Among the services for employment promotion, public job placement – free of charge for all users – is a particularly important element of governmental welfare and is one of the core modern services on the labour market.
Placement efforts should commence as early as possible, since vocational integration is then more promising. For this reason, the Employment Agency should be sought out in due time. Persons whose training or employment relationship is coming to an end are in fact obliged to register three months prior to the ending time at the latest (with the exception of in-company training).
Placement in the Employment Agencies is usually commenced with a systematic examination of the skills and employment options of the training candidate or job-seeker. Following this analysis of potential, an integration agreement is concluded setting out the objective of integration, the services required to achieve vocational integration, as well as the placement efforts to be provided by the Employment Agency. It additionally contains data on the training candidates’ or job-seekers’ own efforts. The integration agreement ought to be reviewed at regular intervals.
Training candidates and job-seekers can obtain information from the Federal Employment Agency’s online job pool (Jobbörse) concerning job openings, and can publish their own information as applicants, anonymously if they so wish.
The Employment Agencies serve as facilitators, as do the labour market service-providers which it commissions for the purpose. Furthermore, individuals fulfilling specific requirements can receive a placement voucher and commission a private job placement firm of their choice with their placement. The costs for this will be paid by the Employment Agencies or the agencies providing basic income support for job-seekers.
In many cases, integration into gainful employment requires support from the Federal Employment Agency. For this purpose, initial instruments are available that directly promote the placement process (e.g. assistance from the placement budget) or prepare for it (e.g. activation programmes and vocational integration measures). Some job-seekers may lack the proper qualifications; in such cases a variety of options are available for further training. Employers are supported through wage subsidies when they hire unemployed individuals who are difficult to place. In addition, the Federal Employment Agency helps unemployed individuals to take up self-employment, since this is a promising channel and because new business start-ups frequently later take on additional staff, who in turn pay into unemployment insurance. Job creation schemes can also be used to improve employability.
The range of services available for integration into the labour market offered by the Employment Agencies is also available to the most part to all jobseekers who are fit for employment and in need of assistance through the agencies providing basic income support for job-seekers (Book Two of the Social Code [SGB II]). There are however yet more instruments provided there that are tailored to the specific needs of these individuals.