BMW Training Small Number of Young Spanish Workers

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is starting a program where it will select 25 young, unemployed Spanish workers and train them in Germany. It might broaden the program out to Greece and Italy later. 

The program will accept applications from workers between 18 and 25 for one year of training at the BMW headquarters in Munich. They will fill roles in development, sales, marketing or other areas. During training, the workers will live with BMW host families. After the yearlong program, there is a possibility that BMW could hire them on as full employees.

While the program will do nothing to combat Spain's 3.5 million unemployed people under 25, the company says that it wants to give back something to Europe.

"We want to give something back to these countries, in which we sell our cars," said Milagros Caina-Andree, BMW head of personnel. Last year, there were 33,000 unfilled job training positions in Germany. 

More than half of the people in Spain and Greece who are under 25 are unemployed. In Germany, the figure stands at 8%, which poses its own problem. German companies are finding it difficult to find skilled workers to fill some positions. Spain has passed laws giving businesses incentives to higher young workers.

BMW is not the only German companies recruiting small groups from outside of Germany. Chemical company BASF is training 20 young Spaniards to be skilled technical workers. Software company SAP is also recruiting from Southern Europe.

Source: Automotive News Europe