Spitzen Arbeitgeber
A curated recognition platform that makes good German employers findable to candidates.
Fact sheet
Mid-sized employers can't outspend big brands.
Recruiting in Germany is loud and expensive. Mid-sized companies rarely have the marketing budget to build the visibility that wins candidates against DAX-listed brands. They lose talent to employers that aren't actually better — just louder.
Findable before the job ad.
A curated directory of good employers, organized by industry and region. Listed companies don't pay for job postings; they pay to be findable and credible to candidates who are already deciding where to work next. The bet is that being visible while a candidate is still choosing matters more than any job ad placed after they have decided.
Where it came from
Spitzen Arbeitgeber comes straight out of what I saw at Leantree. Mid-sized German companies were losing candidates to employers that weren't better, just louder. They couldn't outspend a DAX brand on job ads, and the candidates deciding where to apply next had no way to compare them on the things that actually matter. In 2022 I built the thing I'd have wanted to point those companies at: a curated directory of good employers, organised by industry and region, that makes them findable at the moment a candidate is still choosing.
How it runs
A company doesn't buy a listing. It applies for a free employer audit through the site, answers questions across twelve criteria in four areas, and gets reviewed. Companies that pass are listed and may carry the seal. The paid part comes afterwards and is settled in a conversation, not a checkout, because a quality seal that can be bought with a credit card isn't a quality seal. The public site therefore has exactly one call to action, and it costs nothing.
What I learned
The bet is that visibility at the consideration stage matters more than spend at the application stage, and I still think that's right. What I underestimated is how slow trust products are. A directory of good employers is only valuable once it's large enough that candidates use it as a filter, and it only gets large if employers believe candidates use it. That loop starts slowly and there's no growth hack for it. The other lesson is about restraint: every time I was tempted to add pricing to the site to speed things up, it would have cheapened the one thing the product sells.
Status
Active. It's the smallest of the commercial products by attention and the one that most depends on patience.
More projects
Deimann Com is a privately held software company from Hamburg that builds, acquires, and operates digital products on autonomous AI systems.
