Employers' intention to hire highly educated foreign workforce in the Kokkola region : implications for higher education

Abstract

The rational for this research is to find out the intentions of employers to hire highly educated foreign workforce in the Kokkola region. The research analyses how employers have prepared themselves for meeting the diverse needs of future employees, how strongly and on what basis employers are committed to recruit a foreign workforce, how many they have recruited so far, and what the contribution of Centria University of Applied Sciences could be to improve recruitment of a foreign highly educated workforce in the region. Internationalisation of higher education in Finland has led to the fact that degree programmes offered in English both in traditional universities and in universities of applied sciences have increased and now there is available a foreign highly educated workforce on the labour market. When graduates are employed on the local labour market Centria University of Applied Sciences meets the “Third Mission”. A brief presentation of human resource management of today and recruitment is presented to find out employers’ recruitment plans. The theoretical framework covers intention and research findings are analysed from commitment, behaviour, action, and change aspects. This is a qualitative research with a hermeneutical phenomenology aspect. Employers are interviewed and the informants form a case study. The empirical results are analysed based on employers’ recruitment strategy, commitment to employ, recruitment process, perceptions, experiences, preparations, and the picture of available foreign workforce in the region. The research findings show that recruitment plans strongly influence the intention to employ a foreign workforce, but if no commitment is involved there is nothing guaranteeing that intention will lead to behaviour. This research has also implications for higher education, both related to programme curricula and cooperation with local companies.