What Albert Einstein and Sergey Brin Have in Common: A Guide to Hiring Refugees

Refugees make up one of the largest untapped talent pools in the workforce, yet they rarely appear in formal diversity hiring strategies because government reporting requirements focus on gender, race, veteran status and disability rather than displacement. Historical figures from Einstein to Sergey Brin to Sigmund Freud were refugees, a reminder that displacement has nothing to do with capability.

The barriers refugees face when job hunting are specific and fixable:

• Stigma from employers who see them as a statistic rather than a person with a professional history
• Difficulty adapting to unfamiliar cultural norms, languages and resume formats
• No professional network in their new country
• Certifications from their home country that go unrecognized, even when the underlying skill is intact
• Employment gaps caused by the length and difficulty of fleeing conflict and seeking asylum, not by lack of drive
• Legal and compliance questions around work eligibility, which organizations like Talent Beyond Boundaries, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, Oyster and Remote can help resolve for local or international hiring, including waived fees for refugee placements

Interview practices that work include preparing candidates ahead of time on what to expect, being open and vulnerable to make the process feel human, and asking questions like what they know about the company, what they hope to get from the job, and what they would need to succeed. One question to avoid entirely: why they left their home country, which can surface trauma unrelated to the job.

Even when a candidate isn't hired, detailed feedback on their resume and interview performance, along with an offer to make introductions, can meaningfully help someone rebuilding a professional network from nothing.

Onboarding recommendations include language training, psychological support built into standard benefits, and a deliberate effort to treat new hires exactly like any other employee once they're through the door. A hiring manager's job at that point is to let them show what they can do, regardless of how many years of experience they bring or how far removed that experience is from their new country's job market.

The problem is that people don't know what refugees are capable of, and they don't know how to hire them.

Closing this gap connects directly to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal calling for decent work and economic growth for all by 2030, a target recruiters and HR teams are positioned to influence directly.