A machinery factory from northern Jutland has been flooded with hundreds of job applications from foreign workers after an article about the lack of skilled labourers in Denmark was published by the New York Times at the end of February.
After only three weeks, Sjørring Maskinfabrik, which was mentioned in the story, had received 270 job applications – mostly from people living abroad.
“On the first day alone, we received nearly 100 applications in all kinds of different languages,” Peter Enevoldsen, the chief financial officer at Sjørring Maskinfabrik, told Dansk Industri.
As it later transpired, Italian, Croatian, German and Turkish media reprinted parts of the original article, which then inspired many to seek employment in the Danish company that focuses on a niche production of buckets for machinery used in mining.
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Qualified workers needed
“If we could get 8-10 qualified applicants out of all this activity, we would hire them immediately,” Enevoldsen noted.
“Some of the foreign applicants have the skills we need, but the majority by far do not. We need qualified workers.”
Sjørring Maskinfabrik was founded in 1946 and currently employs around 270 employees, of whom about 40 come from abroad.
Although the unemployment rate in Denmark is lower than in other EU states, the country has a shortage of skilled workers, especially in the iron and metal industry.
According to the confederation of Danish industry, Dansk Industri (DI), more than every third member of the association had to give up attempts to fill a vacancy in 2016.
