A Strategic Approach to Global Recruitment
German universities must take a strategic approach to global recruitment to stay competitive in the evolving international academic landscape. With the U.S. becoming less attractive for researchers and China’s scientific influence rising, Germany has a unique opportunity to attract top talent. To succeed, universities must enhance their appeal, refine recruitment strategies, and prioritize onboarding measures to ensure a smooth transition, integration, and long-term retention of international researchers, says Cathleen Fisher, one of our Experts on International Mobility.
By Cathleen Fisher
Executive Summary - read the full text here or download as PDF document
The internationalization of science, research, and higher education is essential to Germany’s efforts to remain globally competitive, sustain innovation, and secure future prosperity. To accelerate recruitment of international talent, German universities first need to understand the emerging landscape of international science, which is dynamic, competitive, and increasingly infused with geopolitical considerations. In the United States, deep cuts in the federal research workforce and research funding, and an increasingly hostile environment for immigrants, are likely to make the United States a less welcoming place to international academics. While some international researchers may still be attracted by the flexibility and openness of the US system, an academic career path in Trump’s America will entail greater risks and uncertainty. The relative decline in the United States’ attractiveness as a land of scientific opportunity as well as China’s rising scientific prowess both signal seismic shifts in the global academic market, creating new opportunities for Germany, whose academic system offers an attractive balance of excellence with security. However, to be competitive in the global scientific talent market, German universities need to maximize their institution’s attractiveness to foreign applicants and be more targeted in their approach to recruitment.
As reflected in the OECD 2023 assessment of talent attractiveness -in which Germany ranked fifteen- a wide range of factors affect a country’s ability to recruit highly skilled global talent. While universities can influence some factors positively (e.g. salary, type of contract, research infrastructure, spousal and familial support), they have little direct influence over factors such as taxation and inflation rates, the local housing market, digitalization, or societal attitudes toward immigration. However, universities can lessen the negative effects of such factors through onboarding measures that help foreign hires surmount the many simultaneous challenges of international relocation and integration, so that they may become focused, productive, and functional colleagues at an institution in an expeditious manner. In short, onboarding and integration measures are not just “nice to have,” but rather essential to achieve a critical “soft landing” for, and retention of, international talent.
Institutions can maximize the chances that talented foreign researchers will be interested in applying for a position, accept an offer, and have a “soft landing” by thinking strategically and employing a targeted, creative, and proactive approach to recruitment. Specifically:
- Be strategic and directed and, if possible, person-specific in recruitment.
- Have a recruitment plan and develop a broad applicant pool.
- Communicate the strengths of the German academic system clearly and confidently and provide context for negative or faulty perceptions; and
- Remain adaptable in the face of (un)expected domestic and global changes and the opportunities or challenges they create for German research.
Cathleen Fisher
Cathleen Fisher has been engaged in transatlantic dialogue and collaborations for over 35 years, with a focus on academic exchanges and public policy research and dialogue. As Executive Director of the German-American Fulbright Commission in Berlin and President of American Friends of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Washington, DC, she promoted US-German scientific, scholarly, and professional cooperation. She is one of the Foundation's eight international experts on academic mobility.