English-speaking employment in Finance?

Hello,

I am an American from Dallas, Tx starting out in my career. I will graduate with a Bachelor's in Economics in May, take the CFA Level I in June, and hopefully move to Frankfurt in June also (pending employment). I also have experience as an Equity Research Analyst in the US.

My boyfriend will be moving with me. He has American/German dual citizenship because his parents moved to the US before he was born. He speaks what I would call fluent German but his reading and writing skills are not up to par because he has mostly only spoken the language his entire life. I have better reading and writing skills than he does because I've had more formal German education, but I can only speak conversational German at this point (and the longer I'm away from Germany I can feel that getting rusty). I am working towards fluency, but the fact of the matter is that I won't know enough German to be comfortable in a German-speaking workplace until I've been in Germany speaking the language.

What we both need is a workplace where English is the primary language spoken while we gain mastery of German. I need to learn finance jargon in German and he will need to learn design jargon in German. I spoke to my boyfriend's mother (living in US but German citizen) and she didn't seem to think that would be a difficult thing to find. But I want more opinions than just hers. In your experience is this a hope I can dare to have?

I am anxious to start my career (I am 24, a late grad), so if I cannot find employment with my current knowledge of German then the unfortunate truth is that I will stay in the US. I know I cannot gain mastery of German without living in Germany and I cannot wait that long to apply for jobs since my expectations from reading this forum is that I need an employment waiver before I go, not after.

Any input is appreciated. Please don't be rude if it's too obvious I'm a novice at this. Moving overseas is a complicated task that I am only now really sinking my teeth into.

Thanks,

Finding work in the industry is still tough right now- start working to improve your German as you look for work to improve your chances. A couple things that helped me to build vocabulary was to buy a few German language finance books and reading annual reports of German companies and Financial Times Deutschland and the Frankfurter Allgemeine.

Of course English is extremely important, but there may be plenty of times you will have internal meetings and communication or conference calls/meetings with external parties where German is used instead of English. I have found this to be the case even working as an analyst with a firm which had English as its official language and primarily English-speaking clients. Mediocre German may also hamper your networking efforts, and in my experience you will be interviewed primarily in German anyway.

Less than optimal German at the start of your employment might be mitigated by knowledge of a third language.

You are not a late grad by German standards.

Thank you very much for your response. Great suggestion to buy a German language finance book. I'll start looking right now. Any suggestions for a good one?

You can start looking on job hunting sites like monster.de or stepstone.de which allow you to filter jobs by languages spoken. You might also have some luck with the headhunter agency Euro London http://www.eurolondon.com. They specialize in English speaking positions here in Germany although you are preferred if not required to speak some German for most of the positions. But if you have a strong grasp of German already that may not be so much of an issue.

As was mentioned, the job market is rather tough here and you will definitely benefit from speaking languages in addition to English & German. That knowledge could even get you a position at the ECB which also posts their job offers online. Unfortunately you are probably going to need to come over here for a while to actually interview as I can't imagine anyone hiring via the phone for an entry level position...unless we're talking interns.

Best of luck with your hunt, and from one Texas girl to another, don't forget to pack some sunshine to bring with you. Winters in Frankfurt are not so nice