We recently sat down with the CEO of a mid-sized IT company in Munich. When we asked what keeps him up at night, he laughed – but not the good kind.
“You know what’s crazy?” he said. “There are 137,000 open IT positions in Germany right now. And at the same time, I’m seeing experienced developers getting laid off left and right. People are actively looking for work. Yet here we are, desperate for talent and unable to fill our roles.”
He’s right. It’s paradoxical. Thousands of qualified IT professionals are on the market, and yet companies are hemorrhaging productivity because they can’t hire fast enough.
How does this even happen?
The answer isn’t pretty: many German IT companies keep making the same recruitment mistakes over and over—hence this irony.
So, we want to share the five recruitment mistakes we see most often killing companies’ ability to attract top IT talent and, more importantly, how to fix them.
Let’s get into it.
1. Mistake #1: You’re Chasing Unicorns on a Pony Budget
“We want a senior developer with 10 years of experience, expertise in four different tech stacks, leadership potential, fluent German and English—oh, and we can pay mid-level salary.”
Sound familiar?
This is the so-called unicorn trap, and it’s bleeding German IT companies dry. You want everything, but you’re not willing to invest in it. And the market sees right through this.
Here’s reality: 58% of German companies admitted they made at least one wrong hiring decision in 2024. Why? Because they set unrealistic expectations, held out for the “perfect” candidate who doesn’t exist at that price point, and ended up settling for whoever was left after months of searching.
But the best candidates know their value. When they see a job posting that screams “we want a unicorn but we’ll pay for a donkey,” they don’t apply. They go to companies that respect their worth.
And this isn’t just about salary – it’s about the full package.
Experienced developers look at remote flexibility, career growth opportunities, team culture, benefits, and work-life balance. If your offer doesn’t align with all of it, it’s your approach that needs adjusting—not the candidate.
The fix for this professional staffing problem: Get a market reality check. Work with recruiters who can tell you what candidates with specific skills actually cost. Define your must-haves versus nice-to-haves. And if your budget is tight, consider mid-level developers with growth potential instead of pretending you can afford senior talent.
2. Mistake #2: Your Professional Staffing Delays Are Turning Hiring Into a Marathon
German recruitment processes are notoriously slow. And we’re not talking about a week or two. We’re talking about months.
Here are the numbers: 37.5% of personnel managers in Germany take three to four months just to get from posting a job ad to signing a contract. Medium and large companies? They’re looking at 4-8 weeks minimum.
And that’s if everything goes smoothly.
The top IT talent, however, doesn’t wait around. The best developers are off the market in 10 days.
By the time you’ve scheduled your third round of interviews and waited two weeks for feedback from your hiring committee, that perfect candidate has already accepted an offer somewhere else.
And it’s not just candidates who suffer. Your internal team is burning out covering for that empty seat. Your projects are delayed. Your productivity is hemorrhaging.
The fix for this professional staffing problem: Set aggressive timelines and stick to them. First-round interviews within one week of application. Technical assessments completed within days, not weeks. Final decision within two weeks maximum. If you can’t move that fast internally, partner with a specialized IT recruitment agency that can.
3. Mistake #3: You Are Ignoring Cultural Fit
Technical skills get candidates through the door. Cultural fit determines whether they stay.
Yet most German IT companies are still hiring like it’s 2010, focusing almost exclusively on technical abilities while treating soft skills and team dynamics as an afterthought. Big mistake.
Here’s a stat that should scare you: 68% of hiring managers say poor cultural fit is the primary reason new hires fail. Not lack of technical skills. Not inability to code. Cultural misalignment.
You can hire a brilliant developer who aces every technical test. But if they can’t collaborate with your team, adapt to your company’s communication style, or align with your work culture, they’ll struggle – and eventually leave.
And then you’re back at square one, except now you’ve wasted months of onboarding time and damaged team morale.
The fix for this professional staffing problem: Start screening for cultural fit early in the process, not as an afterthought. We do this at People Focus, and we use behavioral interview questions to assess how candidates handle feedback, collaboration, and ambiguity. That’s why sometimes letting non-technical (yet ones specialized in IT recruitment) recruiters conduct the first interviews to evaluate communication style, personality match, and team compatibility is your best bet.
4. Mistake #4: You Have Professional Staffing Transparency Issues
“We’ll discuss compensation later.”
No. Just no.
Salary transparency is no longer optional in Germany’s IT sector. By 2026, EU legislation will require salary ranges in all job postings. But forward-thinking companies are already doing it now—because it works.
The matter of fact is that 90% of job seekers prefer job ads that include salary information. So when you hide compensation details, you’re immediately alienating the vast majority of your potential candidate pool.
And it’s not just about salary. It’s about expectations.
Vague job descriptions. Unclear role responsibilities. No information about growth trajectory, team structure, or why the position is open.
Candidates go through multiple interview rounds, invest hours of their time, only to receive an offer that completely misses their expectations.
This wastes everyone’s time. Candidates feel deceived. You’ve spent weeks on someone who was never going to accept your offer anyway. And your employer brand takes another hit.
The fix for this professional staffing problem: Be transparent from the start. Include realistic salary ranges in your job postings. Clearly define must-have qualifications versus nice-to-haves. Explain what the role actually involves day-to-day. Share information about team structure, career progression, and what success looks like in the first 90 days. The right candidates will self-select in. The wrong ones will self-select out. Either way, you save time and improve your professional staffing process.
5. Mistake #5: You Are Treating Candidates Like Numbers
How you treat candidates during the hiring process directly predicts how you’ll treat them as employees.
And right now? Most German IT companies are failing spectacularly at candidate experience.
The numbers are brutal: 49% of job seekers have declined offers due to poor experiences during the hiring process. 78% of candidates view the recruitment experience as an indicator of how a company treats its people.
And 75% of Gen Z candidates – your future talent pipeline – abandon applications when the process feels too rigid or impersonal.
What does poor candidate experience look like? Mostly like:
- Automated rejections within minutes of applying.
- Ghosting after final-round interviews.
- Weeks of radio silence followed by generic rejection emails.
- No feedback, no transparency, no respect for the time candidates invested.
And you know what else it looks like?
It looks like an expensive thing for your company to be doing. Virgin Media calculated that poor candidate experience cost them $5 million annually in lost revenue from rejected applicants who cancelled their subscriptions. That’s the real cost of treating candidates like disposable resources instead of human beings.
The fix for this professional staffing problem: Treat candidates like valued customers. At People Focus, we respond to candidates’ applications within 24 hours, on your behalf. We also provide clear timelines and stick to them, plus we give real feedback after interviews, not generic template responses. Candidates remember that respect, and they might refer other great candidates your way.
People Focus Will Help You Do Professional Staffing Right
Overall, the German IT sector doesn’t have a talent shortage. It has a professional staffing execution problem.
Companies are chasing unicorns they can’t afford, dragging hiring processes out for months, ignoring cultural fit, hiding salary information, and treating candidates like afterthoughts. Then they wonder why positions stay open for half a year and why their offers keep getting rejected.
But fortunately, every single one of these mistakes is fixable, and People Focus is in the business of fixing them for you – if your internal HR team is sretched too thing to fix it by themselves.
Reach out to People Focus today and start turning your hiring challenges into results.
