Your Role

Most consulting firms in our industry have never systematically questioned their own processes. Much runs because experienced people know workarounds—not because the processes are well-thought-out.

Vogel is one of the most successful medium-sized consulting firms in Germany—several thousand medium-sized companies entrust us with their tax, commercial, and strategic issues. On this basis, we are building the leading consulting platform for the German Mittelstand: We grow organically and through acquisitions, consolidate a fragmented market, and integrate each new entity into a common setup. We are building the operational core that supports this growth: processes that still function with double the mandate volume, and an employee organization that grows with every new location. Both are currently being created. You will help shape this.

You are still studying or about to graduate and want to know how a company works from the inside before you commit to a specific area. You are not looking for an internship where you format presentations for others, but one where you work on topics that will continue after you leave. This role is built precisely for that: broad in scope, spanning implementation and people operations, with the explicit purpose of helping you discover your strengths within three to six months.

Those who deliver during their internship will receive an offer for full-time employment—this is the norm, not the exception.

Your Responsibility

Implementation and Operational Excellence

• Assist in the introduction of new processes at our locations—from documenting the current state to training local teams.

• Analyze existing processes, measure them, and identify where time is being lost. Your standard: Every workflow you describe must be understandable by someone who did not build it themselves.

• Take ownership of your own small sub-projects with clear outcomes and present them yourself—not as supporting work, but as your own initiative.

People Operations

• Work on the operational engine of our employee experience: onboarding journeys, Personio management, contract processes, location setup, travel coordination.

• Support recruiting operations—Ashby configuration, appointment scheduling, data cleanliness for applicants. Those who start with us should find a setup that works from day one.

• Identify recurring tasks and suggest ways to eliminate them. Repetitive tasks here are an opportunity for automation, not a fate.

Analysis, Documentation, and Tooling

• Build analyses that support decision-making—cycle times, utilization, quality metrics. No reliable decisions can be made on unreliable data.

• Maintain and expand our process documentation in Notion so that new colleagues can onboard themselves.

• Familiarize yourself with our tooling stack and contribute to its further development. Our tech operations are currently largely outsourced—you will gain insight into the interface without being responsible for it.

Your Perspectives

The usual path leads to full-time employment in Operations and from there to a managerial level. Whether you develop towards a technical expert career or a leadership career is not decided today—both paths are open. Advancement is based on contribution, not years of service. We do not have an automatic system of 'more time equals higher position'.

What You Bring

Experience & Track Record

• You are studying Business Administration, Business Informatics, Industrial Engineering, or something comparable—ideally with very good to good grades.

• You have achieved outstanding results in some field. The field itself is less important to us than the fact that you can do it.

• You have already gained initial practical experience—working student position, personal project, responsibility in a university initiative, or your own startup, successful or failed.

• Profiles that do not fit the above categories but bring process understanding and organizational skills are explicitly invited—we evaluate based on contribution, not label. Specifically: students from Psychology or Sociology with an interest in organization; career changers from commercial apprenticeships with ongoing studies; people who have built something of their own on the side and learned how to organize processes. The stated range refers to the primary profile. Those with different backgrounds will start at a different market price—the transition to permanent employment follows the same logic as for everyone: compensation follows contribution. This can be read in our compensation principles.

Skills & Work Style

• You work in a structured manner and write so that others can follow you. Anyone who cannot write down a process has not understood it.

• You are proficient in Excel beyond pivot tables and do not shy away from new software but try it out.

• You use AI as a matter-of-fact tool—for research, process analysis, drafting, analyzing free-text data.

• You finish things. Unfinished topics without completion are the only thing that truly bothers us.

Mindset & Personality

• You have the humility to learn from practitioners. The colleague with twenty years of experience knows things about her process that are not in any diagram.

• You hold a position under questioning, correct it with good arguments, and take criticism as material, not as an attack.

• You strive to set the highest standard in everything you deliver—not because someone is checking, but because mediocrity personally bothers you.

What You Won't Find With Us

• No internship where you do subordinate work and wait for tasks. You will take on your own topics from day one, present results yourself, and be corrected when necessary.

• No coffee fetching with presentation formatting as the main task. What you work on will continue after your internship—otherwise, we wouldn't have given it to you.

• No 'we'll give you work when someone is free to guide you' setup. You will receive binding task packages with clear instructions, not gap-filling.

• No dusty industry standard with 2010 tech. Anyone who sees DATEV standard plus Excel as the maximum and fears the implications of AI is in the wrong place here.

• No corporate straitjacket where you wait for promotions. Growth here comes from contribution, not years of service—this applies from the internship onwards.

FAQ

1. What is Vogel—and where do you work?

Vogel is one of Germany's leading consulting firms for medium-sized businesses—a family company since 1959, from Aalen—and is building the leading consulting platform for the Mittelstand. We are growing at several locations: in Aalen/Ostwürttemberg as our established headquarters and in Munich as a new hub. At both locations, we are looking for people across all functions—from tax consulting and advisory to the strategic teams building the platform.

2. How should the salary bands be understood?

Intentionally broad—and indicated at every point. We differentiate based on track record and market value, not on degree: scarce, highly sought-after profiles at the upper end, less scarce ones at the lower end. We calibrate exclusively on the market—two people with similar experience can earn differently with us.

3. How much—and how—do you work at Vogel?

What matters is what you achieve, not hours. But honestly: If you're looking for 9-to-5, we're not your first choice. We seek people who work intensively out of their own drive because the tasks are worth it. How you distribute your time is largely up to you. What we share: We work in person together—culture, sparring, and the best ideas emerge from daily proximity. We are not a remote company and do not have extensive home office policies; occasional remote days are not a problem.

4. How does the application process work?

Lean, fast, transparent—and tiered by profile. For entry-level roles (internship, working student, entry-level hire), two interviews and a short work sample are usually sufficient; experienced roles are somewhat more extensive. For selected senior roles, we are testing the introduction of a joint workday in the future so that both sides can get to know each other better. The following always applies: scheduled appointments, swift decision-making, substantial feedback—regardless of the outcome.

5. How does variable compensation work?

Tied to performance quarterly, assessed qualitatively. The scale increases with the level: up to 20% Associate, 27.5% Manager, 35% Senior Manager, 42.5% Director, 50% VP. The expected value with good performance—you meet the requirements, set your own accents, pass the keeper test—is around 50% of the maximum; the maximum bonus is not the norm. The focus is on a holistic assessment by your manager: ownership, quality, learning curve, collaboration, impact.

6. How do I develop—what career paths are there?

Two active paths: Mastery (technical depth, expert career) and Pioneer (leadership, management). You choose the direction after onboarding, usually in years 1-3. Entry-level positions are not a separate path but the early part of the same journey—from working student or intern to Associate, for the best without a new application process.

7. Team, culture, vacation?

A shared lunch is an open daily offering—not mandatory; whoever wants to join, joins, everyone can eat at any time. In addition, dinners, social events, and offsites at regular intervals—not as a mandatory program, but because a good team also shares time outside of work. Benefits: thoughtful and substantial, not symbolic. Vacation: 28 days.

8. I know someone—is there a referral bonus?

Yes—€2,500 for every successfully filled position (no internships). A brief context is sufficient: who you are thinking of, for which role, why. It doesn't have to be perfect, but substantial.

Compensation: €24K – €48K • During Bachelor's studies: Monthly salary, gross: €2,000 / month Internship duration: optimally 6 months, at least 3 months · After Bachelor's studies / During Master's studies: Monthly salary, gross: €3,000 / month Internship duration: optimally 6 months, at least 3 months · After Master's studies: Monthly salary, gross: €4,000 / month Internship duration: optimally 6 months, at least 3 months

• • OTE €24K – €48K • During Bachelor's studies: Monthly salary, gross: €2,000 / month Internship duration: optimally 6 months, at least 3 months · After Bachelor's studies / During Master's studies: Monthly salary, gross: €3,000 / month Internship duration: optimally 6 months, at least 3 months · After Master's studies: Monthly salary, gross: €4,000 / month Internship duration: optimally 6 months, at least 3 months

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