Contracting in Germany

[tim123]

Is Germany this contractors utopia of not having any agents?

There are few German agents because Germans, as a rule, don't like contracting. Usually they like the warm comfort blanket of the government taking 55% of their income and giving it back to them when they are in education, unemployed, sick or retired (all of which beat the payments HNG give us by a mile).

There are a few placement agencies (e.g: http://www.brunel.de/) that work like software houses, but these are not the home of experienced engineers, rather junior people who failed to get a 'real' job after their 8 years in university who are looking to impress the client so that they can be offered a staff job (for which the charging of transfer fees is forbidden).

It should also be noted that there is an additional risk of 'freelancing' in Germany which is always overlooked by Brits working there. Namely the possibility that if the engineer does not perform as per the resume, the client is entitled to terminate the contract, not pay outstanding invoices and chargeback all the payments already made. This is not just a theoritical possibility, I have know it to happen twice (and I've only worked for three German companies). This risk can be avoided by being third party employed (as the Brunel employees are), but then it is not possible to take advantage of freelance tax breaks.

There are a number of UK agencies that specialise in placing people in Germany and they tend to place mostly Brits. Interviews tend to be short, relying on the honesty of the resume (because of the rule above) and if they are long, will be a 'personality' check, not a skills check.

HTH

tim