Finding staff without job ads
The skilled worker you need is job hunting on their phone tonight.
They type a trade and a town into Google, or ask ChatGPT. We put your vacancy there, with the pay, on your own domain and without an ad budget.
01 Where people look for work
Anyone looking for a job first sees a box of vacancies.
On Google the box sits above the links. ChatGPT builds its answer from job boards and the websites of employers. We measured both for two therapy practices in Germany, one in Berlin and one in Halle (Saale).
9 out of 9
job searches in Berlin showed the jobs box above the links. The physiotherapy practice we measured for appeared in none of them.
Our own measurement · Google, German searches such as “physiotherapeut jobs berlin” and “physiotherapeut stellenangebote berlin” · 22 September 2026
40–45%
of the sources ChatGPT and Perplexity used to answer job seekers’ questions were job boards and salary sites. Employers’ own websites came next, at 36 to 40%. ChatGPT named the practice in Halle when asked about pay, which is where its careers page gives concrete figures.
Our own analysis · 32 answers from ChatGPT and Perplexity with web search · Berlin 29 September, Halle 2 and 3 October 2026
€26
an hour was the wage on one of the cards in the jobs box, and another said up to €30 an hour. That means the pay is visible in the list before anyone opens an ad.
Our own measurement · cards visible in the jobs box, Berlin · 22 September 2026
Both measurements come from healthcare. For other trades the pattern is plausible, though we have not measured it there.
The labour market in Germany
369,516
vacancies for qualified workers had no suitably qualified unemployed person to fill them in 2025, averaged over the year. That was one vacancy in three. In building electrics it was 75.6% of open vacancies.
IW Köln / KOFA, annual review 2025, 25 March 2026 · Germany
156 days
is the average time a vacancy registered with the Federal Employment Agency stayed unfilled in the latest figures. That is more than five months.
Bundesagentur für Arbeit, monthly report September 2026 · October 2025 to September 2026 · Germany
€1,449
is the list price of a single job ad on StepStone, running for 30 days.
StepStone, price page for single job ads (Pro package), accessed 8 October 2026 · Germany
02 Where applications get lost
Applicants decide on five questions. If an answer is missing, they keep looking.
Below is the same vacancy twice, as an example. On the left it is written the way many job ads are. On the right it answers each of the five questions.
Electrician (m/f/d) wanted
We are looking for motivated staff (m/f/d) to strengthen our team.
Electrician (m/f/d), full-time, Hannover
Electrical installation in residential buildings and small commercial premises.
Example, not a real business · illustrative figures
On the first question
14.67%
of job ads on Indeed Germany stated a salary explicitly in August 2026.
Indeed Hiring Lab, Pay Transparency Tracker · data as of 16 September 2026 · Germany
The EU Pay Transparency Directive gives job applicants the right to be told the starting pay or its range, for example in the job ad, before the interview or in some other way. Under the directive, employers may not ask applicants about their pay history.
Directive (EU) 2023/970, Art. 5 · Official Journal of the EU, 17 May 2023
EU countries had until 7 June 2026 to bring it into national law. Germany missed that deadline. In early July 2026 the German government said a draft bill had been prepared.
German Bundestag, document 21/7026 of 8 July 2026 · as of 8 October 2026
On the fifth question
Apply without a CV, from a phone in under two minutes.
Someone who finds a vacancy on their phone in the evening rarely has their CV with them as a file. So the short application asks for three things. You cover everything else in the first phone call.
Every application lands in your client portal. There you can see who has applied and who is still waiting to hear back.
78% of job seekers regularly read job ads on their smartphone. 20.9% drop out if the mobile experience falls short.
StepStone Germany, Hiring Trends Index Q4 2024, published 30 April 2025 · provider data, sample size not stated
03 What we build
A careers page on your domain, where Google and ChatGPT read your vacancies.
The careers page is one of six building blocks we set up for a business. To see how it works together with the website, the Google profile and the monthly measurement, read how we build it.
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A page of its own for every vacancy
Each vacancy page answers the five questions applicants ask. Domain, texts and logins are in your business’s name.
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Vacancies marked up in the code
Job title, location, employer, pay and working hours sit in the code of each vacancy page, in the format Google reads for its jobs box. When we checked 244 company websites ourselves, the vacancies of two businesses showed up in Google Jobs.
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The short application
Three details from a phone, with no CV and no account. Every application lands in your client portal.
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Sentences ChatGPT can pick up
Pay, working hours and how the work is organised appear on the page as full sentences with figures. In that form, ChatGPT can use them when it answers an applicant’s question.
How businesses get named in AI answers -
A measurement every month
You see whether your vacancies are in the jobs box and whether ChatGPT names your business when applicants ask. We ask each question several times, because the answers vary. When we asked the same ten applicant questions in Halle on two days, ChatGPT named the practice we measured for in three answers on the first day and in four on the second.
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New vacancies through the client portal
You enter a new vacancy in the client portal, check it in the preview and approve it. You don’t need an ad budget for that.
What owners ask us before they start.
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01 Is this a recruiting agency?
No. A recruiting agency runs ads and delivers applications for as long as you pay. We build the careers page and the vacancy markup on your domain, and both stay with you. If you are in healthcare and need to fill a role fast, a paid campaign from our sister brand Blacklyne Recruiting will serve you better. Its site is in German. -
02 What if nobody applies anyway?
Then the monthly measurement shows where it gets stuck. Either the vacancy isn’t found, or it is found and not opened, or people give up halfway through applying. Each case has a different fix. We make no promise on the number of applications. The promise we do make is “If nothing moves within eight weeks of going live, we keep working without the monthly fee until it does.” -
03 How fast does it work?
The careers page goes live seven days after you sign off text and images. A vacancy is then marked up and can be found within days. It takes a few weeks before it is found regularly. At FPZ Rückentherapie in Halle the first application came in four days after the page went live. If a role has to be filled this week, a paid ad is the faster route. -
04 We already have a careers page.
Then before the strategy call we look at what it says and at the code underneath. Often the markup that gets a vacancy into the jobs box is missing, or the page doesn’t answer the five questions applicants ask. In many cases both can be added without rebuilding the page. We’ll tell you on the call whether that works for you. -
05 Do we have to state the pay in the vacancy?
The EU Pay Transparency Directive gives applicants the right to be told the starting pay or its range. The directive names the job ad as one possible way, alongside telling them before the interview or in some other way. EU countries had until 7 June 2026 to bring it into national law, and Germany missed that deadline. What this means for your business in Germany is a question for a lawyer. Whatever the law ends up saying, the cards in Google’s jobs box already show pay in the list, and in August 2026 only 14.67% of job ads on Indeed Germany stated a salary explicitly. -
06 Does that mean we no longer need job boards?
Keep using the job board of the Federal Employment Agency (Bundesagentur für Arbeit). In our measurement in Halle it was the source ChatGPT used most often for general questions from job seekers. The monthly measurement will show you whether you need paid ads on top.
Three businesses rank ahead of you. None of them does better work.
Anyone searching in your town sees a handful of names. If yours is not among them, the job is gone before you hear about it. On the call we tell you why.
What happens on the call
- Beforehand we check where you stand on Google and on the map, who gets named in your town instead, and what someone searching actually finds answered on your site.
- On the call we go through it together – on your site, not on slides. You see which enquiries are passing you by today, and why.
- At the end you have what needs doing, in what order, and what it costs. If it does not add up for you, we say so – that happens.