications, simulation and calculation, testing – in close coordination with headquarters in Germany.
• Project Management, based on customer-specific APQP needs.
• Improve customer service.
Requirements:
• University degree in mechanical engineering
• minimum of three years design experience in the automotive industry
• Knowledge of automotive customers standards and requirements
• Knowledge of engines and timing drives would be a plus
• fluent English
• Strong oral and written communication skills, for reports and customer interaction
• Minimum of three years experience with 3D design system UG NX
• German language skills a plus
• Due to interaction levels and issues handled, strong interpersonal / negotiating / communication skills in dealing with upper-level management.
To indicate your interest in this position and to apply, please use the Germany-USA Career Center contact form here and include your full resume.
No phone calls, please.
Is there a U.S.-based business lawyer / law firm out there who would have some legal tips for U.S.-based companies looking for answers on how to pay a German contract worker / independent representative in Germany? Have you specialized in contract / business law between the U.S. and Germany, representing employers?
There’s an opportunity for you to promote your services on the Germany-USA Career Center website and blog!
The question is frequently asked by (SMB) visitors to the Germany-USA Career Center website.
To serve our particular business community better, we think that it now warrants its own FAQ page.
What are we looking for?
Useful pointers that provide informational value to Germany-USA Career Center visitors. As little “legalese” and as much concise, business-relevant information as possible, given the space restrictions.
What’s in it for you?
Future clients?If you are interested, please contact the Germany-USA Career Center’s Gerd Meissner directly at gmeissner@germany-usa.com , or call +1 (508) 597-7101, Ext. 1 to discuss details. Thank you!
„Geschäftsverkehr in den USA” ist ein hilfreicher Leitfaden für deutsche Unternehmen betitelt, den der Wirtschaftsanwalt Aaron Wise verfasst hat, Partner in der New Yorker Kanzlei Gallet Dreyer & Berkey LLP. Die kurze Übersicht für Firmen aus Deutschland, die ins US-Geschäft einsteigen wollen, ist kostenlos auf Read more…
Given the weak state of the employment market in the U.S., there are more than five questions to ask yourself, if filling a stateside vacancy in your company is taking more than 60 days.
As for business between the U.S. and Germany, the following five can be important, in my experience:
1) Are we using the right network, channels, platforms, print media?
Usage of social networks, in the “real world” and online, varies between the U.S. and Germany, as do the privacy attitudes and job search media usage patterns of both active jobseekers and dormant candidates.
2) Did we consider the differences between advertising career opportunities in Germany, and job advertising in the U.S.?
Hint: still two different planets, basically.
3) How important are German – or English – language skills for this position? How important is being familiar with both – U.S. and German – business cultures? In most cases, it depends on the vacancy.
Rule of thumb: the less critical those requirements, the more it could be advised to “localize” the search. In some circumstances, for instance running a translated – German – job ad version in selected German print publications (industry verticals and/or general interest) should be considered.
4) Where and how can the most desirable (dormant) candidates in a highly specialized field be approached?
There is a big difference, even within the same industries, between the two countries as to where you can find those candidates, and how they can be approached without breaking the law…
5) Have we limited our options by including “locals only” or “current US residents / citizens only” as an application requirement?
If that is the case, you may never hear from that machine tools technician or engineer who is sitting on a packed suitcase in Germany, holding a “Green Card”, and is all ready to go to work for a company in North America – no visa hassle for the employer involved.
Of course, these five questions merely scratch the surface of the new challenges posed by a search for German speaking employees. They don’t include a more obvious one: “What will my boss say?!”
“I don’t know what happened. We have used the same job sites and search services that always work for us with more general searches – but nothing,” is a familiar complaint that I hear from companies who have not used the Germany-USA Career Center yet, and whose search using other platforms and resources is rapidly approaching the 60-days mark.
Hopefully, you will be able to avoid that trap. Tip: plan for a search in a highly specialized niche that is simply – different.
Do you have any questions regarding this blog entry? Call for a FREE consultation on how to bring your search to a successful conclusion in much less than 60 days!
Did you notice that recruiting agencies and job boards keep playing bait-and-switch with their clients, constantly changing their focus, service and fee structure? Theirs has turned into a buyer’s market, thanks to a miserable economy. And it definitely hurts.
Good for you, the buyer – IF you know to ask the right questions, and how to compare apples to apples (without getting distracted by the occasional orange or lemon the other side throws in, just to make their offer look extra yummy).
In my experience, the following five questions should serve American and German companies in Germany and in the U.S. well, when evaluating organizations, recruiting agencies or job boards for helping them find and hire bilingual or multilingual, highly qualified employees:
If you have visited our site recently, you may have noticed that we are in the process of a big “spring cleaning”, design-wise and all. Some bigger announcements will follow within the next days.
One smaller addition is a “useful terms” glossary for representatives of U.S. companies looking for information on how to find and hire employees in Germany. If you are familiar with our site, you know there’s tons of it, including a Q&A on Employment Law in Germany.
With the short glossary, we took a stab at some of the terms managers should get familiar with when searching talent / recruiting / hiring in Germany, or posting / advertising jobs in German-speaking countries in Western Europe. It’s certainly work in progress, and feel free to throw any terms at us that you think are missing!
Check out the here:
For further information, please go to http://www.Germany-USA.com/career-adviser/ !
Some companies liked the Germany-USA Career Center’s specialized, narrowly focused approach to online recruiting so much, they have asked us where they can find a “packaged” solution that allows them to run their own niche market-optimized recruitment platform, as an integrated part of their corporate website. (Stay tuned for more on this later.)
One main request, of course: tight social media integration. And as with many other things in online recruiting, it’s the little things that can make or break a success story. Simply put, it can just make the difference between
What are the choices? In a time of severely restricted budgets, a growing number of companies and organizations has figured out that they can attract high-quality traffic directly to their own websites, instead of relying on 3rd-party job boards which are often not well equipped to cater to a specific industry. Those companies cut down on their “shotgun approach” job board expenses, and instead invest in their company website’s career section.
Savings, and ROI, have been stunning – IF they got the details right. After all, Google rewards “relevant” content in its search results. And who would be better prepared to serve up such “relevant” content in an industry vertical, or niche market, than a company who is part of that same field?
Such employers are very specific in what they are looking for in a candidate. Even better, they quite often also have a very good idea what their “targets” – the kind of job seekers they are interested in – are looking for online, when conducting a job search.
One of the most efficient way to reach out to such candidates is via social networks like Twitter or Facebook. Here’s a prime example where attention to detail really pays off:
Streaming out new vacancies or job postings on the company’s or publisher’s Twitter feed is already common practice for some companies and job boards. But let’s take a look at those tweets: in too many cases, what’s actually tweeted out is not really helpful – not for the targeted audience, not with Google, not to effectively communicate the job opening, not for measuring the “viral effect” and actual responses.
The reason: someone forgot to put in the URL Shortener.
URL shorteners are software that prevents a tweet’s publisher from wasting precious job “advertising space”, by shortening the web link a particular tweet points to, in this case: the link to a job posting page.
On Twitter, a message is restricted to 140 characters. If the link to the job posting…
… then, the result will be the same as if putting up an empty or ruined billboard next to a very busy highway:
Not even worth pondering.
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