Going to Germany without an agency: the full, honest route from search to visa

Doing it alone is not a hack, it is the normal route

No German law requires you to go through an intermediary. A company receives your application, interviews you and signs a contract: the process is the same for someone from Casablanca as for someone from Cologne. The German embassy in Rabat goes further on its page about the apprenticeship visa: it warns against placement agencies charging high fees and states that such offers do not in any case increase your chances of success. And German law is more explicit still: under § 296a SGB III, a fee for apprenticeship placement may only be charged to the employer. That covers being put in touch with a company — not the preparation of an application file, which remains a service you may pay for if you choose to.

Read that sentence for exactly what it says: it is about the chances of success of the visa application. Nobody — no agency, no cousin already living there — influences a consular officer's decision. German law and the documents in your file decide. If someone sells you a visa, the promise is false before it is even expensive, and that is the anti-scam reflex to keep all year.

The rest of this page walks the whole route, from the first job portal to filing in Rabat through TLScontact, which is mandatory for any national visa. It also says, without softening, where things actually break when you are on your own: German, money, sworn translations, and staying consistent for months. Nothing here requires paying anyone to apply it.

Where to find apprenticeship openings, for free

Three official portals cover most of the market, all browsable without an account and without paying. The Ausbildungssuche and Jobsuche of the Bundesagentur für Arbeit, on arbeitsagentur.de, are the largest pool. Meine Ausbildung in Deutschland — the former IHK-Lehrstellenbörse, now at meine-ausbildung-in-deutschland.de — gathers openings from the chambers of commerce and industry: industry, trade, services, office roles. The Lehrstellenradar of the chambers of skilled crafts, which also exists as an app, covers around 130 craft occupations.

The counters on their home pages change daily and depend on filters — treat them as an order of magnitude, never as a stable number. What matters more is that the three pools overlap only partly and none contains everything: crafts are poorly represented on the chambers of commerce and industry portal, and office roles are almost absent from the Lehrstellenradar. Searching only one of the three means missing a whole slice of the market — each lists companies the other two do not.

The fourth source is the company's own website. In Germany, every commercial website must publish an Impressum with a name, a physical postal address and a fast electronic means of contact including an e-mail address — that is § 5 of the Digitale-Dienste-Gesetz, in force since 14 May 2024. Know what that address is, though: a general one, often info@ or the owner's, not a recruiting inbox. And none of these portals filters for employers willing to hire from outside the EU.

• arbeitsagentur.de — Ausbildungssuche and Jobsuche of the Bundesagentur für Arbeit, all sectors
• meine-ausbildung-in-deutschland.de — Meine Ausbildung in Deutschland (former IHK-Lehrstellenbörse), chambers of commerce and industry: trade, industry, services, office
• lehrstellen-radar.de — chambers of skilled crafts, around 130 craft occupations, with an app
• The company website itself: the Karriere or Ausbildung page, otherwise the Impressum

What a German Bewerbung actually contains

Three pieces are expected. A cover letter, the Anschreiben, on exactly one page. A tabular CV, the Lebenslauf, on one page as well: headings, aligned dates, no literary sentences. And copies of your diplomas and work certificates as annexes. A cover sheet, the Deckblatt, is optional, and so is the photo.

This format is not a legal rule: no statute imposes it and no authority publishes it. It is a professional norm every German recruiter carries in their head, and departing from it does not make your application unlawful, only harder to read. The photo is in fact rather discouraged by German anti-discrimination law: an application without a photo is not an incomplete one.

The most frequent question is about translations, and it has two answers because there are two contexts. For the visa file submitted in Rabat, documents in German, English or French do not need translating; only documents drawn up in another language — in practice the Arabic ones — must be submitted with a translation. Plan for German, which is accepted everywhere, and for a sworn translator when it comes to civil-status papers and diplomas. That saves many Moroccan applicants real money. But that holds only for the visa: the employer, the chamber and the vocational school may require a German translation of a French diploma, and often do. The embassy points to ATAJ, the Moroccan association of court-approved translators.

Writing the application e-mail, and following up without pestering

The subject line must say immediately what you want: the word Bewerbung, the exact job title as written in the advert, and the starting year. The body needs five or six lines in German: who you are, which occupation, why this company, when you are available, and a pointer to the attachment. An e-mail written entirely in English or French starts badly.

Attach a single PDF, named with your surname and the occupation, and watch its size: some German mail gateways reject heavy attachments, and an application a server discards never existed. If the advert gives a bewerbung@ or ausbildung@ address, write there and not to the switchboard — nobody in recruitment reads a large company's general inbox.

A short follow-up two to three weeks later is normal in Germany and well received: two sentences recalling the date you applied and the position, restating your interest. One follow-up is enough; beyond that, silence is the answer. Keep a simple table — company, occupation, date sent, date followed up, reply — otherwise you will write twice to the same address within a month.

How many applications? Nobody honestly knows

No serious source gives a number, and anyone who does is inventing it — that is exactly the kind of false landmark circulating in Facebook and WhatsApp groups. What can be measured is the state of the German market: the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB) publishes an annual balance sheet, and it tells you more than any rule of thumb.

In 2025, 54 400 apprenticeship places went unfilled in Germany, 10.6 % of what companies offered, after 69 400 the year before. At the same time, 84 400 young people were still without a place in September 2025, up 19.9 % year on year and the highest level since 2010. Both figures belong together: BIBB explains the gap by matching problems, by occupation and by region.

In plain terms: places exist, but they are not waiting for you, and there is local competition on the well-known occupations. What stays vacant sits in occupations and regions few German applicants choose — hospitality, building trades, logistics, care, rural areas and small towns. So what decides is not a magic number of e-mails but consistency over months: thirty genuinely tailored letters go further than three hundred identical ones, which are spotted instantly and deleted just as fast.

A positive reply: contract, chamber, then visa

Your contract is valid from the moment it is signed. The competent chamber — IHK, Handwerkskammer or Landwirtschaftskammer — must then enter it in the register of training relationships provided for by § 34 BBiG: the employer applies for the entry, the chamber checks the contract's compliance, and that registration conditions your admission to the final examination, not the validity of the contract. It is free for the apprentice — remember that: nobody may invoice you for it.

Then read the contract before signing, especially the probationary period. § 20 BBiG requires a Probezeit of at least one month and at most four; a shorter or longer clause is void. During that period either side can terminate without notice. Worth knowing before moving 2 000 kilometres from home.

Then comes the visa, and only one thing genuinely shortens the timeline: the accelerated skilled worker procedure under § 81a AufenthG. The employer initiates it with its Ausländerbehörde — you can only propose it, and the company is free to decline. It costs 411 €, and the fee debtor is in principle the foreign candidate; the employer covers it only with a written Kostenübernahmeerklärung. Do not assume the employer pays it automatically.

Once granted, the Vorabzustimmung is valid three months for booking an appointment, and the mission must give you a slot within three weeks if you flag the accelerated procedure; the decision then follows, as a rule, within three weeks of filing. Outside this procedure no deadline is guaranteed. Filing is done in person and mandatorily through TLScontact: the national D visa fee is 75 €, or 37.50 € for a minor under 18, payable in dirhams, plus the provider's service fees.

What is genuinely hard on your own

German first. B1 is the legal minimum for the apprenticeship visa, with a single exception written into § 16a AufenthG: where the training provider has itself verified your level, or where a preparatory German course is part of the plan. The B2 often demanded in healthcare occupations comes from schools and employers, not from the consulate. In Morocco, budget roughly 3 000 MAD per course level at the Goethe-Institut, 2 500 MAD for the B1 exam and 2 800 MAD for B2. And a bought certificate protects nothing: the embassy in Rabat states it is aware of certificates issued improperly and reserves the right to check your German itself; insufficient German is a ground for refusal.

Then money — the trap almost nobody explains correctly. The threshold above which no blocked account or Verpflichtungserklärung is required is 992 € net per month. Yet the legal minimum first-year training pay is 682 € in 2025 and 724 € in 2026, rising with each year of training, while the average actually paid is around 1 133 € gross. An average contract therefore does not clear that net threshold: a Sperrkonto or a sponsorship often remains necessary. For students, the corresponding blocked account is 11 904 € per year.

There is also a residence permit to come and look for a place on site: § 17 AufenthG, up to nine months. Conditions: under 35; a school-leaving qualification giving access to university, either in Germany or in the country where it was obtained, which the Moroccan baccalauréat does; sufficient German (the statute names no CEFR level, but administrative practice requires proof of B1, and some schools or occupations ask for B2); and above all proof that your living costs are covered for the whole stay, which brings back the same blocked-account mechanics. It allows 20 hours of work per week and two weeks of trial work in total. It is not a cheap shortcut.

What is left is what really wears you down: holding on for months without a reply, reading a German contract you only half understand, translating at the right moment and not twice, and not knocking on the wrong door in Rabat. One last, often confused point: the APS procedure does not concern Moroccans — it targets China, India and Vietnam and simply does not exist for Morocco, and nobody may charge you for it. All of the above is doable alone; support does nothing more than spare you detours and costly mistakes, and that choice stays yours.