I worked for a German startup too and our main problem was not vetting interviewees but finding people who want to interview at all. In the five year history of the company I think only one single person was hired who was not already friends with someone at the company.
Other people just never applied. I remember manning the booth at one of those college campus events and it was very lonely. I probably talked to three students that day. Nobody followed up with us. I even had the distinct feeling that students avoided eye-contact with us and made beelines for the booths of the big established companies.
In the end, our hiring interview process for interns was 'do you want to work for us? yes? you're in' and for full-time applicants it was simply non-existent. I think in the last three years we did not interview a single person.
I often wondered why that is but I have never found a good answer. In the end it worked out for us. The company was acquired by Google.
Still, I would have liked to have some applicants and interviews once in a while because I keep reading so much about them and I wanted to practice being an interviewer to avoid pitfalls as described in the article.
Was your company offering "business solutions" by any chance? I remember once walking across an IT fair in Munich and being floored at the extreme boringness of all the company banners. They all seemed to provide "solutions" - whatever, no details about what they were doing (solutions for what?), nothing special going on. My brain was completely drained after the walk.
Just saying, maybe a better presentation could help. Also working in a software company is a kind of dreadful outlook, even today (neon lights, specs filled with hundreds of pages, dreary meetings...).
Business solutions is indeed just a fancy word for trying to make overcomplicated products with too many features and overcharging unknowing businesses. Business solutions is much shorter.
Looking for a job soon, but job fairs seem very counter-productive to me: websites give a much better impression and idea of possibilities and lead to faster filtering of options.
Maybe it varies between regions. We were based near Mannheim, and it was hard to find interesting software startups. Our town even has a technical university which meant that graduates were always looking for jobs in a market that didn't have that much to offer. In the web world, developers mainly had the choice between working for an advertising agency or work at a very small shop with less than 5 people. Non-web devs would have to choose either IBM in Mainz or SAP in Walldorf as a matter of course. At least that's what it looked like from my perspective, I could be wrong. So yeah, we got a lot of CVs for any job postings and people were also sending them in when we had no openings. I guess the region was just starved.
I have heard this anecdote from many of my friends as well. So my advice would be : any devs frustrated with jobs in their country head over to Germany ! It's a beautiful place with a comfortable work culture ...
Getting to Germany is the easiest when you are a student here.
Do you want to think of getting a Master's here ?
This
i) helps you get here
ii) gives you more access to startups who would be hesitant to take the burden of visa processing
Get yourself a xing.de profile. Headhunters find me there all the time.
If you are looking for an iOS or Android job: Apply at Neofonie Mobile, we're hiring :-)
From my experience (Lot's of Java backend stuff). A lot of companies in Berlin are looking exactly for Java backend developers. Some are looking for Grails, Rails or Python developers.
On the other hand:
There are many Hackerspaces and meet ups in Berlin to find like minded people:
When we advertised our job posts through different media nobody reacted. Headhunters would send us candidates which were too expensive for what they were worth.
So I ended up hiring ex-colleagues and friends who I convinced to start working for us. In the mean time we took 2 interns a year offering a job to the suitable candidate(s). This we we were able to hire staff.
The slow hiring process meant I needed to outsource some projects abroad to off shore development companies.
Ah Germany - where I just gave up applying for jobs.
"Oh, yeah, I see - you've got 10 years of experience. But what's that? You don't have a diploma? Nor a 'Ausbildung'? Sorry, in this case I just won't look at your prior work - no matter how cool it might be. Have a gut day, sir! No job for you."
When advertising on seek.com.au we've resorted to adding additional filters, otherwise we get so many resumes that we just can't read them all. And yes, most of them are clearly from 'spray and pray' applicants with no relevant skills.
Other people just never applied. I remember manning the booth at one of those college campus events and it was very lonely. I probably talked to three students that day. Nobody followed up with us. I even had the distinct feeling that students avoided eye-contact with us and made beelines for the booths of the big established companies.
In the end, our hiring interview process for interns was 'do you want to work for us? yes? you're in' and for full-time applicants it was simply non-existent. I think in the last three years we did not interview a single person.
I often wondered why that is but I have never found a good answer. In the end it worked out for us. The company was acquired by Google.
Still, I would have liked to have some applicants and interviews once in a while because I keep reading so much about them and I wanted to practice being an interviewer to avoid pitfalls as described in the article.