Celebrating our candidates success stories

“A thing of great importance to us is learning from your experience, learning from your success, thus perfecting ourselves in the future”

In life, one should always find time to celebrate success and give credit to the success of others. Every year we like to dedicate an evening to all of our successful candidates that are happily living and working in Germany, and that have remained thankful for all of our hard work and time that we invested in helping them reach their goal: Starting a better life in Germany.

For the celebrations of 2012, the location for the meeting played a key role creating the perfect atmosphere. The city of Weilburg has an historical significance that spread out for over a millennia, giving tourists and visitors the ability to experience to travel back in time and wander through its old squares, castle gardens and narrow medieval streets, and of course – Castle Weilburg.

Dining in the shadow of Weilburg Castle:

As ripped out of a fairytale, a medieval setting, bright lighted hall with tasteful decorations, red velvet seats and big round dining tables and of course, music in the background.

As the guests started arriving, cheerful greets and laughter started to fill the room, transforming the formal setting into a more family-like environment. Every guest is greeted with a glass of champagne, an honest thank you for joining our event and a smile that illustrates the true satisfaction of seeing former candidates so well and truly happy with their new found life in Germany.

“Tonight cultural and ethnic backgrounds do not matter, we are all Europeans!” 

It was so nice to see the fact that cultural backgrounds didn’t matter. Doctors in Germany are doctors in Germany, and they loved to share their experience with one another and exchange experiences about medical and non-medical related topics.

Once everybody got acquainted with each other and the champagne glasses where empty, a short toast was held:

“It is my great pleasure to see you all here at our yearly event. I am so happy to see that you are all well and that you and your families have adapted to the German way of life so well over the years. A thing of great importance to us is learning from your experience, learning from your success, thus perfecting ourselves and our services in the future. But first, let’s honor the mission of our cooks that prepared tonight’s meal for us. Thank you again for coming! Bon Appetite!”

The food was great, the service was impeccable, and the atmosphere was of joy and laughter. As soon as the deserts were finished it was time to honor our own mission and learn about our doctor’s success.

Everybody was keen to share their own personal experiences with us, experiences involving everything from the profession and workplace to the personal life and comparisons between living in Germany and life back home.

First of all, I have to underline the fact that no one was thinking of leaving Germany in the future and going back home, thus denoting a change for the better.

“Integration at the workplace and in society is relatively easy achieved. At the workplace, the multicultural aspects play a key role, German doctors and patients are used to having foreign doctors and foreign colleagues, as long as you can speak German and as long as you prove yourself as a professional people will treat you with respect.” 

“Integration in the German society is also helped by the facts that in Germany doctors are respected, especially in smaller cities where people get to know you. Of course the financial aspect helps the integration process as well. It’s nice to know that you can afford to go out and eat at a restaurant whenever you want, or go to the cinema or the theater.”

“Back home if we wanted to plan a vacation, we had to start putting money aside for months in a row just to be able to afford it; here you can have a decent vacation with the whole family out of just one paycheck.”

“The way of life is far more relaxed and far more comfortable than it was back home. Actually the whole quality of life is much better here, from the professional to the private aspects of life, it is a dream come true to be able to use high tech equipment in the hospital with no restrictions, to be able to prescribe any medications because they are all available in the hospital and to be able to go relaxed home knowing that you can easily pay your bills have fun, go to the restaurant, to the theater, to the cinema, or to go on vacation and still be able to put money aside in your bank account.”

“Starting off in a smaller hospital in a smaller city was the best decision I could have ever taken. As a foreigner having to adapt to so many aspects and break so many barriers at the beginning having a peaceful and calm home and work environment was all I needed. It is hard at first to get used to the system and the culture and the country… having great colleagues that were eager to help me adapt made my life a whole lot easier.”

“Another great thing is the learning experience here as a doctor. Hospitals put a huge accent on learning and training. The residency here as opposed to back home is not only a theoretical learning curve, everybody gets the chance to practice what they learn thus making us responsible doctors.”

As a plus, Dr. Cristian Baluta, resident doctor for Neurology, offerd us the chance to take a short interview with him, interview in which he describes his own experience as a young foreign doctor in Germany. You can access the interview here:

Besides sharing personal and professional experiences with us, it was nice to see that over the years we managed to create a tightly knit community of doctors with foreign backgrounds that thanks to our annual meetings have gotten to know each other and become friends.

We can only conclude that our annual doctor meeting of 2012 was a success. It was a pleasure for us to help you find a position in Germany and now, it is an honor for us to get to learn from your personal success and experience! Thank you!

“From our first contact with EGV Recruiting, we knew that we were dealing with a serious firm. We will forever be thankful to the people that helped us start a better life here in Germany”