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Vienna was always for a very good reason amongst the top contestants when it comes to the most liveable cities around the world. As a matter of fact, it was 10 times in a row the #1 by the Mercer Consulting firm. So I totally get why you’re looking for a job in Vienna.

Is it difficult to find a job in Vienna?

It’s not difficult to find jobs in Vienna when you know what are the most important steps you have to take.

There were, of course, many drawbacks due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the restrictions the government had to introduce: the unemployment rate grew, affecting both supply and demand.

The good news is, 2022 was not all bad for Vienna. Vienna is a very service-oriented city and it’s clearly reflected by the sectors that did increase their number of jobs in 2020. Some examples are information and communication, health and social work, freelance, scientific and technical services, and financial and insurance services. If you’re looking for a job in these sectors, chances are high that you can find yourself the job you’ve been searching for.

But for that, you need to structure your job application process well as there are many ex-pats as well as locals who desire to work in Vienna.

15 tips for how to find a job in Vienna

Make sure you’re eligible to work in Vienna

If you’re an EU member state citizen or part of the EEA region, there should be no problem for you to easily move borders and start working in Vienna.

However, if you’re from the US, Asia or other parts of the world, you’ll need to have a work permit to work in Vienna. Luckily, all the immigration measures you have to take are included on the EU Immigration Portal, as well as the EU Blue Card option, which grants you to work anywhere in EU member states.

Check out online job boards

When you look for a job, online job platforms will become your best friends. Due to the pandemic, there are not many on-site job fairs you can join, therefore you should start your search on Google, by simply writing what you are interested in. Examples could be:

  • Startup jobs in Vienna
  • Sales jobs in Vienna
  • Bitpanda jobs in Vienna

In these 3 examples, you can see, that first you can specify the type of company you’re looking for. If you want something well-structured, with a lot of company politics and well-established guidelines, you should search for big corporate companies, like the big4 consulting firms. But if you’re tired of the hierarchical corporate culture and the fact that you never have the freedom to create something of your own, then you should definitely go for startups!
One of the biggest startup job platforms we can recommend is HROS.io, where you can find plenty of jobs in Vienna.

However, you can also look for the specific occupation you specialized in like software development, or for the industry that most excites you, like fintech. You can also research for specific companies if you have a favorite in your mind. Some scaleups and startups that offer the most jobs in Vienna are the fintech scaleup Bitpanda, the marketing analytics platform Adverity, the marketplace for renewed products Refurbed, and the global teaching platform GoStudent.
Don’t forget, there are also plenty of remote jobs you can apply to.

CV

Your CV or curriculum Vitae gives an overview of your work experience, study experience, additional charity work, and other relevant information, like language skills, hobbies and contact data. As you can see, it’s a very complex piece of document, therefore it has to be well structured and to the point.

In Vienna, we use the standard CV format and not the resume format typical for the US. Many people are using basic CV creators like Europass, but if you want to stand out from the crowd, I wouldn’t recommend that! The problem is, that the CV you create with Europass is a very standard, black-and-white CV – you will end up having the same CV as everyone else.

I also asked our Team Lead in Tech Recruiting, Milica Spiric, to give her opinion on the matter:

  • Recruiters have to go through many CVs daily – imagine if all of them were the same?
  • When I see the standard Europass CVs, it screams low effort since you can complete these CVs literally in minutes
  • In addition, these CVs are usually very long because you cannot customize them and make them a one-pager – which CVs should always be
  • When someone puts effort into their CV, they can give it their personal touch, and that is always nice as it immediately brings you closer to the person

So, if you want to get that competitive job you found perfectly fitting, you should take your time to come up with a more customized CV, so recruiters can remember you. We included 3 professional examples of how your CV should looks if you wish to work for a startup.

Some of the steps to consider when creating your CV are:

If you’re not a pro in Photoshop, do not worry! There are plenty of easy and free CV builder platforms where you can choose your top templates and customize them as you wish, so you can have your unique CV.

Once you’re done, I’d like to share with you two pro tips that can further help you:

Always double-check with someone

When you think you’re done with your CV, never ever forget to show it to an old colleague, friend, or fellow university student. There might be typos, and grammar mistakes, some things might not be as logical as you’d wish, or you can have design mistakes, like bad color combinations or pagination issues. Believe it or not, these things can truly determine, whether the recruiter stops reading your CV or invites you for an interview.

Create different versions of CVs

Now, this might seem like a lot of hassle, but… if you’re open to more than one type of job, you should customize your CV accordingly. As you grow in your career, not all of your past experiences might be relevant for all the job openings.

Minor things you can adjust are:

  • Leaving out your totally unrelated jobs, for example, if you were working as a barista in your student years, it might not be relevant for the product manager job you’re searching for now in Vienna.
  • Include more details about the very relevant job experiences, so you can highlight your aptitude even more.
  • You have limited space: add the skills and interests specifically needed for the job
  • Highlight the keywords that are mentioned in the job ad

Customize your CV according to the industry standards

It’s important to note, that there are some unwritten CV rules for different roles that people who are in the industry should follow. For example, people applying to finance roles usually should have no picture and a very structured black-and-white CV overall.

In general, your CV should reflect a part of yourself while still following industry standards for the role you’re applying for. The obvious examples you should avoid are when a UX/UI designer has design mistakes or the links on an engineer’s online CV don’t work.

Spread your CV

If you created your CV, be proud of it! After checking out online job platforms but having not too much luck, you can also reach out to recruiting firms. They have their own database of talents (called talent pool) and whenever startups and corporates alike look for candidates for high-profile jobs, they ask these recruiting firms to look in their database. As a result, if you’re part of this database, they can more easily find you and recommend you to the company.

For example, if you’d like to make your job search in Vienna easier, you can register and upload your CV to our database on the wecanbeheroes.io job platform. Like that, our senior recruiters can find you much easier, as well as you can indicate what you’re interested in.

You can set for instance:

  • Your desired occupation, like sales & business development
  • Your salary expectation
  • Desired location
  • And whether you’re an active or passive job seeker.

Once you’re done with this, you can also send an email to Vienna-based companies, regardless they have a job opening or not. If you found a company you like but don’t officially have open positions, just send them an initiative email where you tell them you were interested in the company and would be happy to be part of their ecosystem. A similar example email like the one below will do the trick:

“Dear Mrs/Mr., 

My name is – your name -, and I’m a very passionate professional with X years of experience, and right now I’m searching for a job in the area of – occupation -, in Vienna. I would highly appreciate it if you could take a look at my CV attached, and let me know if you have a suitable position for my skills and experience. 

Please feel free to reach out to me in case of any questions. 

Best Regards, 

– Your full name – “

Cover Letter

Once you’re done with your CV, we highly recommend you to write a cover letter. It’s a usually one-page written document, where you include:

  • The position you’re applying for
  • What job experiences and skills make you the best candidate
  • A conclusion where you express your excitement and gratefulness for the opportunity

Why you should attach a cover letter? Because a cover letter shows a sign of commitment and enthusiasm.

When I was personally recruiting a new member for our marketing department, there was a huge difference between applicants who sent a cover letter vs. the ones who did not. I slowly but surely learned, that the applicants attaching a cover letter were always more determined to find a job while the ones without a cover letter seemed to just send their CVs whenever they saw a job opening, which didn’t always fit their profile. After a while, I just started to generalize and accept the fact that cover letters were a sign for better applications.

When you write your cover letter, it’s important to find the right balance between staying professional but still unique and outstanding. With these 30+ example sentences and concrete ideas for the structure of the cover letter, your job search will be much easier!

If you also wish to gain in-depth knowledge and bring the best out of your cover letter, check out our top 10 tips for your perfect cover letter. 

Network – meet like-minded people through meetups: events

Because of COVID-19, more and more events are held online, which of course has its obvious disadvantages. But, on the other hand, you don’t have to care for boundaries, so you can really meet and listen to people from all over the world: here’s a list of events you can join.

If you want localized events, the Meetup app is a great solution to get to know people based on interest – can be professional but also on a hobby level. Another great tool is Eventbrite, where you can search specifically for Vienna – networking events. 

Network – join online groups and discussions

On social platforms like Linkedin or Stack Overflow, you can join groups and discussions, where you can either learn or excel by helping others. Many companies send their job ads in these groups when searching for a specific role. If you’re a marketing professional, for example, you can join Digital Marketing groups, Brand Marketing groups, etc. Just type in whatever you’re looking for and viola – the internet will always have options for you!

Follow your top companies on social media

You can identify a couple of top Viennese companies you like and start following them on Linkedin, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook or TikTok. If you really want to stand out, interact with their content every once in a while! Every social media manager is happy to see user interaction on their profiles.

Also, when the company has a new job opening or exciting project, you’ll be amongst the first ones to know about it if they share it on their social platforms.

Boost your Linkedin

Linkedin is one of the top platforms also in Vienna, when it comes to the virtual job market. You can do many things on Linkedin, but the most important one is that recruiters can directly reach out to you if your profile seems fitting. The requirement for this, of course, is to optimize your LinkedIn, so recruiters can find you to begin with.

You should know, that recruiters have advanced options on Linkedin to filter profiles related to job requirements. That means, once your profile is optimized, you have a much higher chance to pop up for recruiters and be offered a job opportunity.

Boost your Personal Brand

Your personal brand is every value, profession, and mindset you represent. When future employers – and anyone, really – sees your social media profiles, talks to you in an event, they will create a personal brand of you in their mind. You can effectively formulate this personal brand by consistently changing specific facts in your daily life. Examples could range from very small changes to rather resourceful ones:

  • Follow the right people on social media and repost when you find something interesting.
  • Always take care of your grammar and the way you’re interacting with people
  • Share pieces of your personal life that motivated you (keep it under professional boundaries).
  • Write articles related to your expertise – this will definitely show your aptitude! You don’t have to create your own blog for that, you can easily create an account on Medium and start publishing right away.
  • If you’re more creative, you can also create your own website – for free! – where you write about yourself, your past projects, and some articles in your industry. You don’t have to be techy for that, there are great platforms like WixWordPress and Elementor to help you with the implementation.

And if you’re a female with an entrepreneurial mindset, this article from Female Founders, the well-known Viennese startup hub & accelerator will give you great, real-life tips to boost your personal brand even more.

Prepare to learn German

Not knowing Vienna’s official language, German, will not make your job search easier. However, especially in the startup ecosystem, there is a pool of jobs where German is not required, but good English is a must.

Some companies do require German, but if you let them know that you already have a basic understanding and plan to improve your skills, they will be more open to hiring you. For that, you can check out some of the biggest German-language centers in Vienna:

You can also ask the company if they have in-house German courses or tandem programs, showing your interest in the language.

Prepare for Virtual Assessment Centre

If recruiters already approached you, they can also ask you to participate in a Virtual Assessment Centre, so they can test your skills before inviting you to the interview.

The assessment can vary between companies, in Vienna, it’s not standardized. If you want to learn more, make sure to check out this article so you can fully prepare.

Prepare for the interview

If you passed the virtual assessment center, the next step is to get prepared for the interview. Before you have the interview, make sure to:

  • Read carefully the job description and try to identify what are the skills the company is looking for
  • Research the company, so you can give examples of why you chose to apply for them
  • Prepare for the most common interview questions. Some of them are easier, like “What are your strengths?”, while some of them are harder, like “Why should we hire you?”, or “What are your weaknesses?”. There are different methods, like the STAR method, that can also help you answer these complex questions.
  • Prepare for salary negotiationThis is never the most comfortable part of the interview, but chances are high, the interviewer will ask you about your salary expectations.
  • Think about questions to ask after the interviewThe interviewer will always ask you at the end of the interview “So, do you have any questions for us?” – and that’s another moment to shine if you know what to ask!

Set up your bank account

If you got accepted to the job, you also should think about where the money will lend. You can easily open an online bank account with Revolut, or if you want a local bank account, I advise you to check out BAWAG PSK, Raiffeisen Bank, Erste Bank, and Bank Austria.

When you move to Vienna, what to do

When you secured a job, it’s time to check out how you will exactly move to Vienna, in case you haven’t done it just yet. You can either look on online platforms to find a flat, but you also have to keep in mind the legal requirements once you moved. For that, we created a complete guide on how to move to Vienna!

Conclusion

So, this is our complete guide for you if you want to move to Vienna and start a job there. As you can see, there are many steps to take, but you can also just pick the ones you found the most interesting. We just wanted to show you, the opportunities to stand out are really endless! And once you get the job you deserve, you’ll see it was all worth it.

And now, go get your dream job!

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