Emigration Nations:The German capital is an appealing city to live in, but if you want a job, try Frankfurt, Munich or Düsseldorf, where immigrants with job skills can surmount the language barrier
THE NOVELTY on the Dublin-Berlin flight used to be Polish, from the migrant workers to the pre-recorded in-flight announcements.
These days the novelty is most definitely an Irish one, as seats once occupied by gung-ho property developers are now filled by young Irish discussing job options and flat shares in the German capital.
Traditionally, Boston and even Brisbane have been closer in emigrant minds than Berlin. Germany was, at best, a mysterious place where friends had a summer job with BMW and were allowed beer at lunch time.
But times are changing: in the last decade Berlin has become a magnet for the young, with the kind of cachet most other cities in Europe would kill for. Unfortunately, cachet doesn’t mean jobs and new arrivals soon realise that Berlin is an employment blackspot. Apart from teaching English and the creative industries, there is little going on. But anyone anxious to work will find opportunities in prosperous southern Germany: financial services in Frankfurt, and high-tech industries in Bavaria, particularly in Munich, the Irish capital of Germany. The Stuttgart region offers engineering, manufacturing and medical-devices opportunities and a call has even gone out for Irish nurses.
Of course moving to Germany is a leap outside the English-language comfort zone. But learning German isn’t the nightmare you’ve heard tell of, and most Irish people living here think the rewards are greater than elsewhere.
Germany is, put simply, a country that works. Unlike the rest of Europe, it is experiencing an economic boom as well as a labour shortage. “If you have a background in technical metal engineering and can speak a language or two you won’t have to drive long around here to get a job,” says Daniel Dreizler of Walter Dreizler, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of gas and oil burners, based near the Black Forest.
As well as a high standard of living – including good childcare, transport and healthcare – Germany is just a two-hour flight from Dublin with regular daily connections.
“If somebody is looking at opportunities abroad to build up their work experience, then Germany is definitely a good choice,” said Deirdre McPartlin, head of Enterprise Ireland’s (EI) Düsseldorf office. “There is a real shortage of German speakers in Ireland. A few years working in a German environment equips you with both the practical experience and cultural awareness so highly sought after by Irish companies. On returning home you will be very employable.” EI’s Düsseldorf office reports a huge rise in inquiries from Irish companies looking to do business in Germany and seeking German speakers to act as go-betweens.
As well as offering fluent English, Irish people working in Germany display an entrepreneurial streak and a knack for independent thinking, skills valued by many top German companies. It’s not for nothing that Irish executives are sitting on the boards of bluechip German companies such as Allianz and Bayer.
Frances Kelly, a leading recruitment consultant based in Düsseldorf, is confident Irish workers will become even more sought-after here as demographics take their toll on an ageing German society.
Having some level of German is useful to get a foot-hold in the labour market, she says. “But most companies I deal with hire for attitude and train to skills. They’re looking for certain soft skills and not finding them in younger Germans who are well-qualified but a little spoiled,” she says.
“Irish graduates are young, still have the fighting spirit and I see the hunger coming back.”
How to emigrate to Germany
* Start preparing for a move to Germany three months, not three days, in advance to avoid pitfalls requiring emergency embassy assistance.
* Germany is a vast country, over four times the size of Ireland with 20 times the population. Organised federally and decentrally, like the US, there is no “Dublin”. Instead there are 16 federal states with their own rules and bureaucracies.
* Decide what kind of work you want and where before turning up.
* Take the bureaucracy as seriously as the Germans do. Register your address within seven days and don’t ignore any official post – in particular fines, demands or summonses – or it will come back to haunt you.
* Get insured: health insurance is mandatory, as is third-party.
* Irish social welfare benefits can only be transferred for up to 13 weeks.
* Learn German: cheap courses are available at the VEC equivalent, the Volkshochschule.
* Starting salaries range from €33,000 in the services sector to €43,000 in the chemicals/pharma industry.
* Bring at least €5,000 to get you started. Landlords will expect three months’ rent as a deposit for an apartment that will probably be empty except for the kitchen sink.
USEFUL CONTACTS
State labour agency: arbeitsagentur.de
Job sites: jobpilot.de, jobware.de, jobscout24.de
Internships: praktika.de
Recruiters: Signium, Egon Zehnder International, Ray Berndtson, Kienbaum
Temp agencies: Randstad, Manpower, Adecco
Accommodation: wg-gesucht.de, immobilienscout24.de
Local Irish job tips: Irish Business Network, irishbusinessnetwork.de
January 31st is the closing date for Enterprise Ireland’s graduate programme (see enterprise-ireland.com). It offers placements in its offices worldwide. The Düsseldorf office has positions from September 2011.
CAPITAL LIVING WITH SMALL-TOWNPRICES
LORNA BROWNE, ARCHITECT, WESTPORT, CO MAYO
After two years in Berlin, architect Lorna Browne (right) feels she finally has a handle on the city. “Berlin has so much on offer, it’s easy to fall in love,” says the Westport native, “but it’s a hard city to get to love you back.”
After the 1920s and again in the 1980s, Berlin is once again a huge draw for young people the world over. But with neither the 1920s economy nor the 1980s subsidies to fall back on, the German capital is a job blackspot, and Irish emigrants should be aware of the jobless rate of 13 per cent.
That said, Berlin remains a good deal in European comparison, offering young creative types big-city living at a small-town price, although the cost of living is rising.
Browne (30) describes herself as a “boom-time architect” who went straight from college in 2005 into a job in Dublin, working all night to rush through big developments for clients.
“I was carried along, thrown on to the career ladder, in a vicious circle of working hard,” she says. “I was stressed for three solid years and I needed to stop. I’m glad I did: it’s been a life upgrade.”
She moved to Berlin with a two-month plan to enjoy life and absorb the culture. She knew the precarious state of the Berlin economy – for architects, the boom has passed – but through friends and contacts she found various jobs and has now settled into a small architectural office doing interesting work.
“It has taken two years to feel I’ve cracked the city and I was very eager not to live with Irish people,” she says. Today she pays €300 for a vast, 38 sq m room in an alternative co-operative in the Kreuzberg neighbourhood. She took several courses to build on her Leaving Certificate German and recommends that new arrivals make an effort with the language.
“You need at least basic German; you can’t live here grunting like a Neanderthal,” she says. “Funnily, German was never my thing; it was French I loved at school. But it was my father who convinced me to keep the second language because, he said, you never know what will happen.”
After some personal setbacks, she’s happy and established in Berlin.
Her advice to new arrivals? “People come over with drive and get sucked into the nightlife,” she says. “You have to keep an eye out in Berlin that you don’t become complacent. Once your motivation goes, you’re a goner.
