How to check if a recruitment agency in Germany is legitimate

Which documents should you ask a recruitment agency for before you sign?

Ask a recruitment agency in Germany for these documents before you sign anything. A company that works lawfully can produce each of them without delay. If an answer stays vague, that vagueness is the result of your check.

• Full company name, legal form, address and a named contact person — on the website imprint and on the contract.
• The written placement agreement, showing the fee, who owes it and when the claim arises.
• A clear written answer on what candidates themselves pay to the agency, if anything.
• For temporary agency work: the permit document under the Arbeitnehmerüberlassungsgesetz (AÜG), the German law on hiring out workers.
• The written information the recruiter owes the candidate before the employment contract in cross-border placement, including the place of work and the collective agreements that apply (§ 299 SGB III).

Placement or temporary agency work: which provider needs a permit under the AÜG?

A provider that keeps workers on its own payroll and assigns them to you needs a permit; a recruiter that places a worker into your employment contract does not hire out workers at all. Hiring out workers in the course of a business activity is subject to permit under § 1 AÜG. The permit has to be in place before the assignment starts. The contract between provider and hirer must expressly describe the arrangement as Arbeitnehmerüberlassung, and the maximum assignment to the same hirer is 18 consecutive months.

If the permit is missing, the consequences land on you as the hirer. The contract between provider and worker is invalid, and an employment relationship between you and the worker is deemed to exist (§ 9 and § 10 AÜG). Hiring out workers without the required permit is an administrative offence. For the offences listed there the fine can reach 30,000 euros, and the customs authorities act as the administrative authority (§ 16 AÜG).

Ask the provider to show the permit document itself. A second, very concrete check follows from § 11 AÜG: when the contract with the worker is concluded, the provider must hand over the information sheet of the licensing authority, on request in the worker's mother tongue and at the provider's cost. Before each assignment it must tell the worker your company name and address in text form.

Who is allowed to charge whom: employer commission or candidate fee?

German law limits sharply what a recruiter may charge a jobseeker, while a fee agreed with you as the employer is the normal case. A jobseeker owes a fee only if the employment contract came about through the placement. The agreement must be in written form and must name the fee. The cap is 2,000 euros including VAT, with the exceptions the statute sets out; for marginal employment no fee may be demanded or accepted at all (§ 296 SGB III).

Agreements that break these rules are invalid. That covers agreements above the cap, agreements without the written form, charges for services that belong to the placement itself, and clauses that tie a jobseeker exclusively to one recruiter (§ 297 SGB III). In cross-border placement the recruiter must inform the jobseeker in writing before the employment contract, at its own cost, in a language the jobseeker understands. Without that information no fee is owed (§ 299 SGB III).

At Hirenord the employer pays the placement fee, as a commission per placed worker. The amount depends on the scope and is agreed in writing beforehand; there is no flat rate. The claim arises only once the employment contract exists. Candidates are asked for no advance payment; where statutory rules set a lower maximum fee or exclude a fee, those rules apply. You can read more on our page for employers.

Can an unlawful placement put the Federal Employment Agency's consent at risk?

Consent to employment is to be refused if the employment relationship came about through unlawful placement or recruitment. That ground, together with grounds relating to an employer's breaches of social security, tax and employment law, is set out in § 40 AufenthG. So the way your worker was recruited is not only an ethical question. It is part of what the Bundesagentur für Arbeit looks at.

Consent also requires that the foreign worker is not employed on less favourable conditions than comparable domestic employees. You must give the agency information on pay, working time and the other conditions of employment (§ 39 AufenthG). Keep the figures in the job offer, the placement file and the employment contract identical. The agency decides every case on its own, and no recruiter can take that decision for it. What a smaller company needs for this is covered in can a small company hire a foreign worker in Germany.

Which warning signs should you pass on to candidates abroad?

Tell candidates that German missions abroad charge no advance payment for an appointment or for extra services, and that no fee is charged for an employment contract. The Federal Foreign Office describes visa fraud as a business model: job contracts and visas are offered online against payment. The patterns it reports include demands for advance payment and inflated alleged visa or flight fees. They also include passports and visas faked with image editing as supposed proof, calls with spoofed embassy numbers, and alleged embassy contacts on social media.

Candidates do carry their own ordinary costs: passport, translations, visa and authority fees, and travel. That is something different from paying a stranger for a promised job. Make the difference explicit in your first conversation. A candidate who has already lost money to a fraudulent offer will be slower to trust your real one.

What must the employment contract state before your new hire signs it?

The employment contract has to set out the essential working conditions in writing, and that duty sits with you as the employer, not with the recruiter. Under § 2 NachwG the employer must record the essential terms of the employment relationship, sign the record and hand it to the employee. If a written employment contract already contains the statutory particulars, the separate record is not required to that extent. The statutory catalogue covers points such as pay, working time, place of work and the procedure for termination.

Changes to the essential terms must be communicated to the employee no later than the day they take effect (§ 3 NachwG). Use the statutory catalogue as a cross-check on your recruiter. If a partner avoids putting the place of work, the working time or the pay in writing, that becomes your problem too. The steps from first contact to the signed contract are described on how the process works.

Where can you report a recruiter that you believe is acting unlawfully?

Report suspected unlawful practice to the customs administration or to the Bundesagentur für Arbeit. The Finanzkontrolle Schwarzarbeit, the customs unit against undeclared work, checks matters including illegal hiring out of workers and minimum wage compliance. Breaches of the placement rules in the SGB III carry fines; depending on the offence, the customs administration or the Federal Employment Agency acts as the administrative authority (§ 404 SGB III). For hiring out workers without a permit, the customs authorities are the administrative authority (§ 16 AÜG).

Keep your own documentation in order before you report anything. That means the placement agreement, the correspondence about fees and the written information the candidate received. If you want to see how a placement partner answers these questions in practice, you can register as an employer and go through the details with us.