The phenomenon, when precisely those who were absolutely confident in their demand fly through the sieve of corporate selection, is becoming a systemic problem, especially at the first stage of resume selection. The program “Kontrovers — Die Story” conducted a detailed study, tracing the fates of two specialists representing different poles of the professional world but facing a common challenge.
For 25-year-old Munich resident Marco Huber, the collision with unemployment became a painful surprise. Behind him are several years of diligent study and a diploma in the field of fashion management, which on paper looked like a direct ticket to the high fashion industry. However, reality turned out to be less hospitable. Since January, Marco has been in an active search, which so far has not been crowned with success. “It’s not very cool to admit to those around me that I don’t have a job,” he notes, describing the psychological pressure with which a young specialist faces in the competitive environment of a metropolis.
Huber’s story is typical for many neophytes: after a successful practice, he received a fixed-term contract with a promise of enrollment in the staff. But the personnel leapfrog in the company’s management turned verbal agreements into dust. The contract term expired, and the new managers preferred not to fulfill the promises of their predecessors. The following chain of interviews brought only formal, and often automatic rejections, leaving the certified specialist in a state of uncertainty.
Growth of the Unemployment Level Due to the General Economic Situation and AI
Statistical data confirms that private stories are a reflection of deep tectonic shifts in the economy. The unemployment level in Bavaria in 2025 rose to the mark of 4 percent. Unconditionally, among holders of higher education this indicator is traditionally lower — about 2.7 percent, however the dynamics itself is frightening: the figures are steadily growing compared to previous years, destroying the myth about the inviolability of intellectual labor.
Despite the fact that Bavaria still looks more prosperous than many other federal lands, the labor market here is becoming more and more tense. According to the analytics of the Federal Labor Agency, the main triggers of the negative dynamics became the general economic instability and the rapid integration of artificial intelligence into business processes. The biggest problem of introducing new technologies is the bias of many managers by the so-called “Artificial Intelligence”. Aggressive marketing of companies creating the so-called “Artificial Intelligence” led to the fact that people sincerely believe that this system is a panacea for all business problems, and that it can easily replace specialists. Such types of companies quickly lose income and face financial problems, not to mention problems with the quality of products or provided services. In fact, we are dealing with a modern filing cabinet — a neural network. For example: Google’s neural network Gemini openly declares during communication that it is not an AI, but is an improved version of an information processing system — a language model or a neural network.
If you don’t listen to bloggers, coaches, mentors and other representatives of populist professions, essentially talkers, then you can easily find information from real scientists and professionals who authoritatively declare that AI (ed. a system having thinking, logic like a human) can be created only when a quantum computer is created. Modern capacities of even supercomputers and servers are not enough for the implementation of a thinking system. Besides this, it is impossible to completely replace a person with Artificial Intelligence. Proof of this is the implementation of professional neural networks in medicine and science. In essence, a neural network, like a future AI, is sharpened for accelerating processes during a specialist’s work — such a kind of assistant, and not a replacement. But the generation of hipsters always sincerely believes in all novelties, and learns from its own mistakes.
As a result, companies that went the way of replacing people with neural networks cannot afford the hiring of additional specialists, preferring to optimize existing staffs instead of expanding teams. On the other hand, a neural network uncontrolled by a human, an HR, often makes mistakes and discards resumes of real specialists, which the company management doesn’t even suspect.
Project Manager Sent 50 Resumes in Half a Year: “Age is Too Great”
The crisis touched not only the youth, but also those who are in the zenith of their professional form. 47-year-old Thomas Haubold, an experienced specialist in metal structures and a project manager, lost his place half a year after starting a new job. The reason turned out to be banal for the era of globalization: his department was recognized as unprofitable and put out for outsourcing.
Over the last six months, Haubold sent more than 50 resumes and went through a dozen exhausting interviews. His conclusions sound like a sentence to the hiring system: “Experience is available, but my age is simply considered too great.” Although officially personnel services never voice age discrimination as the reason for rejection (which is punishable by law), Haubold unmistakably reads this message between the lines. And young female HRs, recently graduated from university, who are often the first instance of personnel selection by resume in 99% of cases, prefer their personal views to the needs of the company in which they work.
All his life he moved from one stable company to another, but now he turned out to be in dependence on the state agency, which offers vacancies that do not correspond to his qualification. Financial fears are starting to press on the family: the budget has to be calculated to the cent, refusing the habitual standard of living.
Reduction in the Quantity of Vacancies for Highly Qualified Cadres
The problem of Haubold and thousands of other experts lies in the sharp contraction of the very market of vacancies for intellectual labor. The figures of the Federal Labor Agency look depressing: if in 2022 in Germany about 385,000 work places were open for highly qualified specialists, then by 2024 this indicator crashed to 234,000.
This means that competition for the remaining positions grew almost twice, which gives employers the opportunity to dictate harsh, and at times discriminatory conditions. In such a situation, even expert experience does not always become a weighty argument if the company is aimed at the maximum reduction of operational expenses due to hiring more “cheap” and young employees.
Unemployed Fashion Manager Becomes a Content Maker
Returning to Marco Huber, we see the reverse side of the medal: he considers his main disadvantage precisely to be youth and the absence of many years of seniority. While parents provide him with financial support, Marco lives in a communal apartment and tries to monetize his skills in the digital space. He became a content maker, recording videos about his everyday life as an unemployed person and sharing experience of passing unsuccessful interviews. His blog is not only a way of earning, but also therapy, allowing him not to feel isolated.
Radical and Discriminatory Views of Lower-Level HRs — The Main Problem During Hiring
The modern labor market of Germany demonstrates a paradoxical contradiction: on the background of business statements about the sharpest deficit of qualified cadres, thousands of high-class specialists cannot overcome the primary filter when submitting a resume. Experts and applicants more and more often point to a hidden barrier — the ideologized approach of employees of human resources departments (HR) of the lower level. We are talking about a situation when personal convictions, radical views or hidden prejudices of rank-and-file recruiters become an insurmountable obstacle for professionals whose competencies are objectively necessary for the German economy.
On conditions of anonymity, we talked with an applicant whose story clearly illustrates this systemic failure. Imagine a man (a refugee from Ukraine) of 40 years with three higher educations, practically fluently speaking four languages and completing the study of German at a high level. His professional baggage includes more than 20 years of experience in marketing, management of high-profile projects with million budgets and impeccable recommendations from leading European and American companies. Despite such an ideal profile, in two years of mass resume distribution, he did not receive a single invitation even for an introductory interview. This cognitive dissonance between the real hunger of companies for professional cadres and automatic rejections of the first instance makes one think about the quality of the work of the so-called “entry filters” in German companies.
The icing on the cake of our interlocutor became one of the last answers from one of the companies, where a young female HR made a Freudian slip: “Please do not be upset we in no case evaluated your professional qualities”, although usually the answer sounds like this: “Do not be upset, we did not want to touch your professional qualities…..”
«You know, in my life, I have visited dozens of countries; I have been fortunate enough to live and work on various foreign projects. I have always observed how and what people live for.
For the last 15 years, I was regularly invited to new projects; even if I looked for work myself, it took no more than two to three months, regardless of the country or knowledge of the national language of that country. But what I have seen in Germany is frightening — and not just to me.
I will skip ahead and anticipate the thoughts of radical commentators: I came here to be near my son, and I do not plan to change the country just because of temporary difficulties.
For over thirty years, Germany taught my country the “correct views”: civil liberties, respect for the individual, equality.
But the dynamics of social development in Germany itself, which I have noticed over 80 years, have led the Germans from ultra-right radicalism to ultra-left.
Any political scientist will tell you that there is no significant difference in radical approaches, whether they are left-wing or right-wing views.
At the same time, even those who do not agree with what is happening are forced to adapt to social trends, understanding: otherwise, they will become outcasts at the very least, and at the most — objects of harassment.
Where are those manuals now, with which developed Germany taught developing Ukraine?
In my understanding, civil liberties are not the right to break the law, guided by the principle: “I do what I want, and I don’t give a damn about others.”
And there are countless similar problems. It all starts with a lack of elementary respect for others’ space: when people in transport do not let those exiting pass, do not take off bulky backpacks (hitting the heads of seated passengers and children when turning), or crowd by the exit. And I have never met more arrogant people in my life than Bavarian cyclists.
Equality is, first and foremost, equality of opportunity regardless of gender, orientation, age, or marital status. What we see now is a transformation of sexism: now it is directed against men. We see hatred toward meat-eaters, toward people with wealth, and vice versa. I personally support only the path of equality of opportunity — and that is my legal right!
For now, radical views do not dominate everywhere, but looking at how ideologues process the youth through social networks, one can easily predict the situation in 10 years. We already see unkempt female radicals teaching young girls to be “manly.” If such a girl causes a scandal or uses force against a partner — it is presented as her right. But if a man emotionally raises his voice for a second, even begging to stop the harassment, he is automatically recognized as an “abuser.”
Has anyone thought about this?
I have spent half my life fighting opponents of democratic values and now I see that in Germany these values are completely distorted.
After I, being an exemplary father, received threats from the Jugendamt (because a female civil servant didn’t even check the information, starting communication with me as if I were a repeat offender), I am not surprised that when looking for work, personal radical sympathies and views often prevail over professionalism.»
, – our interlocutor concluded.
Ideological Quotas Against Common Sense
Communication with sources in the Munich Jobcenter and consulting companies providing coaching services for applicants confirms: the problem is of a mass character. According to insiders, in recent years a generation of young specialists has come to HR services who often transfer their personal political or social views into the professional sphere. Without the knowledge of the management and official approval of the board of directors, such employees begin to conduct their own “selection” of candidates.
The methods of this shadow filtration are diverse: from unspoken screening of resumes by age sign (hidden ageism) to the establishment of personal gender quotas. In a number of cases, recruiters intentionally ignore male resumes or candidacies of applicants with foreign names and surnames. Such a practice directly contradicts the interests of business, which needs experience and competencies, and not in compliance with subjective ideological balances imposed by employees of the initial level and being in certain circles of society a kind of trend.
Discrimination by name: a proven fact
Recently, all-German media highlighted the results of an investigation which legally confirmed the presence of systemic discrimination. A woman having a degree of Doctor of Sciences received a rejection in a large company after submitting documents under her real name. After a while, she sent the same resume, changing personal data to typically German ones, and was immediately invited for an interview. The court proceeding ended with the victory of the applicant, however this case is only the tip of the iceberg.
The situation is worsened by the introduction of artificial quotas, about which on rights of anonymity an employee of one of the large high-tech corporations told. According to him, inside HR departments decisions are sometimes made to look exclusively for representatives of certain groups — LGBT, ethnic minorities or women — simply because, in the opinion of the recruiter, there are already too many men or persons of a certain nationality in the department.
At the same time, the real lack of hands and lost profit from the absence of the necessary professional are not taken into calculation. The law prohibits segmentation by gender or national sign, but in practice its norms are observed only formally, in texts of announcements (ed. and even then not always), while the real weeding out occurs behind closed doors at the first stage of considering the application.
Budget Crisis and Personnel Deadlock
The fact that direct heads of departments often do not even know about the actions of their low-standing subordinates from HR creates a dangerous precedent. Companies spend huge funds on headhunting and coaching, while the specialists they need hang for years in databases with the mark “rejection”. This closed circle not only demotivates applicants, but also undermines the competitiveness of German business in the long-term perspective.
How to exit this deadlock, experts cannot yet say. One thing is obvious: if personal sympathies and radical views of recruiters continue to dominate over professional qualities of candidates, the economy of the region risks facing the degradation of management and engineering schools. Bavaria, traditionally considered the locomotive of progress, may find itself in a situation when technological and economic potential will be sacrificed to subjective notions about social justice of individual employees of HR departments. Bavaria risks in the long-term perspective returning to times when it was a purely agricultural and poor land.
Who is guilty in this systemic crisis — it’s for everyone to decide, but the consequences will touch all layers of society.
The situation on the labor market of Germany is at a point of bifurcation. On one side, in the coming decade 13 million “baby boomers” will go on a deserved rest, which should create a personnel deficit. On the other — automation, personal views of the new generation of recruiters and economic decline can lead to the fact that many will simply be forced to live on unemployment benefits, which will create an even greater load on the budget of the Land and the federation as a whole. What logically will lead to a budget deficit, inflation and again to a reduction of vacancies, and so in a circle.
Nevertheless, the story of Thomas Haubold received an unexpected and inspiring finale, literally a few days ago, while our material was being prepared, after months of silence he received an offer from a firm for the production of scaffolding. For the position of project manager he was accepted by a boss who is significantly younger than Haubold himself, but managed to see in his experience not a burden, but a strategic asset.
This example proves that, despite radical views popular among young HRs and modern economic shocks, human capital and fundamental knowledge remain the key link capable of convincing even the most skeptical employer.
