German companies seek to attract the laid off talents from US Silicon Valley
Some German companies see the layoffs of thousands of workers in Silicon Valley as an opportunity to recruit top talent as they face a scarcity in the labor market and a shortage of workers with basic skills in software engineering.
The American West Coast has long been a prime destination for aspiring software engineers looking to work among the elite and more lucrative in their profession, but the mass layoffs have created a pool of job seekers that Germany is eager to tap.
“They terminate their services and we hire them,” said Rainer Zujeher, head of human resources at Carriad, a software company affiliated with automaker Volkswagen.
“We have several hundred positions available in the US, Europe and China”.
Fearing inflation and the possibility of recession, Alphabet, Microsoft and Mita companies have collectively cut about 40,000 jobs.
The Bitcom Group said Germany had 137,000 job vacancies in the field of information technology.
The German government is working to simplify immigration rules and promote the prospect of easy citizenship to entice potential skilled immigrants, and authorities in German states are pushing ahead.
“I would like to cordially invite you to move to Bavaria,” Judith Gerlach, the minister for digitization in Bavaria, Germany’s richest region, sent a message to those recently laid off via LinkedIn.
But German bureaucracy may present another challenge, as companies have already reported months-long delays in securing appointments for new employees seeking work permits.
“The bureaucracy in Germany severely hampers most highly qualified workers… Especially if they don’t speak German,” said Diana Stollero of Berlin-based start-up Lindes.
