The German reference letter system

This is just nasty, because it's asymmetrical. It enables bad employers to dis disgruntled employees who might be right in their disappointment.

> someone with Doctor Professor in their title

Or Doctor Doctor Professor

The reference letter system is bullshit.

Besides, most of them are written by the employee himself upon the request of the employer (too busy, can you write it yourself and I sign it?). My advice would be: If in doubt, fake it. The chance the the company will call your previous employer are not zero but close to zero. Even if they call they would just asked if you worked there and not if the letter of recommendation is genuine.

Side Story: I remember when I applied to a (non IT) job closely related to field of expertise at BASF. I upload a shitload of documents into their nightmarish SAP application interface. A few days later I get an email: Thank you for your application but please also upload the letters or reference. I wrote back, that since I was living in the US the last years, I don't have such letters since such letters are not common there but I would be happy to provide references (from MAJOR names by the way).

They wrote back: If you don't have reference letters then we don't need you. We deleted your application from the system (an application that too a tremendous time to create thanks to the SAP application interface bullshit).

So, the bottom line:

1. Letters of reference are bullshit in most cases. If you really need them, FAKE them. No kidding! 2. Don't take this German nonsense in any way as a good example. A phone call is a better thing. In IT I assume you rarely need it. A friend told me: "If I hire somebody I don't need his resume. I just want to have a look at hit git account." 3. If you ever hear on of the Bozos from BASF or Evionik speaking in public of "not enough supply of skilled people" then you know in which category to put them.

I got offered a job in Switzerland last year. It was the weirdest experience ever.

What I suspect happened was I'd written "scrum certified" on my cv, and the job had "scrum manager" in the title, so the poor people were bound by the law of stupid to interview only people with this string in their cv.

They never asked me anything relevant. I code a bunch of languages, I can manage people, yada yada, they didn't care. I don't know why on earth they wanted to hire me after chatting briefly about my experience and doing some silly think-out-of-the-box exercise. The HR lady then proceeded to tell me about the great benefits of working for them (they pay your mortgage, not bad eh?). One of the strangest things about the interview was that the HR person was there at all, and leading it. She presented the manager, who politely said hello, and then sat there as she asked me every inane and cliche question you've ever heard.

So then it got to the documentation stage. They asked for this reference letter, which I had, but I warned them my previous employer was... Me! So obviously they shouldn't be surprised if it was a bit flattering and signed by some partner of mine. Didn't matter. Just give us the letter!

And then they also wanted my graduation certificate. Now for years I've not needed this document, I actually did not know what certificate from my school looked like. At Oxford you have to sign up for a weird Latin ceremony, which I didn't do because I'd started work the week after finishing uni. So this lady insisted on getting a signed cert from the university office. I reminded her is was over a decade ago, but no help. Luckily I was passing through anyway.

I also hinted quite strongly that it might not be the right kind of work for me, and that I might want some sort of term limited contract. Didn't seem to matter.

As others have noted, there are interim letters that you can request without reason at any time. But, there are also events that allow you to request them due to that event. For example if your team lead switches jobs, you can request an interim letter due to that, and it will be noted that this is the reason for writing it.

Those do not tip your hand and you requesting them is considered absolutely reasonable - how would your new boss of 3 months write that letter for your entire employment? These are what you use while still employed.