How we label German

Every listing here carries a label about language. This page explains what each label is based on, and what it does not promise.

The one thing to understand first

We read the advert. We do not know the job.

A label on this site is a statement about what an employer wrote in their own job advert. It is not a statement about what will happen in the interview, what language the team speaks at lunch, or what the role will ask of you in a year. Only the employer can tell you that.

We read 27 real adverts by hand before deciding how to label anything. Fourteen of them never mentioned language at all. That single finding shaped every rule below.

The labels you will see

There are three, and they are in order of how much the employer actually committed to. The first is the employer telling you. The second is us telling you what the advert does not say. That is a real difference, and it used to be hidden — both were labelled the same way until 3 September 2026.

English is the working language

English is the working language

The advert says it outright: English is the company's working language, or all internal communication is in English, or words to that effect.

What this means: the employer has answered the question themselves, in writing, in the advert you can go and read. This is the strongest thing this site can show you.

What this does not mean: that the interview will be in English, that the contract will be, or that the Betriebsrat and the payroll forms will. Working language describes the working day.

No German asked for

No German asked for

The advert is written in English and does not ask for German anywhere in it — but it never says which language the work happens in either.

What this means: nothing in the text the employer published sets a German requirement.

What this does not mean: that German will never come up. An advert that is silent about language is silent — it is not a promise. We say so on the listing itself rather than hiding it behind a confident-looking label.

An advert that promises no German is required, without ever naming English, lands here too. It said something true and useful, and "No German asked for" is exactly what it said — putting the stronger label on it would put a sentence on this site that the advert never contained.

English works, German helps

English works, German helps

The advert names English as the working language, and mentions German as a plus, a nice-to-have, or something you can learn on the job.

What this means: you can apply without German, and the employer has said as much in writing.

What this does not mean: that German is irrelevant to the role. The employer mentioned it for a reason.

The label you will never see

German required

Adverts that ask for German — at any level, in any wording — are not published here. That is the whole point of the site, so this label exists only on this page, so you can see what is being left out.

If a listing on this site asks for German, that is a mistake, and we want to know. See "Tell us if a listing is wrong" below.

How the labelling actually happens

1. We take job adverts only from the employer's own careers page or their own job-board feed. We never copy listings from StepStone, Indeed, LinkedIn or Xing.
2. Software reads the advert text and looks for language requirements.
3. Anything that asks for German is dropped. What survives gets a label and a short excerpt, and links out to the employer's own advert.

That third step matters: the excerpt on this site is a fragment. Always read the employer's full advert before you apply. The link is on every listing.

What else we refuse

Three kinds of advert are left off this site even when they ask for no German at all.

Adverts asking for a native speaker. Not fluency — fluency is about what you can do, and an advert is welcome to ask for it. "Native" is about where you grew up, and no amount of work will change it. A listing here saying no German asked for over an advert demanding native Spanish would be a wasted evening for the reader it was written for. And there is a second reason: Germany's Federal Labour Court has held that asking for German as a mother tongue in a job advert is capable of putting people at a particular disadvantage because of their ethnic origin, and awarded a rejected applicant compensation.^[1] This site is read by people who moved to Germany. Passing that wording on to them is not something we are willing to do.

Adverts setting an age limit. A maximum age, or an age range. A minimum age is left alone, because plenty of jobs lawfully have one. Age is one of the six characteristics the Allgemeines Gleichbehandlungsgesetz protects, and Germany's anti-discrimination agency tells employers to keep job adverts neutral about all six.^[2]

Adverts addressed to one sex. A job title written for one sex only — salesman, waitress, Sekretärin — unless the advert also carries a marker such as (m/f/d) or all genders, which is the usual way to say the job is open to everyone. And any advert that says outright that only men or only women may apply. An advert that encourages women to apply, or describes a women's network at the company, is left alone: that is welcome, not a barrier.

All three are judged on the advert's own words, the same as the language labels. If an employer never writes it down, we cannot see it.

Where this is still imperfect

We would rather say this plainly than let you find out the hard way.

• Software matches wording. An advert that sets a German requirement in an unusual phrasing can slip through and be labelled wrongly.
• The top two labels are separated by wording, not by meaning. An employer who states their working language in a phrasing we have not seen gets the second label instead of the first — understated, never overstated, which is the direction we would rather be wrong in.
• The excerpt is chosen automatically and is sometimes company boilerplate rather than the part of the advert about language. When it is, the link out is the only reliable source.
• The native-speaker check reads wording, not meaning. An advert that asks for it in a phrasing we have not seen will get through, and one that mentions the words while promising the opposite could in principle be refused for it.
• The one-sex check reads the job title and a short list of phrases. It does not judge an advert by "he" or "his" in the text, because in a full advert those words usually belong to someone else — a founder or a customer.

Tell us if a listing is wrong

If a listing is labelled wrongly, has expired, or should not be here at all, write to info@jobswithoutgerman.de with the link. Listings are removed on request from the employer, no questions asked.

And the adverts that never get a label

A label is only given to something we decided to publish. The screens that run before that — and last night's count for each of them — are on how this list is made.