German Job Research Articles

Номинации профессиональной деятельности в русском и немецком дискурсах трудоустройства

The article examines the employment discourse features on the example of vacancies on Internet sites, namely professional activity nominations, in a comparative aspect of Russian and German linguistic cultures. The relevance of the research is due to the significance and popularity of vacancy texts within the employment discourse, as well as its development and modification in connection with the transition to an online format. The comparative approach allows us to consider the specifics of vacancy texts, both in sociolinguistic and linguacultural aspects. The aim of the study is to identify sociolinguistic and linguacultural features of professional activity nominations in vacancy announcements in the Russian and German employment discourse. The research material is presented by Russian and German job advertisements, namely, professional activity nominations, collected by a continuous sampling method in the amount of 500 texts. The methodological basis of the study is also cognitive-discursive and comparative analyses. The authors find that even at the level of professional activity titles, the German employment discourse is closer to the institutional discourse, where the gender component is represented as a sociolinguistic and linguacultural feature. The Russian discourse of employment is closer to everyday discourse, which is manifested in the designation of professional activity directly by the compilers of advertisements. By sociolinguistic features, the authors of the article understand the statistics of the most popular professions and activities, taking into account such aspects as the applicant’s education, gender, and other socially significant characteristics and skills. Linguistically, the authors systematize the communicative features of the nominations in terms of linguistic means at different levels, implementing the employment discourse tactics, obeying the social and linguistic norms of national culture. The most expressive and popular language tools in Russian linguaculture, especially in the field of naming the types of proposed activities, include occasional job nominations and borrowings. The reasons for this type of nominations are discussed in detail by the authors in the article.

Cultural values and the P-O fit: comparative NLP analysis of German online job advertisements

PurposeWithin the Person-Organization fit framework and Signalling Theory, this study investigates the performance of word dictionaries detecting cultural values in online job advertisements as one form of external communication of an organization. Based upon a merge of the dictionaries, a corporate value analysis of Germany is conducted.Design/methodology/approachThe study builds on a dataset (n > 151 k) of online job advertisements which were scraped from a German job portal. It was pre-processed according to natural language processing standards. For analysing the values of an organization a dictionary based word count was applied. Therefore, the current state-of-the-art dictionaries were tested, and an enhanced dictionary was developed and translated from English to German. Finally, a cluster analysis was conducted.FindingsThis study supports the possibility of measuring cultural values in texts where the enhanced dictionary based on Ponitzovskiy shows the best results. It thereby supports the use of the Universal Value Structure model (Schwartz, 1992) as well as the Signalling Theory (Guest et al., 2021), that values spread across 10 core or 4 aggregated dimensions are communicated via online job advertisements. Finally, the study offers a profile of the German corporate culture average as well as 4 cultural clusters and separate organizations, all with different profiles.Originality/valueThis study develops an enhanced dictionary based on a large dataset of online job advertisements for analysing the external communication of values or culture of an organization for improving the Person-Organization fit.

Образ учителя в немецкоязычном и русскоязычном дискурсе трудоустройства (на материале объявлений о вакансиях)

This article is devoted to a comparative analysis of the representation of the image of a foreign language teacher in the employment discourse in two linguistic cultures. The relevance of the research topic is due to transformations in the educational sphere, the trend towards increasing the importance and prestige of the teaching profession in the Russian society, as well as the need for competent training in intercultural communication skills in the modern world. The purpose of this article is to identify the content components of the teacher’s image and the features of their representation in job advertisement texts. The research material was Russian and German job advertisements for foreign language teachers in the amount of 300 texts. The methodological basis of the study is the cognitive and discursive paradigm. In accordance with the goal, the comparative analysis method was used in the work. The authors believe that in the Russian linguistic culture one can distinguish the image of a secondary school teacher and a teacher or tutor in private schools. Consequently, the content components of the image, which include professional competencies, personal qualities, and working conditions, will differ: a private school teacher is presented as a creative, motivated teacher who is provided with both methodological support and various digital tools. A secondary school teacher is a person who performs not only pedagogical tasks, but also organization and management work. A comparative analysis showed that in the German employment discourse, a teacher is, first of all, a “team player.” The main difference between the images of a teacher represented in German job advertisements is the so-called “gender neutrality”. In the Russian employment discourse, a trend has been noted towards the transition of foreign language teaching to an online format. In the pragmalinguistic aspect, in both linguistic cultures, age restrictions are revealed through an informal address to a potential employee, while in German job advertisements, emotional and evaluative vocabulary explicates the employer’s interest.

Limits of Activation? Street-Level Responses to the 2015 Refugee Challenge in German Job Centers

Frontline workers in host-country state organizations influence refugees’ life chances and social integration. Yet little is known about how the local organizational environment shapes the action orientations of street-level bureaucrats (SLBs). This article explores how German job centers and placement officers have responded to the unprecedented increase in refugee clients following the winter of 2015/16. Our findings suggest that new organizational structures motivate SLBs to interpret rules flexibly and do what works well. This pattern of authorized rule bending is relevant for overcoming the limits of activation and for the inclusion/exclusion of refugees as mediated by state bureaucracy.

International Mobility as a Perspective for Young Graduates from Georgia: Analysing Employability for the German Job Market

International Mobility as a Perspective for Young Graduates from Georgia: Analysing Employability for the German Job Market

Diſputiren und Responsibilisieren in der mitteldeutschen Hiob-Paraphrase

ZusammenfassungDie so genannte Hiob-Paraphrase ist eine wohl 1338 von einem Anonymus im Kontext des Deutschordens fertiggestellte, mitteldeutsche Bearbeitung der biblischen Vorlage, welche sie in über 15.000 Versen nicht nur ausführlich und zum Teil in recht wörtlicher Übersetzung wiedererzählt, sondern die sie auch durch zahlreiche, in den Text eingewobene Versatzstücke aus der Kommentartradition und eigene Deutungen erweitert und perspektiviert. Der Beitrag untersucht, wie dieser Text Narrative der Verantwortung beim Wiedererzählen des biblischen Stoffes sowohl im Kontext des Erzählens biblischer Offenbarung als auch dem der Interpretation des Offenbarten als zwei Seiten eines poetisch-hermeneutischen Problems modelliert. Dabei geht es dem Text um die Herstellung von Eindeutigkeit, mit der eine ästhetische Verantwortung für die angemessene Gestaltung der Wiedererzählung des Hiobbuches einhergeht. Dessen wesentlich dialoghafte narratio beziehungsweise disputatio bedingt schließlich eine im Erzählstoff verbürgte Vielstimmigkeit, die es einerseits narrativ auszustellen und andererseits interpretierend einzuhegen gilt, um der Verantwortung für die Arbeit am heiligen Text adäquat nachzukommen.

Attention to multilingual job ads: an eye-tracking study on the use of English in German job ads

Abstract In many non-English-speaking countries, English loanwords in job ads seem to be very common. The question is whether this linguistic choice is advantageous, especially when the job advertised does not involve working in an international environment. Previous research of English loanwords in job ads has revealed that their effect in terms of the evaluation of the company, the job and the ad is limited if effects can be shown at all. Suggestions that English loanwords draw readers’ attention because this language choice deviates from what readers expect and, in addition, take more processing time (because they are foreign) lack empirical evidence. The eye-tracking and behavioural data of our experiment did not provide any empirical evidence for the attention-drawing function of English loanwords nor an influence on their effectiveness in job ads geared to graduate students in Germany. We suggest that loanwords need a certain amount of processing to be identified as foreign. This means they are different from other salient cues that were shown to draw readers’ attention because they are not subject to automatic processes. In addition, our participants were sufficiently proficient in English so that differences in processing time were not reflected in their eye-movement data.

The ‘German Job Miracle’ and Its Impact on Income Inequality: A Decomposition Study

The ‘German Job Miracle’ and Its Impact on Income Inequality: A Decomposition Study

“No German, No Service”: EU Migrants’ Unequal Access to Welfare Entitlements in Germany

While existing research has analysed the intersecting migration and social security law, which stratifies migrants’ formal social entitlements, less work has been done on the informal stratifications beyond the law that determine substantive social rights. This article illustrates the informal barriers to de facto benefit receipt that intra‐EU migrant citizens may experience when claiming social assistance in local German job centres, regardless of their manifest legal entitlements. Focussing on informal, yet commonly institutionalised practices of language discrimination, analysis of 103 qualitative, in‐depth interviews reveal recurring patterns of administrative exclusion beyond individual instances of discriminatory behaviour. The unwritten rules and everyday practices shaping administrators’ claims‐processing routines often go against what the law or administrative procedures proscribe, and could be considered as forms of discrimination. The former may be explained by institutional constraints, such as a performance‐orientedmanagement culture, legalistic claims‐processing, or superficial diversity policies. By shedding light on how inequalities in access are constructed in daily administrative practice, this article adds to existing empirical knowledge on how informal inequalities in access emerge at different stages of the benefit claiming process, in contrast to formal social rights on paper, as well as social administrations’ handling of diversity in a context of transnational social protection.

Why a labour market boom does not necessarily bring down inequality: putting together Germany's inequality puzzle

AbstractAfter an economically tough start to the new millennium, Germany experienced an unprecedented employment boom after 2005, only stopped by the COVID‐19 pandemic. Persistently high levels of inequality despite a booming labour market and drastically falling unemployment rates constituted a puzzle, suggesting either that the German job miracle mainly benefitted individuals in the mid‐ or high‐income range or that other developments offset the effects of the drastically improved labour market conditions. The present paper solves this puzzle by breaking down the observed changes in the distribution of disposable incomes between 2005–06 and 2015–16 into the contributions of eight different factors, one of them being the employment boom. Our results suggest that, while the latter did have an equalising impact, it was partially offset by the disequalising impact of other factors, and substantially dampened by the transfer system. Our results point to a strong role of the German transfer system as a distributional stabiliser implying that, if the COVID‐19 shock were to persistently reverse all the employment gains that occurred during the boom, this would only have a moderately disequalising effect on the distribution of net incomes.

“No German, No Service”: EU Migrants’ Unequal Access to Welfare Entitlements in Germany

While existing research has analysed the intersecting migration and social security law, which stratifies migrants’ formal social entitlements, less work has been done on the informal stratifications beyond the law that determine substantive social rights. This article illustrates the informal barriers to de facto benefit receipt that intra‐EU migrant citizens may experience when claiming social assistance in local German job centres, regardless of their manifest legal entitlements. Focussing on informal, yet commonly institutionalised practices of language discrimination, analysis of 103 qualitative, in‐depth interviews reveal recurring patterns of administrative exclusion beyond individual instances of discriminatory behaviour. The unwritten rules and everyday practices shaping administrators’ claims‐processing routines often go against what the law or administrative procedures proscribe, and could be considered as forms of discrimination. The former may be explained by institutional constraints, such as a performance‐orientedmanagement culture, legalistic claims‐processing, or superficial diversity policies. By shedding light on how inequalities in access are constructed in daily administrative practice, this article adds to existing empirical knowledge on how informal inequalities in access emerge at different stages of the benefit claiming process, in contrast to formal social rights on paper, as well as social administrations’ handling of diversity in a context of transnational social protection.

Anglicisms in German job advertisements (with a focus on English job titles)

Anglicisms in German job advertisements (with a focus on English job titles)

Parameters of Attention at Work (PAW36)\u2014Construction of a Questionnaire

Assessing occupational demands of attention plays a vital role in job analysis which is mandatory to assess and optimize person-job fit. In this article, we aim to contribute to this field by presenting a novel questionnaire, Parameters of Attention at Work (PAW36). It is a German job analysis tool (a yet untested English translation is provided) that enables the differentiated assessment and interpretation of thoroughly derived task-oriented parameters (attentional job characteristics). A stepwise construction, using a pretesting sample (N = 268) followed by the main study with German adults (N = 800), and cross-validation resulted in a final version of 36 items loading on seven subscales that reflect task-oriented attentional demands at work. Initial validation efforts indicate that the PAW36 questionnaire is a useful and generally applicable assessment tool—e.g., in the field of job analysis or job design—both for practitioners and researchers.

Medical informatics labor market analysis using web crawling, web scraping, and text mining

ObjectivesThe European University Association (EUA) defines “employability” as a major goal of higher education. Therefore, competence-based orientation is an important aspect of education. The representation of a standardized job profile in the field of medical informatics, which is based on the most common labor market requirements, is fundamental for identifying and conveying the learning goals corresponding to these competences. MethodsTo identify the most common requirements, we extracted 544 job advertisements from the German job portal, STEPSTONE. This process was conducted via a program we developed in R with the “rvest” library, utilizing web crawling, web extraction, and text mining. After removing duplicates and filtering for jobs that required a bachelor's degree, 147 job advertisements remained, from which we extracted qualification terms. We categorized the terms into six groups: professional expertise, soft skills, teamwork, processes, learning, and problem-solving abilities. ResultsThe results showed that only 45% of the terms are related to professional expertise, while 55% are related to soft skills. Studies of employee soft skills have shown similar results. The most prevalent terms were programming, experience, project, and server. Our second major finding is the importance of experience, further underlining how essential practical skills are. ConclusionsPrevious studies used surveys and narrative descriptions. This is the first study to use web crawling, web extraction, and text mining. Our research shows that soft skills and specialist knowledge carry equal weight. The insights gained from this study may be of assistance in developing curricula for medical informatics.

Why a Labour Market Boom Does Not Necessarily Bring Down Inequality: Putting Together Germany&Apos;S Inequality Puzzle

After an economically tough start into the new millennium, Germany experienced an unprecedented employment boom after 2005 only stopped by the COVID-19 pandemic. Persistently high levels of inequality despite a booming labour market and drastically falling unemployment rates constituted a puzzle, suggesting either that the German job miracle mainly benefitted individuals in the mid- or high-income range or that other developments offset the effects of the drastically improved labour market conditions. The present paper solves this puzzle by breaking down the observed changes in the distribution of disposable incomes between 2005/06 and 2015/16 into the contributions of eight different factors, one of them being the employment boom. Our results suggest that, while the latter did have an equalising impact, it was partially offset by the disequalising impact of other factors and substantially dampened by the tax and transfer system. Our results point to a strong role of the German tax and transfer system as a distributional stabilizer implying that, if the COVID-19 shock were to persistently reverse all the employment gains that occurred during the boom, this would only have a moderately disequalising effect on the distribution of net incomes.

A Study of Education Reform and Industry in the West Germany in the 1960s and 1970s

이 연구는 1960, 1970년대 서독 교육개혁과 산업계의 관계를 다루고 있다. 오랫동안 산업계는 독일의 교육정책에 막강한 영향력을 행사하는 집단으로 상정되었다. 특히 전통적인 계급구조를 옹호하고 개혁을 반대했던 것으로 기술되어 있다. 그러나 1950년대 후반부터 독일의 사회경제는 거대한 변화를 경험하게 된다. 대량소비사회의 도래와 3차 산업의 발전은 계층구분의 약화와 산업구조의 전환을 야기했고, 그 결과 서독의 직업시장은 보다 높은 교육을 받은 노동력을 대규모로 요구하게 되었다. 이러한 구조적 변화에 산업계는 보수진영에 속한 세력들 중에서도 빠르게 대응하였다. 교육팽창은 물론이고 전통적인 학교시스템의 개혁을 요구했던 것이다. 본고는 서독 교육개혁과 산업계의 관계를 새롭게 조망해보고자 하였다. 무엇보다 교육개혁에 대한 산업계의 입장과 그것의 변화를 다루고 있다. 더 나아가 교육영역에서 산업계가 추구하는 근본적인 가치가 무엇이고, 그것이 얼마만큼 교육정책에 관철되었는가를 분석하였다. 1960년대 초부터 경제단체들은 교육제도 현대화를 위한 국가의 투자를 요구하고, 모든 사회집단에 이를 지지해줄 것을 촉구했다. 그리고 기존에 직업교육으로 한정되었던 교육영역에 대한 경제단체들의 관여는 일반학교 교육으로 확장되었다. 중등학교 과정에서 새로운 경제 질서에 긍정적이고 기업에 친화적인 교육환경을 만들려 애썼다. 그러나 산업계의 교육개혁에 대한 지지는 1970년대 초반을 지나면서 약화되었다. 고등인력의 수요 충족, 성장둔화에 의한 재정적 부담 증가, 사민당 정부와의 갈등이 그 원인으로 작용했다. 그것은 종합학교 도입에 대한 경제계의 부정적인 시각으로 이어지게 되었다. 산업계는 변화된 경제 환경에 적합한 효율적인 학교교육을 선호하였으며, 무엇보다 기업의 이익을 우선시하였다. 그리고 충분한 인적자원을 양산하고 기업에 친화적인 시스템을 위한 교육정책을 원했다. 그렇지만 산업계의 경제지향적 요구는 시민사회의 저항을 부르기도 하였다.This article researches the relationship between education reform and industry in West Germany in the 1960s and 1970s. Traditionally, industry has been regarded as a group that exerts a powerful influence on German education policy. It has been described as defending the old social class structure and opposing reform. However, starting in the late 1950s, the German social economy experienced enormous changes. The advent of a mass consumption society and the development of tertiary industries led to a weakening of the hierarchical division and a shift in the industrial structure. As a result, the West German job market faced a demand for many workers with higher education. The industry responded quickly to this change, even among conservatives. Along with the expansion of education, it even called for reform of the traditional school system. This study takes a new look at the relationship between education reform and industry in West Germany. Above all, it covers industry s position on education reform and its changes. Furthermore, it analyzes what fundamental values the industry places on in the field of education and how much such values were implemented in education policy. In the early 1960s, economic associations requested state investment in modernizing the education system and urged all social groups to support it. In addition, the involvement of economic associations in the field of education, which had previously been limited to vocational education, was extended to general school education. During secondary school, they tried to create an environment that was positive for the new economic order and business friendly. However, industry’s support for educational reform has weakened since the early 1970s due to satisfying the demands of manpower with a higher education, the increase of financial burdens caused by slow economic growth, and conflict with the Social Democratic Party government. This also led to a negative view of industry on the introduction of the “Gesamtschule.” The industry preferred efficient school education suitable for the changed economic environment but prioritized the interests of companies. It wanted education policies for a system that mass-produced human resources and that was business friendly. However, an economic-oriented request by industry often brought resistance from civil society.

Analyzing Sentiments of German Job References

Filling a vacancy takes a lot of (costly) time. Automated preprocessing of applications using artificial intelligence technology can help to save time, e.g., by analyzing applications using machine learning algorithms. We investigate whether such systems are potentially biased in terms of gender, origin, and nobility. Using a corpus of common German reference letter sentences, we investigate two research questions. First, we test sentiment analysis systems offered by Amazon, Google, IBM and Microsoft. All tested services rate the sentiment of the same template sentences very inconsistently and biased at least with regard to gender. Second, we examine the impact of (im-)balanced training data sets on classifiers, which are trained to estimate the sentiment of sentences from our corpus. This experiment shows that imbalanced data, on the one hand, lead to biased results, but on the other hand, under certain conditions, can lead to fair results.

Seeking Employment in a Non-Native Language

In 2015, over a million refugees arrived in Germany. After settling into their new environments, these refugees needed to find employment. The search for work, and the orientation to the German job market, increasingly takes place on the Internet requiring language skills and digital competence. The purpose of this study is to examine the online information seeking strategies of refugees in Germany and barriers that affect a successful search. The study builds on data collected from an online study with seven refugees solving different tasks. Search queries for each participant were recorded and analyzed using an approach of both the mixed and grounded theory method. Participants did not follow any observable systematic strategy but relied on supporting tools such as the search engine for providing suggestions or corrections and translation websites. Participants mainly used three formulation tactics: copying, suggestions, and autonomous formulating. The formulation of the query seemed to be the most challenging to the participants.

Do job creation schemes improve the social integration and well-being of the long-term unemployed?

In this paper, we analyze the effects of a German job creation scheme (JCS) on the social integration and well-being of long-term unemployed individuals. Using linked survey and administrative data for participants and a group of matched non-participants, we find significant positive effects of being employed within this program. Participants with health impairments or an above-average duration of welfare dependence benefit more. The effects decline over the course of the program, which is explained by an increase in both the share of participants who leave the program, and of control individuals who find a job. The results suggest that JCSs should target those with the lowest employment prospects.

Drug prevention in Lower Saxony: stakeholders perspectives on performance and potential

Addiction is associated with health-related and social risks. The interministerial harmonized Lower Saxon concept on drug prevention was most recently revised in 2008 and is predominantly implemented by drug counselling services, drug prevention specialists, the police, self-help groups, corporate addiction prevention, child welfare, and local prevention committees. The study aimed at providing the necessary information for an intended enhancement of the Lower Saxon concept on drug prevention. Descriptive analysis of the ratings of asample of 459 stakeholders involved in preventive activities who completed an online questionnaire on the current performance of Lower Saxon drug prevention. Moderate levels of success have been rated in terms of the achievement of selected preventive goals as well as certain quality standards. An additional need for drug prevention was described for several target groups, including children living in families with adrug-addicted family member, youth aged between 13 and 17, refugees, children with poor educational background, people suffering from mental illness, trainees and university students, as well as the unemployed. In comparison to other institutions, German employment offices, job centers, and churches were nominated to alesser extent as being responsible for executing drug prevention. Participants saw great potential in amore consistent implementation of current regulations on advertisement, access, and consumption as well as for additional situation-based-prevention. In addition, stakeholders felt restricted in their preventive work due to financial constraints and alack of recourse in terms of evaluation and documentation. Disregarding their various institutional backgrounds participants had acommon agreement when evaluating the questions. Differences led back to their deferring public service obligations.