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International cultural HR considerations when hiring and managing talent
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Now days, many companies talk about celebrating the diversity in their organizations but not all of them know how to approach the task. Some use internal HR, some hire external services to learn how to hire and more importantly how to manage this talent, how to create the respect and understanding for cultural differences.
The challenge is dual. It’s as hard for both employer and employee to ensure that the cultural differences won’t become obstacles in day to day operations and won’t affect performance.
That’s why it is important to review current HR policies and procedures, to learn about human capital in the company and identify needs and opportunities for changes and improvement to attract, select and retain diverse workforce in the organization. With strong HR practices on your side celebrating workplace diversity won’t be a difficult task. The recruitment, hiring and selection practices of the diverse workforce is one of the challenging but most important steps that help organizations focus on building a diverse workplace and bringing the international talent to the company.
The traditional recruitment and selection practices need to be modified and new practices need to focus on the following areas:
Open/ broader recruitment process
Open minded selection practices
Open/ broader recruitment process
In order to attract people with diverse cultural backgrounds going through regular channels of advertising the position may not work and won’t bring new or increasingly diverse talent into organizations. Better idea is to try advertising those positions with local ethnic newspapers or associations, cultural groups and centers, even local international stores might have links of getting the word out. It’s a good idea for HR to develop strong relationship with cultural groups and international organizations. Doing a community work, creating volunteer opportunities also helps to broader the recruitment efforts.
Open minded selection practices
From my own practice, I can say that it is very challenging to have an international work and educational background when going to interview. Recruiters look at the names of recognized institutions and often face challenges in assessments of foreign credentials. Very often, questions asked are very specific to experience in US and are not exploring on candidate’s transferable skills. Understanding and recognizing the transferability of an international candidate’s training and education gains a definite competitive advantage for the company. It’s important to focus on professional skills, knowledge and experience to perform the work effectively versus focusing on specific credentials such diploma, certificate or license. If the job does not belong to a category where specific credentials are requirements by law, like in the medical field, then knowledge and ability needed to perform the work effectively needs to be evaluated and the recruiters need to focus on candidate’s abilities and potential. The questions need to be aimed in exploring the demonstration of the relevant skills through past achievements, and experiences in working in similar fields.
That’s why it is important to focus on developing HR practices and guides that will help recruiters to deviate from standard approaches and not overlook resumes or applications that look different. If the company HR resources allow, it’s always a good idea to have an interview team with members from different cultural groups that can support understanding of cross-cultural issues to provide insight on socio-cultural responses that others on the panel may question. Be more open minded for language barriers and be patient, give candidates time to understand and respond the questions properly.
Also, keep in mind that the body language or certain behaviors are also dictated by traditions and cultures. For example, some candidates may avoid eye contact with figures of authority as it is considered disrespectful in their culture. It is also important to share and explain the culture of the company to an international candidate to have realistic expectations avoid any misunderstanding. Recently, I came across to a small group, where one of the employees was celebrating Ramadan. Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic lunar calendar. Every day during this month, muslims around the world spend the daylight hours in a complete fast and pray few times a day. The CEO of the company wanted us to train and introduce the cultural differences to the rest of the team. Such approach, was very needed and helped employees to gain respect and tolerance towards each other’s cultural and religious needs.
HR has an important role of supporting the diversity and creating practices for recruitment and management of international talent. The key is to be open minded and review the differences as a new opportunity to support innovation and creativity. Diversity of workforce is a short cut to be creative, competitive and have a global recognition.
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