Guido Seifen runs the medium‑sized German firm Omexom Hochspannung, which employs about 500 people and constructs major power lines. He says finding qualified staff for widely scattered construction sites in Germany is getting harder — the work often requires giving up a stable home and family life during the week.
Seifen hopes to recruit technicians from Vietnam through a German‑Vietnamese development cooperation project. Vietnam is shifting toward renewable energy and is being supported by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ). Germany needs overhead line technicians, and Vietnam’s electricity provider EVN has created a training center to prepare workers for that job.
Omexom intends to share expertise by bringing EVN’s Vietnamese instructors to Germany for training so they can teach to German standards and help trainees gain certification from the German Chamber of Industry and Commerce. GIZ is also offering German language classes at the training center in Vietnam.
The plan is to train enough technicians that roughly half — up to about 200 people, Seifen said — could be offered work in Germany, a setup he described as a “win‑win.”
The federal government wants to back projects that attract foreign skilled workers to Germany while strengthening training and knowledge transfer in origin countries. The Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) already partners with many organizations to train workers, and the new initiative brings industry on board. The alliance is called WE‑Fair — the alliance for the fair recruitment of skilled workers.
“Germany needs qualified skilled workers,” Development Minister Reem Alabali Radovan said at the alliance launch in Berlin, citing Germany’s rapidly ageing workforce. More than 20% of employees are at least 55 and likely to retire within the next decade, she noted. Demographers estimate Germany will need about 400,000 foreign skilled workers annually over the next ten years; meeting that demand would require very large migration flows.
Recruitment from countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America is increasingly important for the German economy because those populations are younger and often well educated. Many people in those countries are seeking opportunities abroad, and their governments expect Germany to create and strengthen pathways for skilled migration.
The WE‑Fair approach emphasizes transparent placement rules and oversight. Candidates should receive clear information on working conditions, pay and required qualifications. Training programs are to prepare participants both for jobs at home and for work in Germany. Costs and risks are to be shared; prospective workers should be able to cover further training or relocation costs.
However, German businesses often underestimate what recruitment and integration require. Edith Otiende‑Lawani, a Kenya‑born managing director of a consulting firm who supports migrant integration in Munich, says companies sometimes assume incoming workers will be fully trained, immediately deployable and quickly integrated. “The fairy‑tale notion is that people will arrive already speaking German, integrate quickly, be resilient and be enthusiastic about Germany and everything that comes with it,” she said. In reality, language, cultural differences and workplace communication styles pose real challenges.
Gerhard Hain, an adviser on intercultural matters, points out that communication and leadership in German companies often work differently; employers must be prepared for different approaches in many everyday and professional situations. Long bureaucratic delays also test candidates’ patience: immigration processes can take years, and multiple overburdened authorities slow arrivals. Markus Lötzsch, chief executive of the Nuremberg Chamber of Industry and Commerce, says even so‑called “accelerated skilled‑worker processes” often fall short of expectations. To ease bottlenecks, chambers are investing staff and money to pre‑check documents so immigration offices can process cases more smoothly.
Retention is another critical issue. “We shouldn’t only talk about people coming — we should also talk about them staying,” Lötzsch said. In 2024, for the first time, more people left Germany than moved there. Many foreign skilled workers return home or move elsewhere when their expectations are not met.
Entrepreneur Jasmin Arbabian‑Vogel argues that Germany’s attitude toward immigrants affects retention. She runs a care and social services company in Hanover with 250 employees, many of whom are migrants. Companies invest in training, only to see employees receive deportation notices or face precarious legal situations. “It was nice working with you, but now goodbye,” she said. Without a political and societal shift toward treating immigrants as long‑term contributors, the skilled‑worker alliance risks falling short of its goals.
This article was originally written in German.
