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JOBTALK GERMANY: ENTREPRENEUR SERIES

JOBS

Not your usual job website

In our weekly feature series, The Local looks into a successful entrepreneur's life - the story behind their successes, major challenges and how being an entrepreneur changed them forever. This week, Sparsh Sharma talks to Robin Eric Haak, founder and COO of Berlin-based Jobspotting.

Published: 13 January 2015 15:36 CET
Not your usual job website
The Jobspotting founders' team. Robin Eric Haak is second from left.

How did you come up with this business idea?

Jobspotting's founder and CEO, Hessam Lavi worked at Google in Dublin for many years. There he met Jan Backes (founder and CDO) and Manuel Holtz (founder and CTO). Lavi also met his German wife there and they moved to Berlin, where he found it was needlessly painful for foreigners to find jobs in startups.

In order to give himself, and other jobseekers, a platform, he started BerlinStartupJobs and later, LondonStartupJobs. Though these websites were started on the side, their huge popularity showed a vital need for this kind of information. The sites have over 100,000 views per month.

Lavi is a big fan of sites like Pandora that make recommendations based on the users’ taste and figured there was need for a similar system in job portals too. So he called up Jan and Manuel, given their expertise in data backend, to discuss the feasibility of this idea.

They have now created technologies that classify job ads, analyze semantics and can produce detailed skills graphs for users, providing relevant job matches.

When they met Saeed Amidi, investor in Dropbox, Paypal and 2,000+ other companies, he encouraged them to join the Axel Springer Plug and Play accelerator, which I had co-founded.

That's how I became friends with them. Next, they received investment and Stefan Gross-Selbeck, one of the angels and former CEO of eBay and XING, asked them to appoint a business head. That’s where I came in and became a co-founder.

What were the initial challenges? How did you overcome them?

The technical backend is pretty hardcore. This is most likely why no company in the classified job market has really stood out – with the exception of LinkedIn. As we have a mind-bogglingly amazing engineering team, we are well on our way to solving this problem.

This is no hipster, boy-band startup but a group of experts trying to solve a serious problem by working efficiently. The founders’ have a combined work experience in Google of over 20 years.

How has the journey been so far?

Creating the technical backend took us 10 months. Now our focus is to make the product really exceptional.

We have created a personalized job-feed that adapts to each user, an explore function that allows people to discover how the scenario is in different job verticals and locations, an iOS app, a magazine as well as company pages that provide users with info about the companies that have posted jobs. This was no piece of cake!

The core ideal of our product is not only for jobseekers to find the most relevant jobs but also use Jobspotting to visualise their futures and make the most informed career choices.

We have partnered with companies like XING, Monster, Stepstone, CW and many more to provide the widest net for all jobs being posted. It will be a constant challenge to find the perfect jobs for jobseekers and take the pain out of the process for them but also exciting. Personally, I am extra excited about the magazine where you can read insights, interviews and information about all things career.

How has becoming an entrepreneur changed you, personally?

I came to Jobspotting from one of the most influential corporates in a country that is the world’s third biggest exporter. There are a lot of corporate challenges that I no longer have to solve. I have much more time to focus on working efficiently without worrying about causing offence or internal office politics.

Everyone believes in the company, and our goal of helping people. We are not doing it for fame and fortune but for people unhappy in their jobs or unsure about jobs best suited to them.

Certainly, I now have more responsibilities and a tighter budget, so the pressure to succeed is higher. But I also have complete ownership of the pace I work at and how fast I can keep pushing forward.

Personally, I think now is the time to utilize what I have learned, and hope that by giving it everything, we can change something. Sometimes it’s hard to stay confident when you know that nothing in life is forever, or can be taken for granted, but following a vision to positively influence people’s lives makes it easier.

Any other personal reflections or message to budding entrepreneurs?

I don’t understand people who say, ‘I don’t have the time’. I always have time, it’s about prioritizing. I think a lot of people need to work on this.

I hope we, in Europe, will come around to the US point of view where everyone just gets one shot. For e.g. if I meet Andreessen Horowitz, he will give me just an hour. If we agree, it’s a deal. If it doesn’t work, I won’t get another chance, which is fair enough.

In Europe, everyone is so busy and important that the same process takes a lot longer. I really don’t get it and hope the startup mentality will change our working culture and lead to more efficiency in the future.

Are you an entrepreneur in Germany? Contact us and we might feature your story

Sparsh Sharma works as a freelance journalist for The Local and blogs about his experiences in Denmark. You can follow him on Twitter at @sparsh_s.

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WORKING IN GERMANY

Which Bavaria-based companies regularly hire English speakers?

Bavaria is no doubt a beautiful state with a strong economy, but can be a hard place for non-German speakers to integrate. The Local takes a look at job opportunities in Germany’s southeastern 'Free State.'

Published: 7 February 2024 10:54 CET
Updated: 10 February 2024 08:20 CET
Which Bavaria-based companies regularly hire English speakers?

Munich ranks third in German cities with the highest total GDP, behind Berlin and Hamburg, but in terms of GDP per capita, it’s higher than both of them.

It also consistently ranks high, often highest, in terms of average household income.

As of 2023, nine of the 40 companies listed on DAX, Germany’s stock index, were based in Bavaria. Seven of those are based specifically in Munich.

While Frankfurt is commonly known to be Germany’s business capital, Munich can claim the title of Germany’s insurance capital, which is saying something, as Germany is home to some of the largest insurance firms in the world, like Allianz.

Beyond the state’s capital city, a number of international companies are based elsewhere in Bavaria, particularly in the Franken region, near Nuremberg.

Which companies actively hire English speakers?

Bavaria, and Munich in particular, is home to a number of companies at the forefront of international business. But the state is known for its traditional, sometimes conservative, culture, which affects its business culture as well.

Whereas companies embracing English as their primary business language are easy to find in Berlin, the practice is less common in the south. That said, there are some notable exceptions. 

Sportswear giants, Adidas and Puma, both have their headquarters near Nuremberg in Herzogenaurach, and regularly recruit English speaking international talent.

“As an international company, our teams reflect the rich diversity of our consumers and communities,” Jon Greenhalgh, Senior Manager Media Relations for Adidas told The Local. “Fostering a culture of inclusion where we value and leverage differences, ensures that we can authentically engage with our employees and truly connect with our consumers.”

He added that around 40 per cent of Adidas’ Germany-based employees are foreign nationals, from over 100 different countries.

Siemens and BMW rank among Bavaria’s top employers, and are also known to hire their fair share of foreigners.

“In Germany, we recently had around 2,000 open positions,” Konstanze Somborn told The Local on behalf of Siemens AG.

He added that Siemens operates in 190 countries. “That is why we value international teams very much…English as a common language is very usual.”

READ ALSO: ‘Which German companies want to hire foreigners?’

Similarly, BMW hires workers from a variety of backgrounds. 

“Every year, we hire lots of internationals and welcome them to the BMW Group,” Dr. Hans-Peter Ketterl, a press spokesman for BMW Group told The Local. 

But not all of these positions are available to non-German speakers.

Ketterl added that BMW’s working language is German in the country, even though, “English is an indispensable entry requirement as the second corporate language in many areas of the company.”

Check job boards and follow best practices

If it’s your first time applying for jobs in Germany, make sure to change your resume to the German format, even for English positions.

While Germany is home to its own job boards, like Xing, LinkedIn is probably the best place to start. In addition to searching for positions based in your preferred location, you can check relevant groups, like Munich Startups, to broaden your horizons.

The English Jobs in Germany website is also a good resource to start with. 

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