After you’ve moved to the Ruhr Region and adapted to your new surroundings, the next step is to broaden your mind.
There are lots of language schools available to the area’s new citizens from abroad and, of course, they also offer German as a foreign language.

For those who can speak German, there are also abundant further education possibilities open to newcomers. Libraries, high schools, academies and continuing education centers offer every conceivable opportunity to expand your knowledge.

Prospective academics are spoilt for choice in the university and college sector. There are five universities, an arts college, 14 other colleges including Ruhr West, Hamm-­Lippstadt and Rhein-Waal, newly opened in 2009, as well as a new college for the health sector in Bochum.

All these cover a wide spectrum of subjects and modern qualifications.
The choice is supplemented by many private colleges such as the EBZ Business School in Bochum.

Once you have educational qualifications, there’s nothing standing in the way of a rising career.
After successfully restructuring its industrial base, the Ruhr metropolitan area is now a center for technology and service providers.
It is also home to the headquarters of important companies such as ThyssenKrupp, RWE, E.ON and Aldi.

Some 16 out of the 100 top-grossing German companies and 34 out of the top 500 are based in the Ruhr Region.
This is a win-win situation for students and apprentices, as well as employers.

To ensure that there are employment opportunities in the future, the region has innovative future projects, such as the “Kreativ.Quartiere’’ project, which is developing modern living and working areas in eight locations right across the region for people employed in the strongly booming cultural and creative business sectors.

Another example is the LogistikRuhr project, which is a joint program of leading logistics companies together with the Metropoleruhr economic development agency, as well as partners from the research and scientific sectors.

The aim is to further develop the Ruhr Region as a logistics hub in the heart of Europe.
For job-seekers, the Agentur für Arbeit government employment service should be the first port of call, but temping agencies can also be a very good starting point.