Masha Holub was on vacation in Barcelona when war broke out in her home country. She only had a rucksack with her and wanted to be back in Kyiv for her brother’s birthday – before she left she had no worries that Russia might attack Ukraine. “I wouldn’t have thought it possible and for the first few days I thought the whole time: That can’t be, it’s a bad dream,” she says.
Today, exactly one month later, you can tell how the 26-year-old is struggling with her feelings on the phone. On the one hand, she just wants to cry because the whole situation is so terrible, she says. Because she is worried about her family, who are still in Kyiv and with whom she speaks every day. On the other hand, she has decided to be strong, earn money and support her family and compatriots as best she can remotely.
Masha Holub heard about a project by entrepreneurs Marcus Diekmann and Christian Weis from friends. A few days after the start of the war, you launched the “Job Aid Ukraine” platform – a placement portal on which companies can post jobs for refugees from Ukraine free of charge. There are around 11,000 so far, with new ones being added every minute. Java and cloud developers are wanted, as well as nurses, florists, cooks and truck drivers. Diekmann has won large companies as supporters, including SAP and Deutsche Bank, who have released employees with programming experience and placed job advertisements themselves. The pledged donations – Job Aid Ukraine is currently becoming a non-profit association – amount to more than 200,000 euros so far.
High demand for new employees
Diekmann can hardly catch his breath when he talks about what is happening on the platform. But it’s not just him in Coesfeld in Münsterland that’s going fast. While many of the now at least 246,000 Ukrainians who have fled to Germany do not yet know what to do next, companies are already providing thousands of job offers especially for them – to help, but of course also because they have an enormous need for new employees. Most recently there were 1.7 million vacancies in this country, more than ever before. The Ukrainians, who are considered to be well educated, could – at least that should be the hope – possibly fill part of the gap.
The “UA Talents” platform, founded by the two Berlin-based Ukrainian entrepreneurs Ivan Kychatyi and Nikita Overchyk, also had more than 5,000 jobs on offer, mainly in the technology sector, when it started two and a half weeks ago. It is supported by well-known companies such as the Internet group Meta, the fashion retailer Zalando and venture capitalists such as Project A and Earlybird. And the network “Companies integrate refugees”, founded in 2016 as a joint initiative of the German Chambers of Industry and Commerce and the Federal Ministry of Economics, has also shown great interest from companies, as project manager Sarah Strobel explains. In March alone, 100 companies have registered so far, usually between 20 and 25 a month. The companies offer, among other things, jobs and internships for refugees from Ukraine. “But it will be a while before there are large-scale recruitment,” she says. “So far, the interest of companies has been greater than that of the refugees.”
Mass influx policies are enabled
This is probably mainly due to the fact that so far it has mainly been women and children who have other concerns than looking for a new job. They are afraid for their husbands and fathers at home, they need an apartment and a place in a day care center or school. And yet there are women like Masha Holub who want to find a job as soon as possible, even if they don’t know how long they will stay and hope to be able to return to their homeland soon. Holub worked as an influencer for Adidas in her home country and is now one of the few permanent employees as a social media manager for the Job Aid Ukraine platform.
This is only possible because the EU states activated the so-called mass influx directive very quickly after the start of the Russian attack and for the first time ever. Refugees from the Ukraine are not only granted a right of residence for up to three years without an application for asylum, but also an immediate work permit. That was different in 2015, during the great wave of refugees from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. At that time, people in Germany first had to go through a complex and sometimes year-long asylum procedure before they were allowed to take up work. Now everything goes very quickly.
At least in theory. How many refugees from Ukraine will actually find work in Germany in the near future is still an open question, especially since many of them do not yet speak German – which is another hurdle. According to Job-Aid-Ukraine founder Diekmann, whose main job is managing director of a subsidiary of Peek and Cloppenburg as well as being on the advisory board of the bicycle dealer Rose Bikes and who says he only sleeps four hours at the moment, tens of thousands of people access the platform every day. According to an initial estimate, around 1,000 job interviews have taken place so far, he reports. However, he does not know how many shots resulted from this. Diekmann now wants to gradually expand the platform and promote the integration of all refugees. His project has also aroused interest abroad: students from England want to bring it to Great Britain.
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