Organisations with a global presence will have a need for a human resources function that can operate in an international environment. What are the challenges for recruiters and hiring teams in sourcing talent for an overseas office and how should they balance any differences between local and global issues.
The recruitment practices along with any rules, regulations and employment laws for a particular jurisdiction can vary. Most European countries follow similar systems because they are operating within the EU jurisdiction and whilst North America may follow the same principles there are small differences. The biggest challenges come when an organisation enters developing countries in South America, Africa or Asia. Third world developing countries are yet to develop any meaningful employment laws and topics like ‘diversity’ can be completely alien terms.
Recruitment Strategy.
Most recruitment policies are dictated by a head office that may be based in Europe for example but with subsidiary offices around the world. In order to transfer the organisation’s processes and procedures for doing business along with their culture it is not unusual to place senior talent from the within the parent company location. They are placed into an overseas office to enforce any company polices and business practices and such expatriate positions are often supplemented with local talent who can provide input on the local market.
Local Custom and Practice.
The way of doing business in different countries can vary and local talent can help steer the company through any challenges with local customs and practices. This can extend to the recruitment and selection process but organisations should adopt policies that reflect their culture and the strictest regulations they adhere to. The head office human resources team will need to monitor any local hiring activity to ensure they adhere to the company’s employment rules and regulations. In Asian countries it is often normal practice in the recruitment process to use discriminatory language and this follows through to the interview process too. Despite recruitment policies reflecting a head office directive there can be difficulty in implementing at a regional and local level because of the cultural norms in that country.
Finding the Right Balance and Solutions.
International organisations with multiple office locations are always looking to find the right balance between enforcing recruitment and selection policies with local culture, custom and practice. One of the best ways to deal with this is to have local human resources and hiring managers attend compulsory training on what the organisation expects of its local recruitment team. Despite advances in the recruitment industry over recent years developing countries are still lagging behind in implementing employment laws that reflect the modern era. Diversity Equity and Inclusion polices are still one of the biggest challenges for international recruitment teams to implement in these developing countries. Head office human resources teams can use Applicant Tracking System (ATS) tech hiring tools across all office locations to ensure that recruitment and selection policies are consistent throughout the organisation irrespective of where an office is located.
One such company who are game changing the face of recruitment by providing a robust process to deliver more efficient recruitment without bias is Hire Digital. A start-up recruitment company with a global presence that has invested heavily in Artificial Intelligence (AI) to manage the digital tech recruitment process. Their talent management ATS software platform gives digital talent recruiters a strict criterion for posting job adverts and descriptions and their AI works in such a way that it generates a much smaller more targeted candidate list by using up to 40,000 attributes. They key to this is efficiency, recruiters spend less time generating job advertisements and trawling through hundreds of CV’s to get their shortlist, Hire Digital tech can rapidly access up to 1bn talent globally.
Hire Digital is an AI technology with a human touch that is completely revolutionising the recruitment and selection process. It’s two times faster, 50 % cheaper and ten times more accurate than traditional hiring tech. To find out more speak to Robin Brohl at Hire Digital he is a real person and would love to engage with you and help you streamline your recruitment processes.
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