How your company benefits from international recruiting
The shortage of skilled workers is part of everyday life in human resource management. SMEs in particular are facing ever greater challenges in finding the skilled staff they need in a timely manner by international recruiting. Unfortunately, very few small or medium-sized enterprises have yet dared to consider the option of filling vacancies with international skilled workers.
The KOFA Centre of Competence for Skilled Labour has dedicated itself to this topic and has developed a detailed recommendation for action (in German).
As I am also confronted with the shortage of skilled workers in German SMEs in my everyday work as an HR interim manager, I would like to show you the possibility of international recruiting in more detail here.
Why you should start international recruiting
If you cannot find suitable skilled workers for your vacancies at home, it can be advantageous to advertise the corresponding vacancies abroad and start international recruiting in your company.
Teams consisting of different nations can approach processes with new creativity and thus increase the innovative power in your company. In addition, intercultural teams also strengthen diversity in your workforce and promote learning from each other.
Furthermore, you increase the international and intercultural competence of your company. Use the language and cultural skills of your employees to increase turnover in foreign sales markets and expand your international network.
Your customer loyalty and service orientation can also be served much better with internationally operating customers, as language or cultural barriers do not arise in the first place.
In order to survive as a company in an increasingly international environment, it is important to think about your company’s image abroad at an early stage. The more cosmopolitan you present your company, the quicker you will gain a modern corporate image and also be seen as an attractive employer in the international labour market. You will also be able to fill vacant positions more quickly and adequately in the future, which will ultimately lead to sustainable positive corporate success.
Practical experience also shows that many skilled workers from abroad are not only very good at multilingual communication, they also have an enormously high motivation to work for German companies. You should take advantage of this, because motivation can also be transferred to existing employees and ultimately leads to a win-win situation for everyone.
How to start international recruiting
When it comes to looking for skilled personnel abroad, small and medium-sized companies in particular still face major challenges and do not feel up to the task of international recreuiting.
However, the recruitment process for foreign skilled personnel does not differ in the first steps from the classic process for domestic recruitment.
Step 1: Create a job requirements profile
Regardless of whether you are looking for staff at home or abroad, a job requirement profile should contain the most important professional and personal requirements that your future staff should bring with them to perform the job.
Make sure that you do not specifically ask for school/university degrees known in Germany in the profile, but rather name skills and abilities that are required for the job. These can be specific language skills or experience with tools, machines, programming language, etc. This will help potential candidates and candidates and will also help potential candidates to familiarise themselves more easily.
If you need help in creating an international job profile, please contact me. With my years of expertise, we can create the right requirements profile for your international job description.
Step 2: Legal framework conditions for the German labour market
Access to the German labour market varies depending on the origin of the international skilled worker.
For EU citizens and their assimilated persons there is neither an entry restriction nor a restriction to the German labour market. This means that EU citizens and citizens from Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland can enter Germany and work here without restriction.
For persons from „visa-exempt countries“ such as Australia, Israel, Japan, Canada, the Republic of Korea, New Zealand and the USA, no entry visa is required, but a residence permit is required, which then also constitutes a work permit.
Therefore, for future employees from visa-exempt countries, it is important to note that a visa or residence permit should be applied for prior to entry.
Persons from all other third countries require a residence permit in addition to an entry visa to enable employment in Germany.
Furthermore, the requirements of the Federal Employment Agency must also be taken into account in this case. You should therefore contact the Employers‘ Service of the Federal Employment Agency in good time to find out what the specific requirements are in your case of international recruiting.
On the website of the Federal Employment Agency you will receive initial guidance as to whether your international skilled workers require a visa and a residence permit and which work permit will be issued.
It is important to mention that there are different regulations for persons from third countries who have an academic degree (university degree or a university degree comparable in Germany) or a professional qualification.
Labour market access for persons with an academic school-leaving qualification
The EU Blue Card can be applied for by persons from third countries who can prove that they have a recognised university degree that is comparable to a university degree in Germany.
Further information on the recognition of foreign university degrees and the possibilities for a residence title can be found on the website of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees.
However, the central prerequisite for the mandatory approval by the Federal Employment Agency for a work permit is a job in Germany corresponding to the qualification with a corresponding minimum salary.
Holders of the EU Blue Card can then be employed for the corresponding duration of the contract period stipulated in the employment contract, but for a maximum of four years.
Innovations in the Skilled Workers Immigration Act
The current Skilled Workers Immigration Act (Fachkräfteeinwanderungsgesetz) introduces new provisions for the EU Blue Card:
- The minimum earnings threshold is lowered, generally for employees as well as for sought-after skilled personnel for bottleneck professions and for those just starting their careers.
- In future, more people will be able to apply for the blue card, as the list of shortage occupations will be extended.
- IT professionals without a university degree but with at least three years of professional experience can now also apply for the blue card.
- Holders of an EU blue card are now granted short- or long-term mobility and can thus enter Germany without a visa for the purpose of working.
- Simplified family reunification for EU Blue Card holders, provided that the family has already lived in another EU Member State.
With these changes, the legislator wants to create opportunities for quicker and less bureaucratic employment of staff in Germany.
Labour market access for persons with vocational qualifications
Professionally qualified applicants from third countries are granted a work permit if they can present a concrete job offer.
IT specialists with at least three years of professional experience and proof that their skills must correspond to the level of qualification attained by German university graduates are considered a special case here.
However, you can support the recognition procedure by helping to fill out the applications. Have the recognition counselling service determine the correct German reference occupation in advance, translate necessary documents in advance and then submit them.
The costs for a recognition procedure can range between 100 € and 600 €, plus necessary translation costs and costs for certifications.
Here you can also support your future employees financially and present yourself as a caring employer right from the start. In this way of international recruiting, you create the basis for a potentially long-term business relationship with your foreign employees that is characterised by loyalty.
You can also find out how to have the skills and qualifications of your applicants from third countries recognised and what you as an employer should know about this in the PDF „Opportunities for skilled labour immigration – What employers need to know“ (in German) from the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, Social Media, Public Relations.
NOTE: Accelerated procedure for international skilled workers
As is well known, official procedures in Germany can unfortunately still take a long time and there is often not enough time to wait several months for a skilled worker to fill the position in the company.
Therefore, you as an employer can take advantage of a so-called „accelerated procedure for skilled workers“ against payment of 411 euros.
This gives you a visa application appointment at the German embassy within three weeks. Furthermore, the visa is then also „usually“ granted within three weeks. And the decision on professional recognition should be made within two months after receipt of all documents.
Click here to download the PDF for more information on the accelerated procedure for international professionals (in German).
Another special case is the ICT Directive:
If your company has a branch outside the EU, you can easen your international reqcruiting by employing skilled workers or trainees from this branch in the German branch for a period of one to three years.
Useful information on this can be found on the website of the Federal Employment Agency on International Staff Exchange.
Experience has shown that the legal framework conditions for the recruitment of international professionals in particular represent an almost insurmountable hurdle for many companies and HR departments.
Contact us. We can draw on many years of expertise in the international recruitment of specialists in IT and other technical sectors and provide you with full support in this step as well.
Step 3: How to find the right country for your search
It makes little sense to simply advertise the vacancy randomly in all countries of the world. By international recruiting you should therefore think in advance about the position and the requirements for which you are looking for skilled personnel.
Therefore, clarify the following questions in advance in order to find the right country in which you are looking for skilled personnel:
- Do you already have contacts or a network in the country that you can build on?
- Can it make sense to invest in networking in the relevant foreign country?
- Do you already use the contacts of your foreign employees or business partners to be able to draw on their network or knowledge of the local labour market conditions?
- Do you know the current labour market situation abroad? Are the skilled workers you need with the appropriate qualifications available ther
In addition, clarify in advance the legal conditions for a residence and work permit in Germany as stated under Step 2.
We will assist you in answering the questions mentioned here. Depending on the industry and occupational field, we will advise you on the basis of our many years of experience in international personnel management in order to find the suitable countries for your personnel search.
Step 4: Create the job advertisement
Just as with the preparation of the job profile, it is important that by international recruiting you depart from the German application standards of purely formal qualifications and focus on the acquired skills and experience of the candidate.
Above all, it is important that you specify the required language skills. One guide is the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages – CEFR (in German).
And while we are on the subject of language:
Publish the advertisement in English and in the respective national language. Also indicate in the description in which languages the application should be made.
If you offer integration and support services in your company, you should also mention this in the job advertisement.
You can provide additional information on the local infrastructure, the regional environment, possible leisure activities, etc. This will help your future employees to get to know you in advance. This will help your future employees to get an idea of the local conditions, environment, etc. and will highlight the attractiveness of your company and location.
We would be happy to support you in international recruiting by creating the job advertisement for international specialists. Contact me and my team of experts!
Step 5: Publish a job advertisement
There are many ways to publish a job advertisement in Germany. First of all, you should present the job on your website under an appropriate category such as „Career“ or „Jobs“.
It is also recommended that you search specifically for recruitment channels in advance for publication abroad and inform yourself about the common target group and information channels.
These can be online job exchanges abroad or the ZAV, the Central International and Specialist Placement Office of the Federal Employment Agency. Free publication on the online job exchange „Make it in Germany“ is also helpful in placing your job advertisement abroad in a targeted way.
In the meantime, in international recruiting it is also common practice for companies to search for staff via social media and to make use of existing contacts. An appropriate network locally or on the internet can be very helpful in the search for international skilled workers.
Contacting international universities for internships can also help to attract skilled workers to your company at an early stage and retain them in the long term. After successfully completing your studies, you can directly take on employees you already know after you have already got to know and appreciate each other during an internship.
Another tip: Find out about recruitment fairs abroad and take part in them if possible. This way you increase your local profile and can network internationally at the same time.
Still undecided about how and where to look for international professionals? With my many years of expertise in international recruiting and HR management for specialists and executives as well as for IT experts, my team and I will be happy to assist you in word and deed!
Step 6: Application and recruitment process.
Here, too, the procedure is the same as for any recruitment. Proceed according to the criteria you have defined and evaluate the application documents you receive quite objectively.
It is important that you are open to possible differences in foreign applications despite internal guidelines. You should therefore allow a little more time for the evaluation of a foreign application. You should not only evaluate the formal certificates or qualifications, but also take into account the professional experience already gained and competences acquired.
But what happens next?
The first meeting is imminent and you should clarify in advance with the candidate whether the first personal contact can take place via telephone, video call or in person.
The further the selection process progresses and the narrower the selection of candidates becomes, the sooner you should deal with the legal formalities mentioned above. If a visa is already required for a personal meeting, you could already support your potential future employees in the search for accommodation, formalities, information on travel, etc.
If several applicants from the same country have applied to you, it would also be conceivable for you to travel to the country of origin and conduct the interviews on site. You can also use this trip to network and gain helpful insights into the culture, mentality and language of the country.
CONCLUSION
For some companies, the path to international recruiting a foreign specialist is completely new. Our experience shows that SMEs in particular often shy away from the step of international recruiting in an international environment and do not feel up to the challenge.
However, the German legislator has meanwhile recognised that we cannot fill the number of missing skilled workers from our own ranks. We are dependent on international skilled workers. For this reason, the legal framework for the employment of foreign staff has been simplified.
Contact us, we have years of experience in international human resource management. Our experts at Consulting HR Solutions will provide you with competent support from the very first day of the international recruitment process for automotive and IT specialists and managers.
Legal hurdles suddenly become very small and can be easily overcome. You will see how creatively an intercultural team can contribute positively to the success of your company. The initial efforts for starting an international recruitment in your company for international professionals will pay off, I am convinced of that!
You can find out how to successfully integrate international professionals into your company in our upcoming article!
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