Avoiding Embarrassing German Interview Mistakes: Dos and Don’ts

As we all know, job interviews are probably one of the single worst things we have to endure in our lives.

I talked about this with my friend when she was searching for a job in Berlin. She was struggling with the effort it involved and was very overwhelmed. She told me she felt like an actor auditioning for a play, expected to go out there and perform to the best of her ability only to be judged by complete strangers about how she behaves in a handful of sessions, where it’s next to impossible to show your current worth and future potential. People who barely know you get to decide whether or not you get a job, your livelihood, and the thing you spend 40+ hours a week doing.

Job interviews for foreigners in Germany are next level. It’s more complicated when you live in a country other than your own and you find out that things you’re used to at home may not work well in your new one. I experienced workplace culture shock when I first moved to Germany and started interviewing. For example, I was surprised when they asked me about my preferred salary range so early in the process. Or that you can’t simply quit your job with two weeks’ notice.

While I’ve already written an extensive guide about acing job interviews in Germany, I thought it was time to break down some of the biggest German interview mistakes and more importantly, how to avoid them. Also, check out our other interview guides like, why you should send a thank you note after big interviews, and the how to answer the question, “tell me about yourself.” 

So just what are the biggest German interview mistakes that people make? Let me help you avoid making the most common German interview mistakes internationals make when job searching in Germany. 

1) Showing Up Late

People always go on about punctuality being important to Germans, but if you’ve been reading our guides for long enough now, you’ll know we avoid shallow stereotypes like this. Being on time for an interview is a no-brainer for anyone, anywhere. In fact, you should show up at least 10 minutes early so you can get settled in and take a few moments for yourself before the interview starts. This way, you go into the interview feeling more relaxed and ready versus coming into it stressed and rushed.

If you’re doing a video interview, you obviously won’t jump into the call 10 minutes early, but you can ensure you’re looking good, have a coffee or water beside you, and take some time to focus. It’s also a good idea to ensure your internet connection is stable and all your equipment works, like your microphone or camera. Try connecting to the chat for test purposes if you need to install software or unlock permissions on your computer. The last thing you want to happen is for the interview to be delayed due to technical reasons.

Of course, things happen, and you could be late for a job interview in Germany. Don’t panic, and get in touch with your contact right away. Make sure you have that information noted beforehand so you don’t have to spend a long time searching for it. Send an email or text, or make an old-fashioned call to explain your reasons and discuss how to proceed.

If the hiring manager or recruiter doesn’t show understanding for your lateness, it’s a HUGE red flag and likely not a place where you’d want to work.

2) Forgetting to Say Thank You

The simple act of saying thanks can go a long way after you’ve had a job interview and potentially make you stand apart from other candidates. All you need to do is fire off a quick email thanking the interviewer(s) for their time, share details about what you liked, and reaffirm your desire to take on the given role.

ℹ️ Check out our guide about sending thank you notes after a job interview.

3) Pretending to Be an Expert

Another common German interview mistake? Pretending to be a subject matter expert when you’re not.

Many people think that admitting you don’t know something during a job interview makes you appear unprofessional. They even think that revealing they are only at a beginner level conveys a lack intelligence. Even worse, they fear that this will cost them the job, 

Nothing could be further from the truth. Everyone can’t know everything and it’s perfectly acceptable to say you don’t know much about a topic or have so much experience with it. If deep expertise was required, you likely wouldn’t have landed the interview in the first place. 

If you’re asked about something you don’t know much about, just say so. You could further mention that you’re currently taking a course, regularly read books, and are eager to learn more. You could also explain that you pick up new skills and knowledge quickly and share an example of when you did this. Your honesty will only be appreciated, as will your keenness for learning.

Nothing is worse than a candidate pretending to be an expert on something when they clearly don’t know a lot about. It’s such a waste of time for everyone involved and makes you seem disingenuous and arrogant. It’s the pretending that you stop you from getting the job, not your honesty.

Another thing to be mindful of is your self-awareness about how much of an expert you are on any given topic. Baking cookies a few times doesn’t make you a pastry chef, taking one Codecademy course doesn’t make you a software engineer, or suffering a few weeks on Duolingo doesn’t make you fluent in a language. 

I’ve seen candidates apply for an agile coach position but also claim to be a UX designer, product manager, and software engineer. No doubt people can possess a huge range of skills and maybe some people are really that “unicorn”, but it feels like you’re trying too hard and are over exaggerating your abilities. It’s also confusing for hiring managers who need to know what you’re really good at doing and where you want to go with your career. 

Be purposeful and intentional about how you present yourself when it comes to your levels of expertise. Make it obvious what you’re good at, what you don’t know so much about (yet), and what you’re keen to learn. More importantly, be able to speak as a truly confident subject matter.

4) Looking Like You Just Rolled Out of Bed

Another German interview mistake to avoid? Whether or not you’re doing the interview in person or by video, you need to make an effort with your appearance. You can go all out by spending hours getting ready or taking a more minimalist approach, but you need to make some effort. 

Video interviews are much easier to prepare for, but you still need to take the time to make your hair look nice, brush your teeth, wash your face, put on some moisturizer or makeup, etc. You won’t need to dress up formally, but wearing a nice sweater, blouse, shirt, etc would be good. 

In-person interviews will require a more rigorous effort, including a head-to-toe outfit. How formally you dress depends on the company culture and vibe, so try to find that out beforehand. A suit will be needed if you’re applying for a job at a German law firm, an academic institution, or a very traditional company. If you’re applying at a startup or an innovation hub, jeans, sneakers, and a nice shirt will likely suffice.

Looking well put together will show that you care about yourself and the job you’re applying for. While appearance really shouldn’t matter, unfortunately, it does in the case of German job interviews.

5) Being Unfamiliar with the Company

You aren’t likely to get a job if you can’t answer questions about your potential employer.

Do your research so you can be ready to provide a good response to general questions like “Why do you want to work here?” or “What do you admire most about our company?”

Imagine not being prepared, and they lob out tougher questions like “How do you see our company being able to achieve a greater market share?” or “Do you feel comfortable working for our team considering the company’s current financials?” 

You need to be in a good position to answer those questions meaningfully. So, before going into any interview, be sure to complete in-depth company research.

ℹ️ Luckily for you, we have a guide about how to complete research on German companies.

6) Failing to Ask Good Questions

Another big German interview mistake that people make is not asking any thoughtful questions. Asking such questions will better inform you about the role, team, and company and provide valuable insight that will guide you in deciding whether to accept a potential offer. It also shows your potential employer that you’re interested in working for them and are skilled at researching.

While the context of your questions will vary depending on who’s interviewing you, always prepare some questions beforehand. Check out these articles for inspiration about what questions you can ask during German job interviews:

⭐ 38 Smart Questions to Ask in a Job Interview

⭐ 57 Smart Questions to Ask in a Job Interview in 2023

⭐ 1 Questions To Ask in a Job Interview (With FAQ)

7) Taking a Long Time to Answer Questions

I’ve seen it time and time again with candidates I’ve interviewed. Especially when I asked the classic interview question, “Tell me about yourself.”15 minutes later, they’re STILL talking. When someone talks for that long, they’ll lose my attention really quickly, and it makes me feel bad to have to gently interrupt them and guide them back to the topic.

This behavior also sets off alarm bells for me, especially if I’ve provided an agenda at the beginning of the interview where I share the points we’ll cover and you’ve used up our valuable time by talking too much. I generally hope that candidates will have more self-awareness.

Regardless, we’ve all been there. Interviews are so hard. It’s not uncommon to be nervous, where extreme anxiety can transform you into babble mode. Other people are big talkers, especially those who talk to think or just like the sound of their own voice. In any case, a good interviewer will detect this and help you get back on point. Note that the interviewer should not have to direct you too often, so you must tap into your self-awareness in these situations.

As a general rule of thumb, you should never talk for more than a few minutes. If an interviewer wants to know more, they’ll ask you to elaborate. Alternatively, you can stop talking and ask the interviewer if they want to hear more. This is a great tactic to gauge their interest and gives you a moment to just breathe before sharing more information.

One tip for ensuring your answers will be short and to the point is to write them down beforehand and practice with a friend or even alone in front of a mirror. Keep your answers structured, beginning with a leading sentence supported by a more detailed example.

8) Neglecting to be Prepared 

This is one of those unfortunately common German interview mistakes.

When you don’t prepare for an interview, it shows. If you don’t ask good questions, know nothing about the company, or don’t have good answers prepared, you’ll appear careless and that won’t impress anyone. 

So follow our advice outlined in other parts of this article and have questions prepared, make sure you know something about the company by doing comprehensive research, and be sure to have esponses to commonly asked questions at the ready. 

If you do this, you’ll come across as a highly motivated candidate who’s likely to score another interview or even better, a job offer.

9) Telling Tall Tales

It’s so basic that you’d think that it doesn’t deserve to be mentioned, but candidates lying during an interview is pretty much a given. One Havard Business Review article cites 81% of people admitting to misrepresenting themselves at some point in their career with study participants telling 2.19 lies per 15-minute interview.

While little falsehoods aren’t a big deal, exaggerating too much can see you get into piles of trouble. Don’t take credit for someone else’s work, don’t lie about your experience, don’t change your job title, etc., as all of these things are big no-nos.

I’ve seen countless times. I’ve had a few colleagues give themselves promotions on LinkedIn and another one who claimed they led a project that didn’t even start until after they left the company. Everyone who saw the changes on LinkedIn knew this and those people became a big joke, losing any trust or credibility they may have once had.

These events can follow you for years to come, especially in cities like Berlin, Frankfurt, or Munich where a talent community can be small and everyone knows one another. People talk and when organizations are interviewing new candidates, they may glimpse your CV history and see that you worked with someone they also know. Often, they will informally check to see if they know you and what they think about you. It won’t look good if a former colleague says “Don’t hire that person. They took credit for work that they didn’t do. It was a betrayal to everyone who actually worked on that project.”

Don’t be that person and avoid this German interview mistake at all costs.

10) Being Too Honest and Spilling Your Guts

We’ve advised you not to exaggerate or tell lies, but another common German interview mistake that happens quite often is that candidates sometimes are way too honest. As such, it’s wise to be careful and avoid oversharing.

While it’s illegal to ask certain personal questions, some interviewers at German company may ask for details like your age, marital status, or family plans. Under no circumstances should you answer, as that’s information they could use against you when they’re making a hiring decision. See this video for more information. If you’re asked such a question, tell them it’s not something you feel comfortable discussing and that you’d rather stay focused on questions that are relevant to the job. 

A common question is “Why did you leave your last company?” You might have had a terrible boss, were overworked you without compensation, and/or had limited career advancement opportunities. Don’t mention anything like this and whatever you do, don’t complain about your last company or any of your former colleagues. Again, these are all truly valid reasons to leave a place, but depending on how you word it, it might not come across that well. Don’t fall into that trap, keep your answers factual, forward-looking, and to the point. 

If you were laid off or you quit because of the company’s poor financial outlook, you can just say it outright as it’s something everyone understands. We work for money and when those prospects diminish, you naturally move on. If it’s something more along the lines of the examples above, say something like, “I’m seeking an opportunity to grow my career in a new environment. While I enjoyed my time at company X and learned a lot there, it’s time to for a fresh start.”

 This is usually enough and will allow you to continue on to more important interview discussions.

11) Briefly Taking Yourself Out of the Equation

During a job interview, you’ll obviously talk a lot about yourself as you shed light on your background. However, when answering interview questions, you need to frame your responses from the company’s perspective. They want to know why they should hire you. 

You need to demonstrate in a convincing manner how you meet or exceed (or have the potential to do so) the job requirements. Be intimately familiar with the company, know its mission, and why someone like you is needed. Have the job description memorized and be able to speak to most or all of the points, supported by examples that show you’re capable of doing the job and, more importantly, delivering impactful results. 

Say a company is looking for a product manager to oversee their website and mobile app and be responsible for increasing customer acquisition through those channels. You need to talk about how you approached product discovery and feature prioritization – i.e., A/B testing, user interviews, MoSCoW, or jobs-to-be-done methods.  You need to speak about what you did and how you did it, including how you handled challenges. You need to be able to present results, such as an uplift in new users or increased sales. You also need to explain what motivates you to work there, be it you want to be part of a start-up at the beginning of their journey, help a company meet its sustainability goals, achieve innovation, or something else.

So while you may have other motivations for working for their company, like their office is close to where you live, they pay high salaries, or you have friends that work there – keep these reasons to yourself. When you frame your responses to interview questions, take your needs out of the equation for the moment. You can address your specific needs later in the recruitment process.

12) Failing to Articulate Your Unique Value

Lastly, the biggest mission of any job interview in Germany is to convince the employer to hire you based on the unique value you bring through your education, skills, and experience. Having a positive attitude and keenness to learn and grow helps, too. As you answer their questions, ask them questions and engage in a back-and-forth discussion. It’s truly your time to show how you are the ideal candidate capable of doing the job well.

Many other people are applying for the same jobs, many of whom are just as qualified or even more qualified than you. This is why it’s so key to communicate what makes you different. It could be your level of education, your sales records, your ability to learn fast, your skill in influencing others, your deep experience, the industries you’ve worked on, what projects you’ve led or contributed to, and/or the number of languages you speak.

Before any job interview, write down all these things and know they are your unique selling points. Then, look at the job description and consider those points when answering questions in the interview. Provide examples to support all of your points and note them down, too, as being able to add context to any interview response is key. Don’t just say you’ve done something; be able to talk about it in more detail.

If you can avoid all of these German interview mistakes, you’ll be sure to impress your future employer during the interview. 

FAQ

Commonly asked questions that people have when it comes to German interview mistakes. 

We hope this list of German interview mistakes helps prepare you for your interviews, feel confident during them, and come away with a job offer.