Guido Seifen runs Omexom Hochspannung, a medium-sized German firm of about 500 employees that builds major overhead power lines. He says recruiting qualified staff for widely scattered construction sites is becoming harder because the work often requires technicians to give up a stable home life during the week.
Seifen hopes to recruit technicians from Vietnam through a German‑Vietnamese cooperation project supported by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ). Vietnam is expanding its renewable energy sector and EVN, the national electricity provider, has created a training center to prepare workers for overhead-line work. Germany needs overhead line technicians, and the project aims to match that demand with Vietnam’s training capacity.
Omexom plans to bring EVN’s Vietnamese instructors to Germany so they can be trained to German standards and teach candidates who can gain certification from the German Chamber of Industry and Commerce. GIZ is also providing German language classes at the training center in Vietnam. Seifen said the goal is to train enough technicians that roughly half — up to about 200 people — could be offered work in Germany, a setup he described as a ‘win-win.’
The federal government is backing projects that both attract foreign skilled workers and strengthen training and knowledge transfer in origin countries. The Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) already works with many partners on training; the new industry-inclusive initiative 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 a 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, a demand that would require very large migration flows.
Recruitment from Asia, Africa and Latin America is becoming increasingly important because those populations tend to be younger and often well educated. Many people in those countries seek opportunities abroad, and their governments expect Germany to create and strengthen safe, transparent pathways for skilled migration.
WE‑Fair places emphasis on 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 in their home countries and for work in Germany. Costs and risks are to be shared; prospective workers should be able to cover further training or relocation costs.
But companies frequently underestimate what recruitment and integration require. Edith Otiende‑Lawani, a Kenya-born managing director of a consulting firm that supports migrant integration in Munich, says employers sometimes expect incoming workers to 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 create real challenges.
Gerhard Hain, an adviser on intercultural matters, points out that communication and leadership in German companies often work differently and employers must be prepared for different approaches in 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, said even so-called ‘accelerated skilled-worker processes’ often fall short. 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, who runs a care and social services company in Hanover with 250 employees, many of whom are migrants, argues that Germany’s attitude toward immigrants affects retention. 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.
The WE‑Fair initiative bundles government, development agencies and industry to create clearer, fairer recruitment channels and stronger training links with origin countries. Its success will depend on realistic employer expectations, faster and more predictable administrative processes, adequate language and integration support, and policies that encourage newcomers to stay.
This article was originally written in German.