This is the first of two blog posts created with masters students of Swiss Universities of Applied Sciences from a variety of academic fields receiving the Hirschmann foundation scholarship. As part of the project, the young group of future decision-makers presented their work in response to the guiding question: What innovative approaches can address workforce shortages and migration simultaneously?
Authors: David Jost, Bruno Kreiner, Maxime Meylan, Lorena Muff, Victor Murone
In Switzerland, sectors like engineering, healthcare, and IT desperately need skilled workers, but qualified immigrants continue to face significant barriers in the job market, recent studies reveal.
EU/EFTA nationals enjoy easier access to the Swiss labor market than workers from other countries who face strict admission criteria set by the Foreign Nationals and Integration Act. This law prioritizes highly qualified workers who demonstrate clear economic benefits. But even with this system, research from ETH Zurich has highlighted that immigrants often encounter barriers such as discrimination and bias during the recruitment process.
A ZHAW study describes the “bias blind spot,” which highlights the tendency of individuals, especially in HR, to underestimate their own bias. One HR professional acknowledged, “While the company does not intend to discriminate, these [recruitment] criteria inadvertently reinforce existing societal inequalities in access to opportunities ». They explain that hard academic criteria can create unintended barriers for candidates from migrant or lower-income backgrounds who may have had limited resources for educational support.
In industries like engineering and technology, where the demand for specialized skills is high, the underutilization of immigrants is especially harmful. Often as qualified as their local counterparts, immigrant workers possess, in many cases, unique expertise that could drive innovation. Research also shows diverse teams are more likely to be innovative in their solutions due to the variety of perspectives and problem-solving approaches.
Moreover, industries like healthcare and construction face immediate labor shortages. Immigrants are often willing to take on roles in these sectors—roles that local workers may not fill due to demographic constraints. Without utilizing this workforce, critical sectors risk stagnation, which could lead to broader economic challenges.
Why Removing Biases Matters
JobRoom, Switzerland’s largest recruitment platform, reveals that immigrants are 6.5% less likely to be contacted than their Swiss-born counterparts despite having equal or superior qualifications. Statistics such as these exemplify how recruitment biases create market inefficiencies. Roles remain unfilled while qualified workers remain unemployed or underemployed.
ETH Zurich’s research points to how biases manifest in structural forms, such as recruitment algorithms that favor local candidates or HR practices that unknowingly disadvantage immigrants. This not only affects individual career prospects but also hampers the broader labor market’s efficiency. One company highlighted its potential solution, stating, “The company is open to trialing a fully automated, performance-based, blind recruitment process for their initial screening. This aligns with their current practices but would reduce the required HR.” Such approaches could, apart from algorithmic biases, minimize other biases while aligning recruitment processes with modern efficiency practices.
Addressing these biases is essential for several reasons. First, it increases the available talent pool, ensuring that the most qualified candidates fill roles regardless of their ethnicity or nationality. Second, it creates a more inclusive economy, which is known to drive innovation and improve productivity across industries. As industries evolve, having a workforce that brings global expertise becomes increasingly important. One of the interviewed HR professionals mentioned that in blind recruiting, there is possibly a lack of reference points to promote diversity. This implies that removing gender, name, and photos wouldn’t necessarily increase the diversity.
Another company states that “sensitization of employees with regard to unconscious bias, implementation of the Comply & Explain process, ensuring inclusive language in advertisements and candidate communication, multilingual advertisements, etc.”. This shows that the problem is perceived by a few companies, but currently, there’s no consensual solution.
Broader Economic and Social Benefits
Immigrant inclusion does not only address immediate labor shortages but also yields significant economic and social benefits. They drive economic growth, fill jobs in high demand that local workers cannot or are not willing to take, pay taxes, and boost consumption.
The social benefits of a diverse workforce are also considerable. Inclusivity in the labor market fosters social cohesion and reduces inequalities, which can lead to a more harmonious society. Immigrant workers who are fully integrated into the workforce are less likely to experience marginalization, and their inclusion strengthens communities and stabilizes the economy. Their integration thus represents not just a solution to labor shortages but a potential investment to Switzerland’s future.