Tips for HR-specialists. International recruitment. Cultural aspects: lost in translation

In our modern world travel communication is quick and convenient. What is more, internet has opened a new era in business operation allowing people to work remotely and to search for jobs outside their home country. As long as the contemporary business environment is limitless, international recruitment becomes inevitable. To stay competitive, especially in the high-technological sector, companies have to consider talented and skilled candidates overseas for their business development.

Recruiting internationally is a tough job. Although, internet social communities allow recruiters to access billions of prospective candidates, the most difficult part of it is to reach those who can be the right match for your company and a particular job position. Furthermore, when one company is penetrating a foreign market, it faces local competitors who have well-established relationships with local specialists. Therefore, it is important to assign a certain part of your budget to accommodate an existing HR brand to a local market in order to build relationships not only with external customers purchasing products, but with prospective internal customers – candidates you aspire to employ.

Why is it actually so important? The answer is the following: what works for one culture will not necessarily work out in another one. In general, western cultures tend to value individualistic approach to live, where personal achievements is a key to professional success. On the other hand, Eastern cultures evaluate a person regarding its contribution to a particular community.  While a Western professional describes his/her work background mostly using such words as ”I” or ”My”, an Eastern specialists would rather say ”We” or ”Our”. Moreover, in the Western culture it is assumed that a person is fully responsible for his/her actions. At the same time, in the Eastern society the concept of so called shared responsibility dominates. This different and oftentimes polarised attitude towards performance can be traced in almost every aspect of life.

Even within Western societies recruiter can encounter different approaches to HR practices. For example, in European countries the main principles of employment should be approved by professional cooperatives. These organisations protect and stand for rights and interests of the personnel. In contrast, in United States recruiters and other HR specialist have much more freedom in introducing various practices for prospective and existing employees.

What can be advised if you are still convinced to hire globally, despite of the difficulties described above? Well, you need to know good news: these cultural peculiarities can actually be used in your favour. Make sure you allocate appropriate resources to create and maintain your recruitment strategy in locations where you want to get a get a considerable market share or where you can discover suitable candidates. Preferably, employ specialists competent in these specific cultural environments, such as ethnic psychologists, on-site legal and marketing consultants. If your company is not ready to afford this, make sure your HR specialists working internationally have a good understanding of these aspects. As an option, you can organise training sessions for your HR department regarding this cultural specificity.

To sum up, we believe that investments in international recruitment are necessary, but they should be smart and oriented on specific cultural ”buttons”.

Keep reading our Qreer.com blog and get to know more about international recruitment in the future articles.

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Qreer.com team

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Keywords: culture, society, country, cultural, social, environment, rules, conditions, engineering, technology, science

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