Office Manager
Job description, salary, sourcing, 15 interview questions and a 30/60/90 plan to hire an Office Manager in a German SMB.
At a glance
- Time to fill35–60 days
- Experience3–7 years
How to hire an Office Manager for your SMB
Before you write the job posting, settle three questions. They determine which profile you actually need and help you avoid the most common scope mistakes at German SMBs.
Question 1: Office Manager, executive assistant or HR officer? The three roles partly overlap but are not equivalent. The executive assistant serves one or two people (CEO, COO) with calendar, travel and mail. The HR officer covers employment law, recruiting, payroll, performance conversations and relations with the Betriebsrat. The Office Manager runs the office for the whole company: suppliers, premises, general administration, expenses, internal events, logistical onboarding, often with an HR entry point at SMBs under 50 employees. Blending the three in one ad attracts poorly matched applications and wastes time. Specify the function in the title itself: Office Manager (m/w/d), not a versatile admin-and-HR profile, which says nothing.
Question 2: What exact scope? At an SMB the scope of an Office Manager varies considerably: pure office running, with or without an HR entry point, with or without payroll preparation, with or without intensive event organization. List the topics covered explicitly in the ad. An Office Manager without HR experience needs 3-6 months of support if that part is to be carried; a versatile profile expects varied topics and gets bored quickly in pure administration.
Question 3: What team size to serve? An Office Manager who has served 15 employees works differently from one who has served 80. The rituals, the cadence, the process structuring and the supplier management all differ. Look for a profile whose previous team size is at most 2x smaller or larger than yours; bigger gaps require a real re-adaptation. At a German SMB with 20-100 employees, the full-time role is justified from 25-30 employees onward; below that an executive assistant or a fractional Office Manager is enough.
If the three answers converge on a full-time Office Manager for an SMB of 20-100 employees (and not an executive assistant or an HR officer), see the ready-to-use template on the Job description tab.
Where to source this role
Stepstone
From €995 / 30 daysBy far the strongest classic channel for Office Manager profiles in Germany. Broad applicant pool, many profiles open to a move, good volume across industries. Especially effective for Mittelstand SMBs outside the tech scene. Expect 40-60 % of qualified applications through Stepstone when the ad runs for 30 days.
Indeed
Sponsoring €0.30-0.80 / click, budget €400-700 / monthVery high volume, suited to SMBs outside the big cities and to junior-to-mid profiles. Without sponsoring it gets lost in the noise quickly; sponsored ads usually deliver enough CVs for a first shortlist within 10-14 days. Particularly useful when the backfill is urgent (unplanned departure, short-notice handover).
LinkedIn
€200-400 / month (Job Slots) plus Recruiter LiteStrong for Office Managers with a scale-up or tech-SMB background and for profiles in Berlin, Munich and Hamburg. Active sourcing via InMails delivers better signal than plain job posts, because many Office Managers are not actively searching but respond to a well-framed direct approach. Less relevant for classic Mittelstand industries and for profiles over 45, who are less often active on LinkedIn.