Due to a lack of qualified personnel German companies are increasingly looking for employees abroad. Currently 62% of all businesses employing more than 100 people look for new personnel abroad. This fact was demonstrated by a study by the Institute for Employment and Employability (IBE) at the university of applied sciences in Ludwigshafen. This study also showed that small and medium-sized entities (SMEs) have a much more locally oriented personnel sourcing policy given that only 43% of these recruit new employees abroad.
In particular high qualified specialists are sought-after (by 72% of German businesses). However, more than half of all German major companies nowadays recruit executive managers outside Germany. Reasons for this are the self understanding of these companies as being international businesses (77%) and the will to improve their international competence (54%). Factors such as demographic change and an ageing society are not said to play any role in the recruitment strategies of German companies (only 8% say so). Due to cultural differences the integration of employees from abroad is a very big challenge (65%). Therefore, 51% of respondents said that measures to integrate these employees are necessary.
Currently companies are in particular looking for specialists in the field of information technology (IT, 40%) as well as for research and development (R&D, 37%). Over the years to come demand will be particularly high for employees with technical expert knowledge (54%).
Personnel recruiters find the people they look for most of the time in the east of Europe (41%), followed by German speaking countries (34%), England (29%) and the USA (25%) as well as India (21%). In future German companies want to concentrate on Switzerland, Austria and east Europe (50% of respondents) in order to find new personnel abroad. “East Europe has a similar education system and similar cultural values”, is the comment by Prof. Jutta Rump, director of the IBE, on the answers of the companies interviewed.
The study is available for free-of-charge download from the website of the Hays AG, which is an international personnel consultancy on behalf of which the above study was carried out. 