"they lay off staff, we recruit," German companies pick up big layoffs in Silicon Valley in the United States
According to news from January 31, many German companies are facing tight supply and demand in the labor market and are in urgent need of employees with key software engineering skills, so they are seeing the layoffs in Silicon Valley as an excellent opportunity to recruit top talent.
Tuyuan Pixabay the West Coast of the United States has always been a major destination for ambitious software engineers, hoping to find higher-paying technical jobs there. However, massive layoffs in the technology industry have created recruitment opportunities for German companies.
"they cut staff and we hire," said Rainer Zugehoer, chief personnel officer of Cariad, a software subsidiary of carmaker Volkswagen. "We have hundreds of vacancies to fill in the US, Europe and China."
Fearing inflation and a deepening recession, Google's parent company Alphabet, Microsoft and Facebook's parent company Meta announced a total of nearly 40,000 job cuts. Germany has one of the most aging populations in the world, and there is a huge gap in its labor force. There are currently 137000 IT job openings, according to Bitkom, an IT industry group.
The German government is simplifying immigration rules and using the promise of easy access to citizenship to attract potential immigrants with key skills. Judith Gerlach Grah, the digital minister of Bavaria, left a message on LinkedIn for those who were recently laid off: "I sincerely invite you to go to Bavaria."
With the value of the euro almost equal to that of the dollar, few European companies can offer hundreds of thousands of dollars as much as their California counterparts, but some companies hope cheaper health care and a lower cost of living compared with hot spots such as San Francisco will help.
Grah added: "did I mention Oktoberfest?" Munich's famous Oktoberfest may attract new unemployed. But some are sceptical. Bernhard Bernhard Rohleder, chief executive of Bitkom, points out that Germany is competing not only with other countries for the best talent, but also with their home countries.
German bureaucracy may be another challenge: many companies have reported that they have been delayed for months in arranging appointments for new employees to obtain work permits.
"for most people, German bureaucracy is extremely serious, especially if they don't speak German," says Diana Stoleru of Lendis, a Berlin start-up.
