German companies who need to hire abroad for production-related jobs, such as machine operators and technicians, face more hurdles than recruiting candidates with academic backgrounds, according to Marcel Schmutzler, spokesman of the state-run ZAV, which handles international recruitment for Germany’s federal employment agency Bundesagentur für Arbeit.

“For these categories [of recruits], German companies often really have to start from scratch,” he told Plasteurope.com. ZAV’s major source countries are Egypt, India, Mexico, Morocco, and Tunisia.

ZAV works only under the principle of “fair migration”, meaning it will only hire those people whose jobs are not needed by the country itself. This explains why the local government agency itself is one of ZAV’s partners, along with the German embassies and language schools.

The customer centre is currently assisting 12,000 jobseekers from abroad. This includes 25% IT specialists and engineers, 23% in the healthcare sector, and 12% skilled-trade jobs and technicians, such as electricians and plant facility mechanics, mechatronics, and welders.

Schmutzler elaborated on international hiring in an exclusive interview with Plasteurope.com correspondent Marilyn Gerlach. The interview is part of a series on Europe’s labour market. Plasteurope.com also spoke to EuPC MD Bernard Merkx about the challenges in recruiting young talent and Polyvia COO Jean Chaillet about recruiting from non-EU countries.

PIE: How do you go about with your recruitment process?

Marcel Schmutzler: We do not orient our search in terms of a particular industry, like the plastics industry. We seek, for example, the professions or the types of job most needed on the German labour market – like healthcare workers, engineers, trained mechanics/machinists who can handle factory machinery, etc.

We recruit abroad through two channels. The first channel is through our own websites. Those who are interested can contact us directly by email or phone. We also offer regular online seminars. Interested parties who contact us can ask us what it is like to work in Germany, if there are certain positions open, where to work, for example. We then check if there are openings for whatever position they are interested in. If they are qualified, we put their data in our database and we use the data to connect them with companies in Germany who might be interested in their profiles. 

The second way is we actively recruit abroad through our partners in those countries for specific jobs, like health workers. This is one of our priorities. We also seek IT professionals, and those with non-academic backgrounds, like skilled workmen for certain jobs in the manufacturing industries. These would be mechanics/machinists for factories and IT. Some of our most important partner countries are Mexico, India, Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia. In those countries we work together with the domestic labour authorities, the German embassies, language schools, and other relevant institutions.

What is important for us is the concept of “fair migration”. This means we will only hire people through the government labour agencies of a particular country that is willing to cooperate with us. We don’t want to lure away jobs that are needed by the country itself.

Do you have figures on how many were wanted for those with and without academic degrees?

Schmutzler: In 2023, there were an average of 51,000 job openings registered in mechatronics, energy, and electricity at the German federal employment agency (academics, skilled, and unskilled workers), while 48,000 were registered for machinery and vehicle construction engineering. These correspond to 3^rd and 5^th place among the most wanted professions from an employer’s perspective in Germany in 2023.

What has been the agency’s experience when it comes to recruiting outside of Germany?

Schmutzler: From our experience, we have seen that those who have studied the German language in their home countries before coming here are the ones who remain in Germany to continue working in the jobs they applied for. Those who break off their language studies mid-course do not come to Germany at all. The companies pay for these language studies lasting from 6 to 12 months. 

We started recruiting abroad in 2013 on a very small scale, and only for health workers at that time. Then we slowly expanded as we gathered experience, in terms of improving our procedures, for example. Our experience is that for IT jobs, we can conduct the recruitment online. IT professionals speak good English and can make their decisions already over there, in their countries. But for mechanics and jobs that involve manual labour, they often want to physically see and meet who their employers would be. The decision on whether to come to Germany or not has a far more reaching consequence for them than IT professionals, and they need a person they can meet personally to ask questions before they make their decisions. Also, their German or even English language skills are mostly not as proficient as those of academics. For these categories, the German companies often really have to start from scratch. 

Could you give us a sense of the types of people who approach you?

Schmutzler: Our Customer Center is currently assisting around 12,000 jobseekers. This figure includes:

• approximately 25% IT/engineers, such as IT specialists, product and software developers, web-developers, IT administrators; 
• around 23% in the healthcare sector, such as doctors, caregivers, pharmacists, midwives, physical therapists; 
• some 12% handyman jobs/technicians, such as electricians, industrial technicians, automotive mechanics, plant facility mechanics, mechatronics, welders; 
• about 5% hotel and catering jobs, such as service staff, cooks, kitchen helpers, receptionists;
• around 3% transportation/logistics jobs, such as bus drivers, truck drivers;
• others, such as in trading/marketing or jobs in social welfare activities.

In 2023, our Customer Center received enquiries from more than 233,000 people, mostly via email. Unfortunately, we do not know how many of them actually came to Germany.

Some of the jobseekers who approached us by email in the past were assisted by our Customer Center over a long period of time, while often those who had only enquired about certain specific issues stopped communicating with us after receiving our reply.

Over the next few days, Plasteurope.com will lend you, dear readers, a sneak-peek into the labour market of Europe, how it came to be consistently short-staffed, and what possible solutions are on offer for the plastics industry. We talk to various industry experts, heads of plastics trade associations and companies, to get a firmer grip on the ever-expanding problem of labour shortages in EU member states. If you are planning to recruit new staff or would like to advertise open positions, visit our Job Portal, devoted exclusively to the plastics industry.