What outplacement is, in one paragraph
Outplacement is career transition support that an employer commissions and pays for when it separates from an employee. The employer is the paying client, the employee is the candidate and pays nothing, and that funding line is what separates it from career coaching someone buys privately. In Germany it is agreed inside an Aufhebungsvertrag, the mutual termination agreement, or inside a Sozialplan under § 112 BetrVG, and no statute obliges an employer to offer it. The long version, with the law, the market figures and the questions worth asking a provider, sits in the guide on outplacement in DACH pharma.
Who this is for
Individuals in a separation process
You have an Aufhebungsvertrag on the table, a Sozialplan has been announced at your site, or a Transfergesellschaft is being discussed. You work in Regulatory Affairs, Pharmacovigilance, Medical Affairs, Clinical Operations, QA and GMP, Market Access or a commercial headquarters function, and you have already worked out that the number of employers in your niche within reach of Berlin, Frankfurt or Basel is small. Raise outplacement before you sign anything, because after signature there is nothing left to negotiate with.
Employers and HR
You are closing a site, cutting a function or separating from one senior person, and you want the file closed rather than a Kündigungsschutzklage running for months on continued salary. Outplacement raises the perceived value of a package without raising the cash figure, and the people who stay watch how the leavers get treated. I take individual mandates and cohorts out of one restructuring, I work with works councils and alongside a Transfergesellschaft where one is set up, and I say early when a case sits outside my sector.
How it runs
- Standortbestimmung, weeks 1 to 2. Two to four sessions in which I go through the verifiable track record, how the separation gets explained to a hiring manager, income expectations and geographic limits.
- Positioning and documents, weeks 2 to 5. We settle on two or three role types and I rebuild CV, cover letter, LinkedIn and XING for those, written for the exact strings pharma screening runs on, GxP, GCP, ICH E6(R3), EU GMP Annex 1 and the German role titles.
- Market access, from week 4. I build a named list of target employers in your niche, identify the hiring managers behind the roles and approach them directly, instead of forwarding you postings.
- Applications and live processes, month 2 onwards. Every application is written from scratch for the specific role and goes out in your name, and I keep the pipeline moving through the silences that a QA or Regulatory process produces as a matter of routine.
- Interviews, whenever they land. Mock interviews run against the way pharma panels actually assess, including the evidence a company will want against its GMP or GxP requirements.
- Offer, contract and first weeks. I work the salary and package negotiation with you before you answer a number, and stay reachable through the notice period and the first weeks in the new job.
What you get
- Positioning: two or three role types your record genuinely supports, and the argument that makes each one credible to a hiring manager.
- CV and LinkedIn: both rebuilt for those role types, not reformatted, with the terminology a pharma screen and a pharma recruiter search on.
- Market access: a named target list of employers and hiring managers in your segment, and direct approaches to them. The BDU 2024 data attributes 24 per cent of placements to the consultant’s own network and 26 per cent to advertised positions.
- Application strategy: which roles are worth an application, which are not, and an individually written application for each one that is.
- Interview preparation: mock interviews for the specific process, the separation question rehearsed until it is boring, and a debrief after every real interview.
- Salary negotiation: the market range for the role and the region before you name a figure, and the wording for the counter, because people who have just been made redundant take the first number offered.
- Support to the contract and into the job: the offer read against the market, and availability through the notice period and the first weeks in the new role.
What this is not
It is not a job guarantee. Nobody can honour one, and a provider that offers one has told you something about itself. It is not a placement agency: no employer pays me to fill a vacancy, I do not own the roles and I owe you no job. It is not a workshop programme, and I have read CVs from people whose programme produced a folder of certificates and no employment contract. It does not create vacancies that do not exist, repair a track record with unexplained gaps, or shorten a hiring process a company has decided will take five months, and it is not legal advice. What it does is compress the time between separation and signature, and put a market strategy in place of a job board habit.
Pricing
Price on request. What a mandate costs depends on the scope, on whether it is fixed at three, six or twelve months or runs open-ended, on whether it covers one person or a cohort out of one restructuring, and on seniority, because a search for a QPPV and a search for a first-line manager are not the same amount of work. The first call is free, lasts twenty minutes and has no proposal attached to it. Employers receive a written quote on the basis of a short briefing: how many people, which functions, which sites, what timeline, and whether a works council or a Transfergesellschaft is involved.
For orientation only, the German market average works out at roughly 8,900 euro per head, derived from the BDU figure of 98 million euro billed in 2024 across about 11,000 candidates in all formats, individual and group. That is what the market billed on average, not my price.
Frequently asked questions
Who pays for outplacement?
The employer, in almost every case. It is commissioned and paid for by the company that is separating from you, either individually through an Aufhebungsvertrag or collectively through a Sozialplan under § 112 BetrVG, and you pay nothing yourself. Where no employer money is on the table the same work can be bought privately, but then it is candidate-funded career management rather than outplacement.
Can I negotiate outplacement into my Aufhebungsvertrag?
Yes, and that is where most of it comes from. No German statute creates a right to it, so it is a bargaining item like the Abfindung and the reference letter. Raise it before you sign, name a provider and a scope instead of accepting a vague promise of support, and get the mandate length and the number of sessions in the second half of the mandate written into the agreement rather than left to the provider.
Is employer-funded outplacement taxable for me?
No, provided it falls under § 3 Nr. 19 EStG, which since the Jahressteuergesetz 2020 covers employer consulting for berufliche Neuorientierung on termination of employment, as long as the benefit has no predominantly rewarding character. That is an argument for taking the service rather than the cash equivalent, because an Abfindung is taxable and since 1 January 2025 the employer no longer applies the Fünftelregelung in payroll, so you claim it in your tax return. This is career guidance and not tax advice; have your own case checked.
How long does a mandate run?
Fixed-term mandates in Germany commonly run three, six or twelve months. Open-ended ones, marketed as bis zur Vermittlung, were 11 per cent of engagements in the BDU 2024 data, and the same study reports 93 per cent of candidates in a new job within twelve months and 40 per cent within six months or less. For a specialised pharma role in DACH, where the regional employer pool is small, plan for the upper half of that range and plan your cash for twelve months.
What happens if I find something myself before the mandate ends?
That is the intended outcome and it happens regularly. If you sign a contract during the mandate the search stops there and I do not keep running one you no longer need. The part that continues is the part that still matters: going through the offer and the package with you before you answer a number, and staying available through the notice period and the first weeks in the new role.
Do you work with groups and Transfergesellschaften?
Yes. Group mandates out of one restructuring were about half of all engagements in the German market in 2024, and they only work when the individual sessions are genuinely individual instead of rationed around shared workshops. A Transfergesellschaft is a separate instrument: the employee signs a dreiseitiger Vertrag, the old employment relationship ends, and Transferkurzarbeitergeld under § 111 SGB III runs for at most twelve months. While employees are still employed, § 110 SGB III funds Transfermaßnahmen at 50 per cent of necessary and appropriate costs, capped at 2,500 euro per employee, and the measure has to be delivered by an approved third party, so check that before anyone counts on the subsidy.