The paper aims to contribute to the ongoing debate on the attractiveness of the German system of VET in future-oriented employment fields. The different positions are on weather the German vocational training system could provide the acquisition of a different set of higher skills and knowledge, in particularly problem-solving, extended social and self organising skills, which characterise the skills requirements in these future oriented fields of employment. One position underlines that the German system of Vet is traditionally strong to train experienced based skills and competences by apprenticeship and in-company training but not cannot provide training for those higher level skills and competences. These kinds of skills are acquired in the German educational system more by school or academic based education but not by the vocational training system. It is assumed that companies tend to recruit people with an educational background from institutions of higher and academic education also for positions which were previous hold on by people with a company-based vocational training background. As a result company-based vocational training is seen in danger to be left only for routine and low skilled positions and jobs (Baethge 2004, 2007). In contrast, the other positions says, that experiential and work-based knowledge and skills are gaining more and more the important preconditions for socio-economic innovation and the professional and vocational development of individuals. Experiential and work-based knowledge and skills are seen as important for the creation of innovation in companies but also for managing unforeseen events and problems and to access to information and to use it efficiently. As a result of this position, work-based experiential skills are seen as more important (Rauner 2007). Work-based training and learning and communities of practice are emphasised as becoming more and more important for the competence development of individuals. Yet, this debate is still lacking a sufficient empirical ground. Therefore, the paper will present results from a representative survey on company’s strategies for competence development and personnel recruitment to the following research questions: 1. How do companies organize their competence development in the following action fields (1) external recruiting (2) providing initial training venues and adopt them according to changing training needs (3) Providing further formal training and learning (4) linking work-organization and work requirements with learning requirements? 2. Are these fields of action linked within the general strategy of the company and how is this done concretely? 3. Is it possible to identify different types of companies according their strategic behavior within these action fields? 4. In what way does the companies strategies favors internal segmentation between low skilled and skilled persons and those with different training backgrounds? 5. Do skilled workers trained in the dual system compete with academic trained people at medium qualification level and are there displacement processes ongoing?

These questions will be addressed by empirical results of a quantitative survey from about 2500 companies within selected increasing employment sectors. These sectors are defined by the increase of their absolute numbers of full time positions from 2007 to 2009. The survey involves 12 economic sectors and is based on a disproportional sampling in order to involve a sufficient number of large companies. The data analysis involves the testing of a number of hypotheses which were generated by a theoretical analysis (resource-based HRD approaches, human-capital theory, neo-institutionalism and labor-market theories on segmentation) and by the results from 30 qualitative interviews (HRD Managers and sector specific experts from employer’s organizations).

Research on company’s personnel and competence development strategies in employment increasing fields is an important issue in VET, due to several reasons: - It contributes to the development of skills and competence theme by imbedding this approach in a more comprehensive framework of companies organizational and strategic behavior - It gives insight about the relevance of different kind of educational tracks for working positions - It helps to identify processes of internal labor market segmentation between persons with lower skill level and higher skill levels and different backgrounds from institutions of higher and academic education and those with a company-based vocational training background - It helps to identify possibilities to introduce new training and learning possibilities