One year older with 40+ more questions!

Besides regular weekly Substack posts for Handpicked Berlin I recently published two important articles; one dedicated to interesting questions you could ask at your next interview for a role and the second one to celebrate one year anniversary of my newsletter. I am sending you a short preview of both.

Let's start with

What have you missed by in the last year? (more here)

The post is a 8min read, and it consists the following chapters:

1. ?? Award acceptance speech
2. ?? Facts and numbers
3. ????Berlin, Berlin, Berlin
4. ?? Money, Money, Money
5. ?? Snippets revisited
6. ?? Startups, scale-ups and others

I am adding the second and the fifth here.

2. ?? Facts and numbers

In one year we had:

• Over 1250 roles, out of which 64 were submitted by the readers! I know people found jobs this way, and it feels great!
• 400-500 career pages?of recently funded companies. I can't give an exact number, but a BIG MAJORITY were companies from Berlin and Germany.
• Countless inspiring and relevant links with?50 memes?at least I found funny. Hah.
• 1244 upvotes?for my handpicked related posts on r/berlin, the world's toughest crowd.

5. ?? Snippets revisited

I published hundreds and decided to repeat a dozen:

1. Google reviews are fake, and you can buy them, for example, at fivestar-marketing.net (#2)
2. ?? If you are moving cities in Germany, it is cheap to send stuff to yourself by DHL. Up to 31.5 kg will cost you €16.50. (#14)
3. According to ADAC, the most cost-effective times to refuel your car in Germany are between 20:00-22:00 and between 18:00-19:00. (#16)
4. ?? Jerry Seinfeld kept photos from the Hubble telescope in his writer’s room for cosmic perspective:?“It would calm me when I would start to think that what I was doing was important.”
5. How about?board games as gift ideas? My former colleague recommends Exploding Kittens, Seven Wonders, Splendor, Istanbul, Pandemic Legacy, Camel Up, and Food Chain. (#27)
6. ?? Beer lovers were warned about price hikes owing to inflation and rising ingredient costs. Stefan Fritsche of Brauereiverband Berlin-Brandenburg suggested a beer could reach €7.5 by year-end. (#38) I say bluff, but close.
7. ???? ?? I did a lot of research on?how to make an excellent Cacio e Pepe, so you do not need to. (#41)
8. How much would you need to pay Russian soldiers to defect?for EU citizenship? $100k would cost $20B. An interesting thought experiment. (#46)
9. ?? I?used a mobile stamp for the first time. You simply buy it with an app and write the code on your letter. And we complain that Germany is not digitized?! (#39)
10. ?? You can save a lot of money (€100+) by changing your shower head. But first, you must?get access to the Stiftung Warentest test. (#47)
11. A fine article and Substack discovered randomly:?Why do women have breasts??(#48)
12. Why is Germany a rich country? (????), a great wake-up call and a case for humility from 5 years ago. A fun fact:?Made in Germany?was considered shit in the 19th century, a cheap copy-paste of the products from the UK. (#46)

Read the rest here. And do not forget to subscribe!

The next article

Collection of 40+ questions to ask at a job interview (more here)

is self explanatory. But just to make sure: it is for interviewees. ??

Executive summary:

1. do your research (Google, LinkedIn, rating sites, limited ChatGPT)
2. prepare several questions
3. follow-up if needed

Here are some of my favourite questions:

1. Why do you like to show up each day?
2. What would you change in the way your company is run?
3. Why would you recommend this role to your children or nephews?
4. What would you say is the current biggest pain point?
5. What would be your expectation in my first 100 days?

There are plenty more (40+) here.

I hope you found them interesting and useful. Let me know!

Thanks for reading! ??