In the Netherlands, defense companies are actively luring students away, media write.

Defense companies in the Netherlands are actively poaching engineering students amid a severe shortage of engineers and skilled workers, the NRC newspaper reported.

According to the publication, due to the growth of the military budget and the expansion of orders, defense companies, including Thales, Damen and drone manufacturer Destinus, are strengthening their presence at universities, funding student projects and offering graduates jobs.

Students at TU Delft told the newspaper that the demand for their majors is very high: they estimate that all aerospace engineering graduates find a job within three months. Employers connect with them through LinkedIn and compete for young professionals at university career fairs.

“Companies pay student associations from 5 thousand to 20 thousand euros for long-term cooperation for a period of one to three years,” the article says.

It is reported that the shortage of personnel concerns not only engineers with higher education, but also skilled workers. Shipbuilder Damen will need a large number of technicians to build warships in the coming years, including graduates from Dutch vocational colleges and technical training schools.

“I expect that we will have to attract them from abroad, from Europe, because they simply don’t exist in the Netherlands,” said Damen HR director Dirk de Bruijn. The company already has experience working with Romanian specialists: its shipyard in Romania employs about 1.7 thousand people.