When Gabriele M. went from Milan to Munich in summer of 2021, he came for love: he followed his wife who settled here for professional reasons. At this time, Corona still had a big impact on personal life, that’s why looking for a job was not quite easy...
Get ahead professionally with an amiga Job Buddy and learn from each other culturally
Susanne Nguyen
Publish on : 09 -06-2022
Jamila came to Germany from Afghanistan in 2019 – in her luggage: a package of womanpower, with a bachelor’s and master’s degree and a lot of professional experience. However, the path in Germany is rocky for all those who are not familiar with the German job market. With the help of Job Buddy Dastin S., Jamila makes her way through the Munich job and career jungle and exchanges ideas with the expert in the field of (further) education and media psychology.
When Jamila came to amiga in May 2021 via the Caritas migration advisory service, she had a clear goal: to conquer the German job market as quickly as possible. After all, the Afghan woman has a master’s degree in education – a “privilege” in her home country – and a lot of professional experience: most recently as a Quality Assurance Manager at a Canadian organization for women and as a coordinator at an international education project for aid and development.
However, access to the labour and job market in Germany is initially a closed book for the education expert. That’s why amiga suggests her to participate in a Job Buddy programme with Dastin – Dastin is professionally also firmly anchored in education: e.g. as a freelance lecturer at the Hochschule Fresenius, University of Applied Sciences. As Head of Products at Hypercampus, he drives digital training in the healthcare sector. Previously, he also has been working for amiga and set up a precursor to the current job buddy programme (called “Experts4Expats”).
“amiga Job Buddy Programme is really good, it means a world to me,” explains Jamila. With the help of Dastin, she is able to adapt the CV and cover letter to the German format. “In Afghanistan, for example, the CV is very long, a cover letter is not usual and the use of a photo was new to me,” she explains. At the side of her Job Buddy, Jamila also optimizes her social media profile for recruiters and gets to know Munich companies and organizations in the education sector. Dastin also encourages Jamila to complete her B1 German language course, to fine-tune her PC and IT skills and to get new impetus in the field of project management. “Dastin gave me great support, on good days as well as on difficult days,” says Jamila.
However, the Job Buddy Programme is by no means one-sided: “For me, the discussions with Jamila are very exciting. I learned a lot from her,” explains Dastin. Through Jamila, he gets authentic and multi-faceted insights into the country of Afghanistan that are different from what is usually reported in the western media. He also uses this, for example, in his seminars on media psychology at Hochschule Fresenius, University of Applied Sciences. Jamila also teaches him Farsi or Dari – the Persian official and majority language in Afghanistan. By the way, the experienced pedagogue has language skills in Hindi, Pashtun and Urdo! With so much language competence on the one hand, Dastin would also appreciate more openness on the employer side: “Many job advertisements are in German – I wished that more employers would also advertise jobs in English.”
Jamila and Dastin took part in an amiga Job Buddy Programme. If you are also interested in a job buddy, please contact Cetty from amiga. . She is also happy to answer your questions 😉
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