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How does my company find a German native speaker in LA?

  • How does my company find a German native speaker in Los Angeles? I work in the EU branch of a company whose headquarters are in LA, and we badly need to hire a German native speaker who has a work permit in the US. This is for a computer game, and the position would be in Customer Service, but I can say with absolute confidence that this would probably be one of the best possible customer service positions you could find in the industry. Our company is extremely clueful. So anyway, we've not been able to find a German native speaker through the usual channels. We've had a few applications where the candidates spoke barely passable German, but that's not enough for us. So I'm looking around for forums and communities of Germans in LA where I could post information about this job... but I'm not sure what would be acceptable, and what would feel like spam. Also totally not sure where to post about this. I've found a few potential places on the web where Germans seem to gather. For instance, this: http://www.meetup.com/Deutscher-Verein-Los-Angeles/about/ Or this: http://www.meetup.com/German-Stammtisch/ I'm finding a lot of other places like that with various google searches ("German expatriates in Los Angeles" etc), but these all seem like small communities, and I'm not sure how these places would react to job listings. There must be a better way, surely! So is there anything you guys can think of? We don't really absolutely need a native speaker, but their German has to be practically native level.

  • Answer:

    You could try posting something on http://www.amerika-forum.de/usa-auswandern-198/leben-und-arbeiten-in-den-usa-84/arbeit-job-oder-praktikum-140/job-offers-189/.

DanielZKlein at Ask.Metafilter.Com Visit the source

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http://www.goethe.de/ins/us/los/enindex.htm That's the go-to place to find Germans.

Admiral Haddock

Try the universities, if they have a German Language department.

CathyG

Admiral, I was considering the Goethe Institut as well, but from what I recall, they're more interested in generally promoting German culture abroad. I'm not sure if this sort of thing isn't too banal for them. I sent them an e-mail anyway. Thanks :)

DanielZKlein

International Students' Union at local universities.

k8t

We're actually looking for a full employee, not an intern--I'm not sure a university graduate would be looking for a customer service job?

DanielZKlein

If this native German speaker will be required to work something approaching full-time (i.e. >30 hrs/wk) and the role isn't very short-term (i.e. >1 month) then you might struggle with recruiting form a university. A native German speaking student who is in the US on a study visa (I assume this will be most of them) will have restrictions on how many hours a week they are allowed to work while studying (I believe it's 20) and they won't be allowed to temporarily drop-out of school to work this job full-time without in doing so violating the terms of their visa. Have you tried advertising a 'finding fee' of say $100 in the job advert for the person who recommends the successful applicant? When the recruitment criterion is so strict, you can't always rely that a suitable candidate will come across your job advert, but with the finding fee you greatly increase your chances, since it's more likely that an unsuitable somebody who reads the advert knows somebody who is suitable.

davidjohnfox

I know a lot of German-Germans in L.A. Post the full job listing here (or Memail it to me) and I'll forward it around.

turducken

You could also try the http://www.miis.edu/employerswho have a lot of native speakers. They also have a MIIS graduate board there and are extremely helpful.

clarkie666

Every meetup on meetup.com has a 'contact the organizer' link on the front page of it. Contact the organizers of those German meetups. Ask them if it's okay to post. Or ask them if they can send it out via their mailing list of members. Some organizers will say yes, some will say no, but all you've wasted is a couple of emails.

jacquilynne

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