Does a business with a single apprenticeship place really need a page of its own for it?

As a rule yes, because the page is not built for the place but for the question that precedes it. An applicant searches for the occupation and the town, not for the name of the business. A dedicated address with the occupational title in the heading is typically found more often than a paragraph on the careers page. The effort involved is usually half a day and two diary dates a year.

Should the training pay appear on the page?

Experience suggests yes. The floor is set by statute and publicly available; a business that stays silent is rarely assumed to be generous. The sensible form is a figure per training year with a note that it is gross and a date it applies to. A business paying above the agreed rate makes that visible. Where a collective agreement applies, that agreement governs, which can be mentioned in half a sentence.

What about applications that consist only of a short message?

That is the normal case when the form is short, and in practice it is more of an advantage. A message with a name and a mobile number is enough to start a conversation; documents can be requested afterwards. Making a complete folder a precondition typically filters not for aptitude but for stamina with paperwork.

May apprentices appear in the photographs on the page?

With consent yes, and for minors with the consent of those with parental responsibility as well. The consent belongs in the personnel file in writing, stating the purpose and noting the right to withdraw it. Without consent, pictures of tools, vehicles and sites carry the page just as well; recognisable faces are not strictly necessary for it.

Is the page still worth it once the training year has already begun?

As a rule yes. Post-deadline placing continues until the end of the year, and part of the contracts are only concluded in that period. What it requires is one sentence on the page stating the current position: whether a place is still free for the running year, or whether the information now refers to the year after.

How often does the apprenticeship page have to be updated?

Two fixed dates a year are usually enough: the end of September and the beginning of January. What gets checked is the intake year, the pay figures, the named contact and whether a place is still free. The most common fault is not a design fault but an out-of-date date, which makes the whole page look unreliable.

Apprenticeships: the page that reaches applicants

In August two figures stood side by side that do not fit together: 116,000 registered apprenticeship places were still unfilled, and 102,000 registered applicants had found neither an apprenticeship nor an alternative by that point (Federal Employment Agency). Both sides are searching; they simply do not find each other. Part of that gap is created where a business does have a place to offer but describes it nowhere in a way that a fifteen-year-old, reading on a phone in the evening, can understand. This article sets out how a dedicated apprenticeship page is built so that it answers that question, and why it is something other than the careers page for qualified tradespeople.

Key takeaways

The apprenticeship page is not the careers page. It addresses 15- to 17-year-olds and their parents, who typically read along — and both need different answers than a tradesperson with ten years in the job.
The German reporting year runs from 1 October to 30 September. A page finished in spring has missed the months in which the applications are actually written.
Of the businesses offering apprenticeship places, 60 per cent use their own homepage to place those offers (BIBB training panel, surveyed 2022). It is typically maintained less often than the notification to the employment agency.
Pay, duration, working hours and the journey to work are what decide matters at the kitchen table. For training starting in 2026 the statutory minimum is 724 euros per month in the first year (Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training).
Nothing ends on 30 September: at the close of 2025 the statistics still recorded 65,862 apprenticeship places intended to be filled within that same year (Vocational Education and Training Report 2026).

Why the apprenticeship page is not the careers page

On most trade websites there is exactly one page for everything to do with staff. It is called Careers or Jobs and lists three lines: qualified tradesperson, fitter, apprentice. That is economical, and for the first two lines it holds. For the third it typically does not, because the reader is a different person. Someone with eight years in the job reads a vacancy as a comparison: hourly rate, vehicle, weekly hours, supplements. He knows what the job asks of him and is only checking the terms. A fifteen-year-old does not know that. He reads the same advert as an explanation and looks for answers to questions a vacancy rarely raises: what do you actually do all day in this job, do you have to be good at maths, how do you get to the site in the morning, and what happens after three and a half years.

The scale justifies a page of its own. In 2025 the skilled trades registered a total of 135,540 newly concluded training contracts, 488 more than the year before; with a 28.5 per cent share of all new contracts the trades are the second-largest responsible sector (Vocational Education and Training Report 2026). At the same time, averaged over recent years, around 20,000 apprenticeship places offered in the trades have remained unfilled (German Confederation of Skilled Crafts). Not every one of those places fails because of a website. But the route from a vacant place to a first application runs through a page that somebody has to find, read and understand — and in the trades that is typically the business's own homepage.

Two pages, two readers

The careers page addresses people who already do the job; it answers questions about terms and daily work. What belongs there is set out in the article on the careers page for trade businesses. The apprenticeship page addresses people who do not yet know the job, and their parents. The two pages may point to each other. They should not be the same page, because otherwise two languages crowd onto one page and neither of them carries.

Who reads the page — and who is sitting next to them

The first reader is easy to describe and hard to reach. 95 per cent of 12- to 19-year-olds own a smartphone of their own and 98 per cent use one regularly (JIM Study 2025). That is where the searching happens: of eight digital options put to them, search engines carry the greatest weight in everyday life and more than two thirds use them regularly (JIM Study 2025). And training is on their minds: asked in an open question what they are looking forward to in the years ahead, 32 per cent of young people name the field of education — a school leaving qualification, an upcoming apprenticeship or a course of study, all equally to the fore (JIM Study 2025). Two things follow for the page. It is read on a screen that fits in one hand, and it is found through a search rather than through the home page. An apprenticeship page that only appears three clicks deep in the menu is typically not reached at all. How much the loading time on a phone contributes to that is covered in the article on load time on mobile for trade sites.

The applicant, 15 to 17

Reads in the evening, in bed, with half his attention. He is searching for the occupation, not for the business, and decides within seconds whether the page explains something to him or interrogates him. Technical terms without explanation end the visit.

The parents at the kitchen table

Read the same page with different questions: how secure is the occupation, what does it pay, how does the child get there in the morning, who is responsible. Those details are missing from many pages and are therefore asked on the phone — or not at all.

Teachers and careers advisers

Pass on pages that are concrete. An apprenticeship page with the occupational title, a named contact and a route to applying can be shown in a careers session; a page saying “we are looking for motivated apprentices” cannot.

We have to convince not only the young people of these opportunities, but also the parents, the teachers and with them society as a whole.

Jörg Dittrich, President of the German Confederation of Skilled Crafts, interview of 1 September 2026 (translated from the German original)

The second reader is the reason an apprenticeship page sounds different from a vacancy. Parents ask about reliability, not about perks. They want to know whether the business will still exist in five years, how many apprentices have completed their training there in recent years, and whether there is somebody who feels responsible. All of that can be answered in three plain sentences if the figures are right — and none of it can be replaced by adjectives. Anyone writing the text themselves will find the approach needed in the article on writing your own website copy.

What belongs on the page, in this order

The order is not a matter of taste; it follows the question that comes next. Start at the top with the business and you answer a question nobody has asked yet. Start with the occupation and you still have the reader. That applies to the apprenticeship page just as it does to the structure of a trade business home page, except that the reader here is younger and less patient. The list below is the order that has proved workable in project work.

The occupational title written out as it appears in the training contract, and next to it, in one sentence, what you actually do in that job.
Start and duration: the start date, the standard length, the option of shortening it. A business filling two intake years names both.
Pay per training year as a figure, not as a phrase. Without a figure the question is asked on the phone, or not at all.
A day in the business: working hours, meeting point, vehicle, clothing, who the trainer is. A few sentences are enough.
Vocational school: location, rhythm, who covers the travel costs. Almost every parent asks this.
Requirements stated honestly and briefly: which school qualification is usually expected, what is not required, whether a work placement is possible.
Photographs from your own yard rather than bought motifs. How that works with a phone is covered in the article on phone photos for trade websites, and for project shots the article on before-and-after photos in a project gallery applies.
A named contact with a direct line and a time window. A shared mailbox does not answer the question of who is responsible.
The route to applying in one sentence, directly beneath the contact, with a form underneath it.
What happens after sending, and by when the business usually gets back in touch.

Wording found on many pages	What the reader makes of it	A version that holds
We train apprentices.	At some point, in some occupation, possibly not this year.	Apprenticeship in plumbing and heating, starting 1 August 2027, one place.
Attractive pay	No figure given, so presumably not much.	Year 1: 850 euros. Year 2: 940 euros. Year 3: 1,030 euros. Year 4: 1,100 euros gross per month.
Good school grades desirable	I got a poor grade in maths, so this is not for me.	We look at reliability and interest. A work placement beforehand is possible and usual.
Applications to info@ …	Lands in the mailbox that also holds the sales offers.	A named contact with a direct line and a time window, and beneath it a form with six fields.
We look forward to your application.	Covering letter, CV, certificates, PDF — I will do that at the weekend. Or not.	Send us your name and mobile number; we will settle everything else in conversation.
A young, dynamic team	Everyone says that. It says nothing.	Four tradespeople, two apprentices, one master craftsman. Whoever trains is named on the page.

The details that decide it at the kitchen table

Training pay is the detail most often missing and most often looked for. It can be stated, because there is a statutory floor: for apprentices in dual occupations under the Vocational Training Act or the Trade and Crafts Code who begin their training between 1 January and 31 December 2026, the minimum pay in the first year rises by just under 6.2 per cent to 724 euros per month; in the second year it is 854 euros, in the third 977 euros and in the fourth 1,014 euros (Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training). In 2025 the first-year rate stood at 682 euros. For businesses not bound by a collective agreement there is a further rule: their pay may fall short of the collectively agreed rates applying to their sector and region by no more than 20 per cent (Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training). A business paying above the agreed rate therefore has an argument that belongs on the page. A business only just above it should still state the figure: a missing detail is rarely read charitably. Which further benefits are worth showing depends on the business — the framework for that is set out on the recruiting staff page.

Three details carry every pay line

The amount per training year, whether it is gross or net, and the date the figure applies to. Left on its own, the amount gets renegotiated on the phone or misread. Put the three together and the question is answered before it is asked — and the first call starts somewhere else entirely.

The second detail that counts at the kitchen table is the school qualification. Restraint in the wording pays here: in 2024, 43.1 per cent of apprentices with a newly concluded training contract held an intermediate school qualification, making them the largest group, while 26.8 per cent held a university entrance qualification (Vocational Education and Training Report 2026). A substantial share of contracts is therefore concluded with other qualifications. A page stating “intermediate certificate required” typically loses applications the business would have accepted in conversation. The version that holds says what the business actually looks at and invites a work placement. That the real subject is fit rather than paperwork is also the view of the German Confederation of Skilled Crafts: where businesses with places and applicants fail to come together, the reason often lies above all in matching problems.

The calendar: when each question arrives

The reporting year for the German training statistics runs from 1 October to 30 September. Those twelve months have a fixed dramaturgy, and the apprenticeship page answers a different question in each stretch of them. A page finished in May has missed the months in which the applications take shape. The same argument applies to the question of whether separate service pages instead of one combined page are needed: the moment a piece of content goes online is part of what decides whether it is read at all.

Step 1

October to December

Post-deadline placing. Anyone who came away empty-handed in the summer is still searching. In these weeks the page needs a visible note on whether a place is still free for the current year, and a second one for the year after.

The application: a form a sixteen-year-old will actually fill in

A complete application pack of covering letter, CV and certificates is, for a sixteen-year-old on a phone, an obstacle to be postponed. Postponed often means not at all. The workable order reverses it: contact first, documents afterwards. Six fields are enough to start a conversation; everything else can be settled once somebody is on the phone. Which fields a trade enquiry form needs in general is covered in the article on trade enquiry form fields; for an application the list is shorter still.

short-application-apprenticeship.json

{
  "form": "Short application, apprenticeship",
  "fields": [
    { "name": "first_name", "label": "First name",   "required": true },
    { "name": "last_name",  "label": "Last name",    "required": true },
    { "name": "phone",      "label": "Mobile number", "required": true,
      "note": "We usually get back to you within two working days." },
    { "name": "occupation", "label": "Which apprenticeship?", "required": true,
      "type": "select",
      "options": ["Plumbing and heating", "Electrical", "a work placement first"] },
    { "name": "start",      "label": "From when?", "required": false,
      "type": "select",
      "options": ["as soon as possible", "August 2027", "not sure yet"] },
    { "name": "message",    "label": "Anything you want to tell us?", "required": false,
      "type": "textarea", "rows": 3 }
  ],
  "not_required": ["covering_letter", "cv", "certificate"],
  "confirmation": "Your message has arrived. We usually get back to you within two working days."
}

No compulsory file upload. Anyone who wants to attach a certificate may; it is asked for later, in conversation.
No title selector and no date of birth at the first step. Neither is needed for the call back, and both cost drop-offs.
The mobile number before the email address. A call is answered faster than a message, and the call back is the actual purpose of the form.
A short note on data processing with a link to the privacy policy. What has to appear there is covered in the article on the legal notice and privacy page for trade websites.
A confirmation page that names the next step. A page saying only “thank you” leaves the applicant in the dark.

What the page cannot do

A good apprenticeship page replaces neither the conversation nor the selection. It only moves the point at which both begin. Nor does it solve the matching problems inside the training market: according to the 2025 DIHK training survey cited in the Vocational Education and Training Report 2026 — an online survey of businesses belonging to the chambers of industry and commerce — 32 per cent of the businesses surveyed with difficulties filling places said they had received no applications at all for vacant apprenticeships in 2024, and 73 per cent of those businesses found no suitable applicant (Vocational Education and Training Report 2026). Skilled-trades businesses are not covered by that survey; the two figures describe industry and commerce. The two patterns behind them — applications that never arrive and applicants who do not fit — are not unknown in the skilled trades either. The first figure describes a visibility problem, which a page can change something about. The second describes a selection problem, which it changes little — except in so far as it says more clearly beforehand what the job involves, and so deters applications that would not have fitted anyway. The time after signing remains work too: across Germany around 159,000 training contracts were terminated early in 2024 (Vocational Education and Training Report 2026). A page that prettifies the working day is more likely to raise that figure than to lower it.

Three places where it typically goes wrong

First: the apprenticeship page sits under Careers, at the third level of the menu, and is not found through a search. Second: the page names an intake year that has passed — the most common reason an otherwise good page brings in no applications. Third: the form sits behind a link labelled “apply now” that points at a mailbox. All three can be fixed in an hour and still often stand for a year.

After 30 September the second round begins

Many businesses take the apprenticeship page down at the start of October or leave it standing unchanged. Both are premature. The placement efforts of the employment agencies and job centres do not end on 30 September but continue into what is known as the fifth quarter; this post-deadline placing is aimed at everyone who wants to begin training in the already-started year between 1 October and 31 December (Vocational Education and Training Report 2026). The figures involved are not small: at the close of 2025 the statistics recorded 65,862 apprenticeship places still intended to be filled in 2025 — made up of the 54,385 places unfilled at the cut-off date plus further places reported only afterwards (Vocational Education and Training Report 2026). Anyone wanting to learn a trade can therefore still start after the official beginning of the training year (German Confederation of Skilled Crafts). On the page that takes exactly one sentence — and a date that is correct. That details have to line up across every channel applies here just as it does to consistent business details in directories.

One date, three states

A place free for this year, a place free for next year, or no place at present. One sentence is enough, but it has to match the calendar. An out-of-date intake year usually costs more applications than having no page at all.

A meeting instead of a folder

Offering a short informal meeting lowers the barrier considerably. How such appointments can be organised through the website is covered in the article on organising appointments via the website.

Two dates in the diary

End of September and the beginning of January: open the page, check the intake year, check the pay figures, check the named contact. Two dates a year are enough, provided they actually happen.

What is left is an unspectacular calculation. An apprenticeship page costs half a day of work in the business and two diary dates a year after that. An unfilled apprenticeship costs you, three years later, a qualified tradesperson who is not there. That calculation works out in almost every business, and it does not hinge on how handsome the page is but on whether the six or seven details a fifteen-year-old and his parents are looking for are actually on it. If you would like to set this page up for your own business, the framework is on the recruiting staff page; for a concrete assessment a message through the contact form is enough.

This article is based on data from: the Federal Employment Agency, press release no. 31 “Labour market in August 2026” of 28 August 2026; the Vocational Education and Training Report 2026 issued by the Federal Ministry of Education, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth (as at May 2026, drawing on data from the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training and the Federal Employment Agency); BIBB Report 3/2023 based on the BIBB training panel (surveyed 2022, 1,630 businesses offering training places for 2021/2022); the JIM Study 2025 by the Medienpädagogischer Forschungsverbund Südwest (1,200 respondents aged 12 to 19); press release 28/2025 of the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training on minimum training pay; the German Confederation of Skilled Crafts, interview of 1 September 2026. None of this replaces legal or tax advice; for an individual case your chamber and your adviser remain responsible.