Recruit international professionals – but how?

Germany is running out of skilled workers, the best-known example of this development is probably nursing care for the elderly and the sick. But there are also increasing difficulties in filling positions in other sectors, for example in social professions, in education, in the trades, in metal and electrical trades and in the IT sector.

According to the competence center for securing skilled workers, a project of the Federal Ministry of Economics, 632,488 vacancies in Germany could not be filled with suitably qualified unemployed people in 2022. This so-called skilled worker gap has become ever larger in recent years.

In politics, it has been known for years that Germany must therefore increasingly rely on skilled workers from abroad. And that the country must become more open and attractive to immigrants, including by removing bureaucratic hurdles.

Politicians hope for quick successes

While not much happened before, the traffic light coalition now wants to speed things up. Above all, a further developed Skilled Immigration Act is intended to facilitate the immigration of qualified specialists from countries outside the European Union. The bill is still being discussed.

The federal government has also agreed on the basics of a new citizenship law. Naturalization should therefore be possible in the future after five instead of eight years, in some cases after three years. It should also no longer be necessary to give up one’s previous citizenship, as has been the case up to now.

Priyanka Mane welcomes the fact that politicians and companies want to improve their recruitment of foreign skilled workers. Mane himself came to Germany from India in 2016, completed a master’s degree in business informatics in Nuremberg and then managed to enter the world of work. Today she works as an IT product manager for a car company.

But Priyanka Mane’s story is more of an isolated case, she owes her success above all to her own ambition. “There was hardly any information at the time, for example that studying was free and that the work-life balance was good here.”

Because it was so difficult for her herself, at some point she started informing others on social media about the possibilities, how to find the right websites, how application processes work in Germany.

Job descriptions only in German

The 29-year-old is now followed by more than 160,000 Instagram users, and coaching people willing to immigrate, mainly from India, but also from African countries or the Philippines, has become her part-time job.

Mane fills a gap because much information are not so readily available for people abroad: For example, how popular is your own profession in Germany, how the payment, how a CV should be designed for German employers or which qualifications are recognised.

The list is long – and in some areas major improvements could be achieved with comparatively little effort. “Job descriptions on the Internet are often only in German, even if the working language is later actually English,” says Mane. The essential question of whether a company will take care of a visa and looking for an apartment is often not answered unequivocally.

Terrible bureaucracy

In any case, the visa is one of the biggest hurdles for skilled workers from other EU countries, along with language acquisition and the recognition of qualifications. The process is complicated and lengthy, which can be daunting for both professionals and companies.

There are a number of projects for recruiting skilled workers in Germany, in the context of which such aspects are significantly simplified. One of them is “Handicraft offers a future” (HabiZu): The project, funded by the Federal Ministry of Economics, supports craft businesses in recruiting workers from Bosnia and Herzegovina.

It should expressly only be about immigration, at the end of which there is not a job as an assistant but as a specialist. As part of HabiZu, empirical values ​​are being collected for the skilled trades, which are very badly affected by the shortage of skilled workers, which are also to be included in the new Skilled Immigration Act.

Ralf Meier is in charge of the project at the implementing development organization “sequa” and explains: “In a small workshop you have nobody who can take care of making contacts in a third country. That’s of course a lot for a, let’s say, hospital group easier.”

Valuable start-up help from integration support

“sequa” accompanies the entire recruitment process in the HabiZu project and works closely with the employment agency in Bosnia and Herzegovina and with the Federal Employment Agency in Germany. A German course is financed for project participants in their home country, it is checked to what extent their vocational training can also be recognized in Germany and they are brought into contact with the companies.

On-site in Germany, there are integration support staff for dealing with authorities, looking for accommodation and much more. “Searching for an apartment is already difficult for mere mortals,” explains Meier. “And for people who come from abroad and of course don’t earn much at the beginning, even more so.”

However, with the imminent end of the pilot project, advantages such as the paid German course or the integration support will disappear again. In the end, significantly fewer skilled workers will be successfully placed than expected at the start of the project in 2020.

Meier says: “We have learned that the immigration of skilled workers does not work as easily as many would like to imagine. Many people around the world are interested in getting a good job, and maybe also in Germany. But there are Difficulties in many places, investments are often required first.”

On the other hand, the project has provided important practical experience for politics, for the craft organizations and the companies on which one can build. “You could say the glass is half empty and half full at the same time,” Meier concludes.

Priyanka Mane sees it similarly. State pilot projects such as “Hand in Hand”, which is aimed specifically at people from Brazil, India and Vietnam, are great – but there must be more of them, such support must be more widespread.

And she repeats her appeal to German companies and the German state: “Recruit skilled workers in English, provide information in English. Otherwise you’ll never reach the right people.”