How A Doctor Tracks 20 German Job Applications
A simple spreadsheet with 5 columns keeps 20 German hospital applications straight, so no reply gets buried in your inbox.
Ahmed Quteishat
Assistenzarzt, Innere Medizin (Berlin) · Founder of Klaro
If you send 20 job applications to German hospitals in one month, your inbox cannot be the system.
Replies come in days apart, from different departments, under names you do not recognise.
A spreadsheet with 5 columns, updated the same day you apply, keeps a reply from getting buried.
Why the inbox alone fails
A hospital's human resources office (Personalabteilung) often replies from a generic address, not the one you wrote to.
That email lands between a newsletter and a bank alert. By week 3, you cannot remember if Klinikum Dortmund already answered.
What goes in the tracker
You need 5 columns, nothing more. A sixth one just gives you an excuse not to fill it in.
- Hospital and department (for example, Klinikum Dortmund, Innere Medizin)
- Date you sent the application
- Status: sent, interview invited, rejected, or no reply yet
- Date of your next action (follow up, send a document, call)
- Name of the contact person, if you have one
When do you follow up
Most hospitals that plan to answer do it within 2 to 3 weeks.
If a reply has not come by then, a short follow up email is normal. It often moves your file to the top of a pile.
Keep the follow up to 2 lines: you applied on this date, for this position, and you want to check it arrived.
Why status matters more than the count
20 applications with no tracker feels like effort.
20 applications in a spreadsheet, sorted by status, shows you something different: maybe 14 never got a reply at all.
That is not bad luck. It usually means the CV attached, not the hospital, is the problem worth fixing next.
What to do this week
- Open one spreadsheet, today, with the 5 columns above.
- Add every hospital you already applied to, even from memory.
- Enter the date the same hour you send a new application, not at the end of the week.
- Mark a follow up date 2 to 3 weeks out for anything still showing 'sent'.
- Before you apply to a new hospital, check the tracker first, so you never send the same CV twice.
Stand: 2026-11-05. This is a guide, not legal advice. Every German state has its own rules, and rules change. Check with your state's medical chamber (Landesärztekammer) before you act.
Ahmed Quteishat — Assistenzarzt, Innere Medizin (Berlin) · Founder of Klaro
Ahmed built Klaro after watching how much of a doctor's move to Germany gets lost in paperwork rather than medicine.
