Interview with arbeitnow: benefits, job trends and the future of work

Adithya, can you quickly introduce arbeitnow to our readers?

arbeitnow is a job board I set up in 2020 when I was searching for a new job. It specialises in jobs with visa sponsorship and English-speaking jobs in Germany. But it is also focussing on remote jobs, jobs with relocation service, jobs with a 4-day-week, and job offers with salary specifications.

In addition to this, it aims at supporting international talent relocating to Germany with getting an overview of their future living costs and resolving the most common bureaucratic issues like applying for a visa and getting registered at the town hall.

It is optimised to be as hassle-free as possible, meaning you don’t need to sign up, you can tag specifications of your job to simplify the search for your candidates and applications are done quickly and easily with just a few clicks.

arbeitnow thus provides candidates with a more speedy application experience and a more convenient candidate experience than many other platforms.

Want to know more? Check out our dedicated platform introduction of arbeitnow:

Or find more detailed information on Adithya’s “About” page.

Why did you set up arbeitnow?

I am originally from India and moved to Germany in 2018. For that purpose, I needed to find a job with a visa and English as the working language. However, hardly any job board I used offered a specialised section for jobs with a visa – and neither did any job board indicate if speaking English was accepted.

During my relocation process, I experienced that moving to and working in Germany is bound to involve quite a lot of bureaucracy – this made my relocation a lot more complicated and often left me frustrated and overwhelmed.

And so I wanted to help with this issue – and also with everything else that I would have required help with during my search in 2018 and 2020.

Also, in order to find a new job as a Software Engineer, I wanted something I could show to potential employers as a programming project. You know, in tech interviews, it is usual to be asked for something like that, and so I also used my job board as the required show-and-tell-project to help me find a job. Indeed, I finally found my new job via arbeitnow.

Which types of talent do you target?

arbeitnow mostly attracts English-speaking jobseekers from all over the world who are searching for a job in Germany.

That again can be divided into two main groups: Candidates who want to relocate, and candidates who are already here and need help with getting a visa from Ausländerbehörde etc. when applying for a new job.

Many of these users are working in the fields of UI/UX, Software, Development, and Product Management.

Thanks to your experience, which job trends do you see evolving?

There are three trends I can see evolving: English-speaking jobs, jobs with visa support or sponsorship, and 4-day week jobs.

As working remotely was suddenly required for more or less every company during Covid, it also became much more common to hire talent globally. As a result, the demand for English-speaking positions steadily increases.

Along with that, I also see jobs with relocation gaining more and more popularity. Working in Germany, however, requires a visa for global talent. And in order to get that, you need to know a lot of very specific things. This circumstance makes jobs with visa support or visa sponsorship strongly sought after.

And lastly, I see the 4-day week jobs evolving as an important job trend, which is certainly due to the increasing desire among employees for a good work-life balance.

Which features did you implement as a consequence?

Actually, I chose the features based on what I would have liked to see and know during my job-seeking process. I wanted to include the things I wouldn’t know either if I hadn’t worked here before – and that I had to find out myself through asking and doing extensive research via Google.

For candidates, it often takes a lot of scanning through job ads to figure out if it really works for them or not. I don’t think it’s good to leave such a lot of room for interpretations.

And so, I implemented features to specify a salary, but also to assign tags like “English-speaking” or “visa sponsorship” to job offers to enable companies to be more clear about the USPs they offer along with their job.

As I said before, working in Germany, you need to know very specific things. But many international candidates don’t understand terms like, for example, salary after-tax. Therefore I included some handy tools like the salary, tax return, and sick pay calculators.

The salary calculator for example helps international candidates get an overview of what they will finally earn and how they can get along with this amount. It also enables them to compare job offers regarding their future salary, etc.

Beside that, I also write a blog explaining the difficult processes around booking appointments, applying for a visa, and much more. With this, I offer further help for applicants as well as employers to navigate through the German bureaucracy jungle.

Which features would you like to implement in the future?

Something I would really like to include would be some quick introductions giving more information on the company posting a job.

That could, for example, answer questions like what their core business is, how many employees they have, where they are located, how close they are to public transport… All of that would offer a great experience for the candidate.

Another thing I’d love to see (and highlight) on arbeitnow would be closer information on the hiring process of a company, naming which steps they take (e.g., how many interviews, assessments, etc.) until they make their final decision.

That would give candidates a clear overview of what to expect – and ideally further encourage them to apply for the job.

This is the end of our interview. Many thanks for giving us and our
readers such deep and useful insights on arbeitnow, Adithya!

So, who should post job ads to arbeitnow?

arbeitnow is a very good choice for companies practising global recruitment for tech, development and product-related roles, and companies offering remote jobs or jobs with visa support or sponsorship.

It has a great outreach to skilled talent from all over the world searching for a job with relocation to Germany without having German language skills yet (speaking of: offering German language lessons as a corporate benefit could be another compelling and supportive enhancement for your job ad 😊).

Why arbeitnow should turn your job posting into a win-win

And what is it that finally turns your arbeitnow job posting into a win-win? Here are the key takeaways from our interview above:

• arbeitnow is super easy to use and offers DirectApply, which allows candidates to apply with just a few clicks. This improves your candidate experience a lot.
• It achieves a wide reach and can be of great support for your diversity hiring efforts.
• It features helpful tools like the salary and tax calculator that helps both candidates and companies find a proper salary.
• It offers a blog providing:
  • All the information relocating candidates will need to know when moving to Germany – e.g. how to apply for a visa, how to book appointments with the Ausländerbehörde, probation period, etc.
  • Helpful insights from a person that has been through it several times. That can help companies empathise with their candidates, and improve their visa support and onboarding process.

Would you like some further inspiration on where to post your job ad or how to hire international talent for your company?

In this case, don’t miss our Blog articles linked below to discover more great job boards and find guidance on how to attract the talents you need.