Interview Questions for Germany

Today I am going to share common interview questions for Germany and possible answers with you. Interviews could be so challenging, if you have not prepared yourself for possible questions in advance. Therefore I recommend you to use your time wisely for preparing answers of below questions. You will see that it will provide you to decrease your stress level and increase your performance in the interviews.

Let’s see what those questions are and what kind of information you should include in your answers. I divided the subject into different categories. So that you can prepare yourself in a structured way.

Ice-breaker interview questions

These kind of questions are used by interviewer to start the conversation and reduce your stress level at the very beginning. Some examples of the interview questions for Germany:

Did you find here easy?
How did you get here?
When did you arrive to the city? (If you come from another city or country)
Would you like to drink something?

You should try to answer those questions positively. Because no one will get a good impression, if they complain about every little thing. This will give a sign that you are not pleased by coming to the interview.

Personal questions

Actually the main purpose of the interviews are getting to know the people and seeing how good they are in explaining themselves. With personal questions, interviewers observe your character, clarity to explain something and enthusiasm. Below questions give you the chance of reflecting your character, skills and enthusiasm.

Table of Contents

Can you briefly introduce yourself?

This is the most common question which is asked at the beginning of an interview. It is a chance to go through your CV with the points that you would like to emphasize. At this point you should not explain all the details in your CV. You should only give an intuition about the chronology and important milestones in your career.

If you are recently graduated or about to graduate, you most probably have only internships, projects, actively involved societies and/or exchange semester. Therefore you can summarize what you have done so far for some of those subjects.

On the other hand, as a professional with experience, you can mention most relevant milestones with the applied position.

What motivates you?

This question is asked to get to know your reasons to apply this job. You should be honest about your motivations. For example if you like to work in a team, you should mention it.

Where do you see yourself in 5 to 10 years?

It is expected that you should have an idea about your targets in short and long term. Of course with the time and experiences your targets may change. But it is important to give the impression in the interviews that you thought about it and you have an idea how to reach your ultimate target.

What is your salary expectation?

This question is a bit tricky. They want to know how you are familiar with the field you applied and understand how you judged the position and your skills.

You should check possible salary range of the position that you applied. You can find such information on Glassdoor, Kununu or LinkedIn. At least it will give you an idea. Then you can define a range for you based on your working experience.

I recommend you to think about a range not a fixed salary. Because most of the times it will be asked you as range or it will give an impression to the interviewer that you are open to discussion.

Would you like to move for the job?

If it is written in the job opening and you do not want to move, then you should not apply for that job. In case you are willing to move for the job, you can mention how you easily adapt yourself to the changes. It is always better to give a concrete example. For that reason if you had such an experience in the past, I recommend you to mention it.

When will you be available?

Before your interview, you should have a clear idea about your availability. When they ask, you should be able to give an answer directly. Here you should also consider the required time for gathering documents for job entry.

Actually no one will ask you the size of the company or sector of the company directly. But they will definitely ask you a general question to see how much you know about the company.

What do you know about the company?

To be able to answer this general question, you should take a look to below subjects about the company before your interview.

Foundation and origin
Size (how many employees are working there)
Position in the sector
Product or service
Location (including headquarters, R&D, production or service locations)
Most critical steps in the company history
Current news

Now with those information, you can lead the interview in the direction you want to go. If the applied position could be affected from current news, you can emphasize that you are aware of it before you jump into the deep conversation about the position. This will show to the interviewer that you made your research and you can associate information.

Why this company?

After searching about the company, you should find possible reasons to work in there. This could be related with anything. Actually it depends what kind of values do you care in a company. At this point, I would like to emphasize that it is better not to discuss the salary in the interview with managers. So you should choose any other value than salary. Because it is a discussion subject with HR, not with the manager who you might work together in the future.

During the interview, even if it is not asked, you should lead the conversation through your reasons to choose this company and how you are a perfect match for the company. For example, if you enjoy working in an international team and if the company has great diversity, then you can definitely emphasize this to give the impression that you have characteristics to fit to the company.

Why this position? / Why do we hire you?

Before the interview, you should have a clear idea about why you want this position. Based on this, you should explain your soft and hard skills to the interviewers during the interview and convince them that you are perfectly matching with the position.

Do you have any question to us?

You should have thought about at least two smart questions. Because it will show your interest to the interviewer. Asking nothing is definitely not a good impression. Therefore think about your questions beforehand.

This part is one of the most challenging category of common interview questions for Germany. I highly recommend you to train yourself to explain topics in STAR method. The message that you give the interviewer must be clear and structured. So that they can easily follow you and understand the case that you experienced.

Before going into detail, tell the interviewer the subject. So that he or she can have an initial idea about it. After that you should explain following subjects: what kind of situation did you faced in this experience, what was your task, what kind of actions did you take and what was the result. You should always keep the order and find clear answers to those questions. To the point answers are always more welcomed. As a summary;

Situation
Task
Action
Result

Now based on this logic, you can answer below challenging questions in your interviews.

What are your strengths?

Consider your experiences related with your studies, internships, working student jobs or full-time employment and find out at least three strengths for you with concrete examples. Because the interviewer will evaluate your skill based on your experience. Ideally the skills that you will mention should match with the job description. If you are emphasizing a skill that you are good at but there is no connection with the job, then it will not help you to get the job. Therefore pay attention to the relevance!

Although the skills are person depended, here are some examples that can light the way for you to think about your own skills.

Analytical thinking
Structural working
Good presentation
Organization
Time management
Teamwork

As you can see these are more or like the required skills in most of the job descriptions.

Therefore as a hint, you can search for the possible job openings that you have great interest and check the required soft skills there. Based on those skills you can think whether you possess those skills or not with the examples. If you do not possess the skills yet, then you know which skills to improve for yourself. 😉

What is your greatest professional achievement?

This question might have a similar response with your strengths. Because in every subject you need to give an example and you can choose this example from your greatest achievement. That could be related with a project, contest, successful education, exchange semester, social or a self-development program and so on. But please keep in mind to explain it with STAR method.

Did you have any difficulties in your tasks? What have you done to overcome those difficulties?

Interviewers try to understand your behaviour and approach in difficult situations. Therefore it is very critical to give the impression that you are not freaking out when you faced with a difficulty. So in this question you can mention a situation that you had trouble. But the most critical thing in here is that you should also mention what was your plan to overcome it. And additionally what is the lessons learned that you had at the end. Because no one is perfect and to show that you are conscious of yourself will give the best impression to interviewer.

What are your weaknesses or improvement points?

You should be very careful when you answer this critical question. You should find three weaknesses which are not very critical for the applied job. Or you can select a weakness that you overcome with your plan. Giving a positive impression is the key to success in interviews.

Can you give us an example that you could do better in your task?

In here your judgement ability is questioned. You should form an answer with STAR method and at the end it is very critical to give what was your lessons learned out of this problem.

These are the common interview questions for Germany. I hope you enjoyed the content.

You might be also interested in reading Tips for Successful Interview in Europe, CV Preparation and Cover Letter Preparation.

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Interview Questions for Germany