Wasn't me, but a friend of mine worked from Germany for a couple of years. He worked for a company in the US that had offices throughout the world (it was a shipping company). A bit of his work involved working with other teams, so he had a bit of insight into those teams. He noticed that there were openings for positions similar to his in the foreign offices and reached out to the managers. He had to prepare a CV for them, but he was able to transfer there relatively easily.
Could I ask what exactly is it that you do and how do you get on this path? I'm trying to explore options where I can work for US companies from somewhere else.
Do you hire mainly in Germany? I'm curious about working abroad for a while (Australian work holiday, mainly) and am interested in the the opinions on hiring a US citizen.
If you know someone who's already working in Germany or you're able to hook up with someone, it shouldn't take long to connect you with companies that are looking for employees.
You don't need to write applications in German, since most people in Germany with higher education are able and willing to communicate in English. Existing German knowledge and willingnes to pick up the language are of course an advantage.
Another way to find work is to look for German companies operating in the US and trying to get in touch with someone who works there. For example, my previous employer operated at construction sites in India which helped some of my collegues to get in touch with them. If you already know in which sector you want to work, you can find companies and apply unsolicited or search their websites for job offerings. Job ads on German websites are typically placed under the keywords:
Karriere, Stellenangebote, Unternehmen, Karriere, Jobs. If you have any questions feel free to ask.
Every now and then I (in France) see positions that require being a native English speaker, so you might try looking into that. There also is a community of expats who sometimes post open jobs or in generally can share their experiences of finding a job. However, due to quite high taxes and complicated hiring process, many American companies choose to open their offices in the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, etc.
I applied for a system administration job with a company that had offices world-wide, but I started in the U.S. An opportunity came up within my company to provide sysadmin support in an AsiaPac timezone, and I took it! Trying to obtain a professional job in a foreign country can be difficult otherwise because most companies aren't willing to hire somebody who doesn't already have a work visa for that country.
It's anecdotal, but my wife moved here 1.5 years ago and before she quit her job to move here with me, she was a Global Application Manager for DHL International (Deutsche Post). She was responsible for a team of software engineers and support technicians whose app was installed in 9 countries, at 20 locations all over the world. She has expertise in Oracle and is fluent in Spanish as well as English. The software controlls automotive sequencing (just in time part delivery) for Chrysler, Volkswagen, Seat, Ford, and GM where the supplier can be charged > $10,000 per minute of downtime. We met through work and she was always the person who could be counted on to troubleshoot any issue even outside her area of expertise.
In one and a half years, she has had two interviews and no offers.
It's pretty clear that her resume is almost immediately rejected because she isn't a U.S. citizen (she's a permanent resident) and because her experience is with "foreign" companies.
Check out German software-related companies. Small ones are usually flexible to be persuaded to hire you, if you can get through to them, that is. A good application should work, and as usual, don't give up too soon.
They don't even know they can handle it. Maybe do some research as to how they'd have to do payroll, to reduce the scariness of someone overseas.
Does Amazon.de or Yahoo.de allow international transfers of their employees? I would be surprised if they didn't - I used to work in the financial industry (GS), where international employee transfers (US, Tokyo, London) were the norm.
This is mostly an IBM process problem. Employees need to have "in country managers". We didn't have anyone in Germany, thus we had to scare someone up to have the new person report to on paper despite working with us. IBM itself can hire in basically any country, but for a lot of really irritating and well entrenched reasons, we're further limited by internal org structure and finance.
In theory, had the person relocated to the UK it would have been easier because we do have in country managers that know what we're up to there.
Sure, if you want to work for a big multinational. I just looked at his LinkedIn and after he moved back he had the same job (Eng manager) remotely (this was about 15 years ago) but when he moved into management he switched to management and now running the Indian sub of a different multinational.
We had lunch around the time he made the switch and he’d just dropped his kids off at tutoring then he went to pick them up from Judo after our meal, i.e, basically the same as if he’d stayed in New Jersey.
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