An Edeka store assistant.
picture alliance/dpa | Patrick Seeger
A German supermarket’s job advert for people who aren’t “completely screwed up” has gone viral.
The advert was for a full-time position at one of Edeka’s drinks stores.
It asked for workers that “can tell the time,” and aren’t “completely screwed up.”
This is an edited, translated version of an article that originally appeared on September 16, 2022.
A job advert posted to work at a supermarket in Germany, which asked for workers that aren’t “completely screwed up” and “can work five days a week without immediately suffering from burnout” went viral.
It also asked for people that “can tell the time” and “can tell a case of beer from a case of water.”
The advert was posted by an Edeka Gebhardt store in western Germany, and it appeared in regional newspaper Lippe Akteull in early September.
The job advert.
Edeka Gebhardt is the independent operator of the Edeka-branded store.
Edeka Rhein-Ruhr, which is responsible for Edeka stores in the region, said its independent operators were free to decide for themselves what to stock and what to charge, as well as how to recruit and when to open.
It told Insider that the goal “was to create an unusual job ad that would help the team find new employees.”
It added that the number of applications was “significantly higher than with standard adverts.”
Robindro Ullah, the CEO of Trendence Institute, a HR marketing and employer branding consultancy, told Insider these sort of blunt adverts could only work if it matched the recruitment strategy.
He said that job adverts in print really have to stand out, adding that the Edeka advert achieved that.
“I’ve seen so many job ads where people shake their heads at first, but which actually end up working,” Ullah said.
But the only way to determine how well it works, he said, was if the supermarket ran this one against a more conventional one at another Edeka store in a neighboring town and counted how many applications each received.