HELP! Was this internal hiring process discrimanatory & biased against me?

honestly that whole thing sounds like a nightmare and i'm sorry you went through it. one thing that sticks out to me is how she pulled the "legal team" card - that's a classic move to shut you up without actually having anything concrete. i've seen managers do this when they just don't want to deal with a candidate they've already decided against for whatever reason.

since you're already an internal employee with a valid work permit, the visa argument is basically nonsense. blue card rules for people already in germany with a job offer are pretty straightforward - you just need a contract and the right salary threshold. she prob knows that but wanted to create a paper trail to justify excluding you.

i'd take this to the betriebsrat if your company has one. they handle exactly this kind of stuff and can push back on HR decisions that don't make sense. also keep all those emails where she contradicts herself about the masters requirement vs the actual job posting. that's your evidence if it goes further.

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I work in HR in Berlin and this whole story sounds off to me. The fact that she told you a masters was required when the internal job posting says bachelors is a clear red flag. You should absolutely report this to your company's internal complaints office or the Betriebsrat if you have one, because what she did with the visa scare tactic is not just unprofessional, it could violate the Allgemeines Gleichbehandlungsgesetz.

The hiring manager being left out of the loop is also a bad sign. That informal chat you had with her should have been used as a positive data point, not twisted into a reason to reject you. I'd also save that email where she said the legal team said you can't be legally employed, because that's almost certainly nonsense given you already have a valid work permit as a student.

You could also reach out to the hiring manager directly again and explain what happened with HR. If she was genuinely happy to meet you, she might be able to advocate for you or at least clarify to the right people that this wasn't a fair process.

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Worth noting that Berlin street names have official umlaut and ß rules that trip people up, so a sign showing "Strasse" versus "Straße" is not actually a spelling error, just an older transcription. Same with "ue" versus "ü" (e.g. "Kantstrasse" vs "Kantstraße"), both are considered valid renderings and you'll see the ß version on the blue Schilder and the ss version on older plaques or in databases that predate Unicode. If the difference you're seeing is between those two forms, there's nothing to fix and both are technically correct.

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if the signs u mean are the old enamel ones on the house facades those are often protected as Baudenkmal so nobody's allowed to correct them even if the spelling is outdated. the binding version is whatever is in the Berliner Strassenverzeichnis plus the entry in the Liegenschaftskataster, so if u tell me the street i can point u to the right Bezirksamt Mitte or Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf page. tbh the merged district thing is real but the facade signs are a separate story, theyre basically museum pieces at this point

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honestly thats super common in Charlottenburg, the district offices were merged from older Bezirke and nobody ever fixed all the Schilder. if its a real street you can check the official strassenverzeichnis on berlin.de, that list is what the Burgeramt actually goes by. which street is it? some of the Kaiserdamm / Kantstrasse signs are notorious for this.

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