How to find new jobs as a self-employed person: get ready for the check first

You click “send” on an application, read your price one more time, and can already picture the first visit or the start of the work. Then a short message arrives: your offer was not considered. Not because your price was too high, and not because someone else necessarily does the work better. Your submission lacked something the client asked you to confirm before offers could be compared. It is an unpleasant moment because it feels like a broken process: you carefully make coffee, but the coffee machine is not plugged in yet. You can search for new listings forever, but first it is worth understanding exactly how you will be checked.

Finding jobs as a self-employed person is not only about finding people who need a service. It is about preparing an answer to the client’s simple question: “Can I entrust this work to you?” A private client and a public procedure ask that question differently. If you do not mix them up, you will spend less energy on random submissions and see more clearly where it truly makes sense for you to be present.

A private client is a company or person who independently chooses a contractor for their own need. For example, the owner of a small office is looking for someone to provide Gebäudereinigung, meaning professional cleaning of premises. They may ask acquaintances, see a recommendation for you, compare several offers, or write to you after a short conversation. What matters here is whether you explain the service clearly, can name the boundaries of the work, and are easy to agree a next step with. For public contracts, German law GWB § 97 provides for competition and transparent procedures, and participants must be treated equally unless the law expressly provides otherwise.

A private contact does not mean you can reply any old way. If the person does not understand what exactly you will do, when it will be done, and what they need to prepare on their side, your good work will remain an assumption to them. So after the first enquiry, it is useful not to rush into sending a universal price list, but to ask a few questions about the task and briefly repeat how you understood it.

A public procedure is a formal way in which a public client chooses a contractor. It is not simply an exchange of messages asking “how much will it cost?”: your offer is checked within the conditions of a specific procedure.

First decide which world you are in

You do not need to carry the rules of one world into the other. If a private company chose a contractor after a recommendation, that does not mean a public procedure will work the same way. And conversely, if you have learned to collect documents carefully for a formal submission, that does not turn every private client into an official with a folder.

There is, however, one useful shared action: for every potential job, immediately determine whether it is a private contact or a public procedure. Then record what exactly the client wants to receive and what proof of your reliability will be clear to them.

For example, if you independently edit short videos, a private client may come through a recommendation from a business you know. Do not send them a set of general phrases. Show one relevant example, explain exactly what the work includes, and ask about their materials and desired result. But if you see a public procedure, do not consider a previous price email a sufficient submission: open the conditions and check what you need to confirm there.

In GWB § 122, the term Eignung means the suitability of a business: public contracts are awarded to qualified and capable businesses that have not been excluded under §§ 123 or 124. The client sets the suitability criteria for a specific contract, so there is no single universal file that will open every procedure for you once and for all. This is an important distinction for a beginner: you may honestly be a good tradesperson, designer, or consultant, but the procedure may ask you to confirm exactly what is needed to perform that work properly. Do not guess what “should be enough”. Read the conditions like instructions for the work you are applying for.

Match the condition with real proof

Imagine you run a small cleaning business and see a public contract for Gebäudereinigung. One client may describe its criteria in a way that makes it important to see your qualification and capacity to handle the scope. Another will formulate requirements differently because it is buying work of a different kind. Your task is not to prove that you are “generally great”, but to match every condition with the document or explanation you can actually provide.

Create a simple working card for every submission. In the left column, rewrite the client’s requirement in your own words. In the right column, state exactly how you will confirm it: with a document, a description of experience, information about resources, or an honest note that you do not yet have that confirmation. Add a third short label: the material is already ready, needs updating, or still needs to be prepared. This will immediately show you the difference between a real capability and an application assembled on hope.

Do not try to hide a gap behind a polished presentation. If you do not have the confirmation, that is a signal not to apply at random, but to understand what you need to prepare for the next opportunity. Sometimes the most useful outcome from a procedure that does not suit you is not an application, but an exact list of what is missing from your working set.

There are things that do not belong to the choice of offer style or the strength of a portfolio. GWB § 123 provides for the mandatory exclusion of a business from a public procedure at any stage if the client knows of a final conviction or an imposed fine for one of the offences listed in that provision.

Here it is important not to invent what the law says and not to diagnose yourself from someone else’s example. If your situation has legal details, do not draw a conclusion from one article. But for everyday preparation, the conclusion is simple: formal grounds exist separately from how convincingly you describe the service. Price, a pleasant letter, and well completed previous work do not replace compliance with the requirements of the procedure.

That is why you should separate two folders, even if they are digital: keep materials about your work in one - service descriptions, examples, and clear conditions - and documents and information for formal submissions in the other. Do not collect them at the moment when the listing is already open and your inbox is flashing with unread messages. The separation itself matters: do not put every file into one huge folder with names such as “new_final_definitely”. When materials are separated by purpose, you can see more quickly what is missing: a service explanation, a work example, or formal confirmation. You can also answer yourself more honestly about whether you are ready to apply now.

This preparation does not mean you have to turn yourself into an administrative office. It means something else: when a suitable job appears, you do not start with panic and a search for old attachments. The repeating parts of this work can gradually be organized through document-preparation automation, but first you need to see for yourself which materials repeat and who should check that they are current.

GWB § 97 specifically says that the interests of small and medium-sized businesses must be considered primarily when public contracts are awarded. It is useful to know this if you think: “Public procedures exist only for large companies.” Being small does not itself mean there is nothing there for you to look for.

But do not turn this provision into a promise. It does not cancel the criteria of a particular contract, remove the need to be suitable, or give you an automatic win. It merely means you should not cross this channel off your radar in advance because of your own scale.

It is more useful to act selectively. Do not apply everywhere simply because a procedure is open. Select opportunities where you can explain your qualification and capacity without stretching the truth. If the conditions match your actual service, open them more carefully. If they do not, record exactly what was missing and return to your materials.

Likewise, do not hold on to one channel. Keep a simple record: where the contact came from, whether it was a private enquiry or a public procedure, at which stage everything stopped, and what you learned. You do not need to turn this into a complicated spreadsheet: it is enough that after some time you can see your own picture. Where do people find you? Where does your offer reach a conversation? Where do you stop before your price is even assessed? When the number of records becomes more than is convenient to review manually, job-channel analytics can help assemble that picture.

This record also protects you from another trap. After several unsuccessful attempts, it is easy to decide that “this channel does not work”. In reality, one rejection may have concerned not the channel but one unsuitable job, an unprepared document, or an unclear service explanation. Separate these causes before giving up on a way of finding jobs.

You do not need to have a ready answer for every possible procedure. You need a foundation that is easy to compare with specific conditions. Gather in one accessible place a short and truthful description of your services, current work examples, a list of what you can actually perform, and documents you have already used in submissions. Write the review date next to each item so you do not send an old version simply because it appears first in search. After every submission, return to this set: if you had to search for a file, rewrite a description, or clarify a requirement, add clearer material or a short note for yourself.

Then make it a habit after every unpleasant rejection to ask yourself: “At exactly which point was I stopped?” If the answer repeats, your next submission will depend less on memory and haste.

If clarity was missing in a private conversation, rewrite your explanation of the service. If confirmation was missing in a public submission, add it to your set when that is genuinely possible. If the work did not suit your business at all, do not disguise that as failure. Do not rush to look for the next listing until you understand exactly what is worth changing in your set.

First step: open the most recent job you wanted to apply for and write down in two columns its requirements and your proof for each of them. Only after that decide whether it is worth looking for the next listing.