Apprentices wanted – Economy – SZ.de

The fact that Ines Schulze-Hillert is still confident is due to the new logic on the job market. Garik Parishkura is sitting in front of the blonde woman at the desk. The 19-year-old is looking for an apprenticeship. Now, early October. The vocational schools already started in August. “What would you like to do?” asks the careers adviser. “So far I’ve applied for apprenticeships as a real estate agent or tax clerk,” says Parishkura. The 55-year-old nods knowingly that the real estate agent is still one of the most popular apprenticeship positions and that places are quickly taken. The chances of becoming a tax clerk look better.

Schulze-Hillert sits in a small corner office in the huge nested administration building of the Employment Agency in Essen. She enters the career aspirations of her visitor, who at least has a technical diploma, into a red and white input mask. “From now on,” she says and clicks Enter. She turns her screen so he can see it. And indeed, five offers appear. “Okay, the two have general high school diplomas,” says Schulze-Hillert and keeps scrolling. That leaves three vacancies, which she copies directly into an email to the 19-year-old. Unthinkable just a few years ago. Not at this time.

For as long as she can remember, there have been more applicants than apprenticeships. Pupils had to write 30 to 40 applications. “I also had people there who sent out 80 letters.” She has been working as a careers counselor at the employment agency for 26 years. “Now the employers have to do the pull-ups,” says Schulze-Hillert in her humorous Ruhrpott speech. The need is now great in the companies: butchers, sanitary facilities, nursing homes, locksmiths, restaurateurs and supermarkets are desperately looking for staff and trainees. Anyone who visits the career counselor’s office hours understands why so many young people are suddenly absent from the job market.

A quick start plan

But first, it’s about getting the quiet young man into an apprenticeship this fall. The tall woman in the light blue dotted blouse looks between her screens. “Now, unfortunately, you’ve only gotten rejections. What do you think, was it appropriate?” She asks without hesitation. “The notes?” – “Yes, I think so, too.” Garik Parishkura has a mid-three, a F in German, a F in Math, and a F in Accounting. But three specific questions later, the consultant also knows why. The 19-year-old lost 200 days in his last school year. He was ill, with severe stomach pains for months. Until a doctor found out he was lactose intolerant.

“I would write that in exactly the same way, in the cover letter,” says Schulze-Hillert. And he could enclose the certificate from the 11th grade, since the grades were almost one grade better. With just a few clicks, she registers him for application training, from the “perfect cover letter” to a personal interview, the very next week. An hour later, Parishkura departs with a new plan and renewed hope. When he’s been through the door ten minutes, she calls his cell phone. You have now even found a vacancy at a real estate company. The offer would come by e-mail, she wishes the best of luck with the application.

In the next ten years, the boomers clear the field

According to the Federal Employment Agency, more than 60,000 training positions remained vacant in Germany last year. That is more than at any time since the early 1990s. “We’ve been noticing the development here for about five or six years,” says Ines Schulze-Hillert.

The labor market has long needed more trained workers instead of fewer. In the second quarter of 2022 there were nationwide almost two million vacancies. That hasn’t happened since the 1990s either. According to a survey by the German Economic Institute (IW), there could be a shortage of five million workers in 2030. Over the next ten years, the Boomers retired, i.e. the baby boomers of the 50s and 60s. They leave gaps in the labor market that the lower-birth cohorts of Generation Z cannot fill.

More and more are fighting their way through to college

Vocational training is particularly relevant. “It’s a rarity for a secondary school student to say today that I want to do an apprenticeship first,” says the careers adviser. Your next guest, Annabel Gehrig, is faced with exactly this choice – study or vocational training? The 17-year-old wants to work with children, that has been clear since an internship in the eighth grade. But now she doesn’t know whether to start training as a teacher or apply for a place at university in social education.

First, Schulze-Hillert can be explained exactly how her dream career came about. Then she gives a short presentation on the differences between the two job profiles. But looking at the certificates then limits the decision by itself. A grade point average of around 2.1 is required for the social education degree. Annabell Gehrig won’t be able to do that until she graduates in the spring. She recommends that she do the teacher training first. “The six waiting semesters are enough for your studies,” Schulze-Hillert encourages. After the training you can always continue. “How does that sound to you now?” – “It’s okay,” says Gehrig, “the time in kindergarten was a lot of fun.”

Achievement badge from seahorse to bachelor

The path to the Abitur is now almost programmed for most of them. “The parents push so hard in the direction of studying, as if the other thing was worth nothing,” says the careers adviser. And indeed it is Quota of those who study in one year start, now at 56 percent. At the turn of the millennium it was just 37 percent. But universities and educational researchers contradict the thesis of “excessive academization” that is costing society its craftsmen, nurses and technicians. The shortage of staff has long since affected academic professions.

Nevertheless, Ines Schulze-Hillert does not see the collective striving for a university degree as positive. “Today, the idea of ​​performance runs through everything. From the seahorse to the recommendation for high school to a bachelor’s degree.” Many ended up back with her two years later. Either because they are overwhelmed, or because they have chosen a course of study “mainly NC-free”, which does not correspond to their interests or abilities. The search starts over. Schulze-Hillert says she would like to spare the young people this loop. Especially now, when the career opportunities after training are so good and many craftsmen want to hand over their businesses in the next one or two years.

Apply via Whatsapp

At job fairs, she increasingly meets desperate bosses. “They just don’t know what to do anymore,” says Schulze-Hillert. She tells of hoteliers who advertise themselves with set tables, companies that allow applications via Whatsapp, roofers on Instagram and medical companies that offer training courses on pipe wrenches.

Along with the departing Boomers and the pull of the university, the pandemic is also having its aftermath. Year groups leave schools that have hardly ever had an internship. But without having seen the companies from the inside at least once, many decided to continue going to school, says Ines Schulze-Hillert.

The third guest in her corner office is a 17-year-old with a white Yorkshire terrier. The girl was a good student until she started seventh grade, explains her mother, who sat next to her. But then a “horror phase” began, she says. Her daughter developed Tourette’s syndrome, a chronic nervous disorder with involuntary tics. Her grades plummeted and she found it difficult to concentrate for long periods of time. During the consultation, the 17-year-old lasts 30 minutes, then she taps her foot more and more violently. Suddenly she claps her hands, calls out “Don’t touch my fish” in a deep barking voice and pulls her dog back to her.

The guidance counselor pauses briefly, but quickly catches up and calmly addresses the young woman by her name. “It’s okay, I think I know how the ticks work now.” And she goes on to explain what options there are for catching up on a school-leaving certificate. Again she radiates this confidence. That’s the positive thing about the lack, says Schulze-Hillert, as mother, daughter and dog close the door. Now young people with “tainted” certificates or biographical cuts would also have chances on the first job market. So those who had it extremely difficult there before.