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The embassy interview schedule is full in my country and the soonest time to get an appointment is more than a year away. I was wondering if it is possible to enter Germany as a tourist, and then apply for a job seeker visa inside the country.

Is there any official article about that?

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    What is your citizenship? According to nomadenberlin.com/germany-job-seeker-visa you are only eligible to apply for a Job Seeker Visa after entering Germany if you are from the United States, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Israel, or the UK.
    – Traveller
    Jul 31, 2021 at 23:28
  • Not only I'm not from those countries, but also unfortunately I'm from Iran, which is a sanctioned country, which is why interview schedules are full.
    – FarhadGh
    Aug 1, 2021 at 7:46

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First of all, it is questionable why one needs a "change" to a job seeker visa if one already has a tourist visa. In a general case, it might be complicated to clearly separate tourist activities from job seeking activities. For example, this is exactly the reason, why US issues "combined" B-1/B-2 visas. So if one visits some sights, he/she is not prohibited to search for a job in parallel and sign a job contract.

However, a job permission with a proper visa or residence permit are needed on the first working day. If one is inside a country on a tourist visa, applying for residence permit should be generally not permitted. For example, this page of the Ministry of Migration and Refugees states that one needs a German national visa (NOT a Schengen visa) in order to apply for residence permit. Since in 99,7% of cases tourist visas are non-national visas, this implies that it will be almost impossible to apply for residence permit having a tourist visa. The one exception from this might be a Blue Card (I could also imagine some other exceptions like marriage or refugee status, but it is probably not relevant to this topic), which is issued according to European rules and therefore it might be allowed to apply for it while being inside the country. If one's job does not satisfy the Blue Card conditions, he/she needs to leave the country and apply for a visa in the embassy.

Please note that I'm not a lawyer and this is only my personal opinion on generic case.

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  • The reason to change from Tourist to jobseeker, is I can get a tourist visa soon. but not a jobseeker. And as you told, with a tourist Visa, I cannot apply for work visa. Some people go to Germany embassy in Turkey to bypass this jobseeker waiting time. I want to know if people can do it in a third country, can they do this in Germany itself?
    – FarhadGh
    Aug 3, 2021 at 10:10
  • Visas are issued in embassies, inside the country it will be something unusual, and is might only be done as exception. It seems to me that trying to get/change the visa inside Germany might be very hard.
    – Andrey Sapegin
    Aug 3, 2021 at 15:14
  • The usual process looks like (1) getting a visa, (2) entering Germany, (3) applying for residence permit. Although it is probably not prohibited to look for a job in the parallel to main tourist activities, applying for residence permit on a tourist visa might be only possible if one applies for a Blue Card (and I strongly suggest to double-check this). Other ways are marriage, refugee status, etc. So it is not absolutely impossible like many things in the world, but it will be definitely a hard way.
    – Andrey Sapegin
    Aug 4, 2021 at 8:07

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