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Chris Pyak on skills shortage: "Companies need to get off their high horse"

2022-12-14T06:59:21.285Z


In Germany there is a shortage of around 400,000 skilled workers - but only 4 percent of German companies hire new employees who do not speak German. That has to change, says career coach Chris Pyak.


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Nursing home construction site:

The country lacks 400,000 skilled workers, especially in the nursing sector and crafts there are problems

Photo: Christoph Schmidt/dpa

Mr. Pyak, there is already a shortage of 400,000 skilled workers per year in Germany.

Crafts are suffering, but managers and software developers are also urgently needed - and the trend is rising.

As a career coach, you place international specialists in Germany.

Why are you doing this job?

I am German, grew up here, but then lived and worked in seven countries and returned to Germany in 2011.

At that time I had a kind of reserve culture shock – people who have lived abroad for a long time experience that more often.

It usually works like this: the country you come back to has changed and so has you.

In this case, I felt that only I had changed.

We are talking about the same topics today as we were 30 years ago.

Immigration and skills shortages have long been predicted by looking at birth rates.

But nothing happens because German employers still have disdain for what people have done abroad.

Do we need immigration to counteract the shortage of skilled workers?

Definitive.

For example, Germany has a simple visa for highly qualified specialists with the Blue Card.

The federal government now sees this to some extent.

The new Skilled Workers Act is a step in the right direction, but will not help enough - because the real reasons for the low number of international skilled workers lie elsewhere.

This is also reflected in your everyday life.

Some of your clients come from elite universities like Harvard, Princeton and Cambridge.

Can't these people find a job in Germany without help?

The mere fact that I can earn my living with it shows the situation we are in.

I should actually be unemployed - it can't be that someone who graduated from Princeton or Harvard pays me money to get him a job in Germany.

I work for people from all parts of the world, from all professions.

Most of them have university degrees, mostly software developers, managers and researchers.

Quite a few come from elite universities.

But many top people cannot find a job in Germany.

Why is that?

For example, I spoke to an HR manager who rejected a candidate because she could not evaluate the foreign degree.

The candidate, my client, had a Masters from Cambridge University.

I experience something like this all the time.

We can't afford this attitude of denial much longer.

The city of Düsseldorf has shown, for example, that a third of its employees will retire in the next five to ten years.

Many companies still act as if they were still receiving masses of applications.

What does this mean for our labor market in the long term?

Baby boomers are retiring now, that's millions of people.

And if companies continue not to change their attitude, we will not be able to maintain our prosperity and our economic performance.

We also run the risk that, in a few years, people who have been working for years will be lying alone in a nursing home for hours because there are no longer any caregivers.

Why is Germany unattractive for many executives from abroad?

Only 4 percent of the more than three million German companies hire employees who only speak English.

Half of all jobs advertised in English come from just 350 companies.

Of course, it's extremely tough for applicants to have a chance against thousands of competitors.

At the same time, we have millions of other attractive and powerful companies.

There is already a shortage of applicants here.

The economy urgently needs to understand: We have to hire in English, the employees can learn German "on the job", which in many cases is much easier than we imagine.

How, for example?

A good concept that I have come to know is to provide the foreign colleague with a "partner".

How well this works can be seen in a metalworking company that I know: Employees with every language background are already being hired here today, and they are usually assigned a colleague who speaks the same language, but also German.

As a result, new employees can perform directly and have the time to learn the new language.

This can also be transferred to the management level: Since many people today want to work less than 100 percent, you can do job sharing: two employees share one job.

So you have an international specialist in the team, but full communication and performance.

But there are many other possibilities.

HR managers don't see these opportunities yet?

HR professionals understand what a huge need we have.

And many know that the labor market in Germany is exhausted.

They often want to recruit internationally.

The problem: They often demand that applicants speak German, preferably at level C1, i.e. almost their mother tongue.

But that's utopian: there are 180 million people worldwide who speak German.

100 million of them live in Germany, Switzerland or Austria.

The chance of finding someone from the other 80 million who exactly fits your job advertisement is vanishingly small.

But the language isn't the only problem that slows down the search for skilled workers, is it?

No, there are many other problems.

HR managers often have 30 to 40 positions to fill, but they often don't know exactly what the applicants actually have to achieve for each position.

They often only know the rough formal requirements.

Many recruiters therefore try to hire exactly the same person they last hired for the position - and in most cases that is a 35-year-old German man.

But it would be much more important to look at: What result should the employee achieve?

Then it often doesn't matter where he comes from.

Do other countries do it better?

Yes.

For my clients, Germany is just one option among many.

Many of them go to England.

Or to Holland.

In Amsterdam, for example, 25 percent of job advertisements are in English.

I recently placed a South African manager in the automotive industry in Amsterdam.

He tried to find a job in Germany for a year and only got rejections, sometimes not even invitations to job interviews.

The corona pandemic has changed the world of work, there is now much more remote work.

Hasn't that changed the situation?

Yes, anyway.

Before Covid-19, only one percent of all companies hired in English, but now it is four times as many.

The pandemic has shown that changes are possible in some areas.

But there had to be a pandemic first.

In Germany, we have the general tendency to regard everything that is unusual as potentially dangerous.

This not only affects working methods, but also people who do not fit into our scheme.

This attitude has to change.

I underestimated how big the problem with racism is in Germany.

That is very dangerous.

What experiences have you had with your clients on the subject?

A researcher came to southern Germany from India and was supposed to develop a new product there.

After a year she gave up.

She was marginalized and treated with open distrust in public.

In the end she gave up - she has now gone to another country.

The project was dead. Five German laboratory assistants were also sent home.

Karma is a bitch.

What can companies do about it?

Businesses need to get off their high horse.

They should make an effort and do everything they can to make their employees feel comfortable.

This also makes economic sense: After all, it is much more expensive to find a new employee than to keep the one I already have.

It's not just about money and holidays for people.

They want to be valued and lead a life in Germany.

And Germany is really, really bad at that.

A study by "Internations.org" shows that Germany ranks 42nd out of 52 in terms of welcoming culture.

For comparison: Saudi Arabia is in 27th place.

Can this change?

Yes.

To change that, the legislature has an opportunity to do something.

In my view, Nancy Faeser's bill to simplify dual citizenship is the first step in the right direction.

So far we have expected: If you want to become German and work here, then you have to deny everything you have achieved and experienced so far.

That's not a sign of appreciation.

All major immigration countries allow multiple citizenship.

Take Ireland, for example: they know from their own experience what it's like when you have to start over.

But the German authorities are only interested in the theory: I should integrate.

But by asking for your passport to be handed in, you're more likely to trigger frustration and break the bond.

This is not how we will overcome the shortage of skilled workers.

Source: spiegel

All news articles on 2022-12-14

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