5 Key Factors Companies Should Consider for Global Recruiting

When we entered the era of remote work, we learned that talent acquisition knows no boundaries. International hiring opened the potential for businesses to discover emerging experts in a global, diverse labor pool across different countries.

Businesses looking to fill a specialized position often seek high-potential candidates worldwide while remaining open to offering their employees both hybrid and remote work options.

Meanwhile, global recruiting is still the most efficient way to scale your business when expanding to a new market. Local employees demonstrate a greater understanding of consumer behavior and culture; thus, hiring sales and marketing teams locally makes a lot of sense.

However, adapting to the international hiring strategy implies various legal and cultural factors. This article will cover the key factors for successful global recruiting.

Let’s get started.

1. Legal and regulatory considerations

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For successful onboarding of employees on an international level, understanding and complying with international labor laws is a must. Depending on the origin country of the employee, special work permits might be required to overcome legal barriers.

Business owners should be prepared to advise on tax payments for self-employed contractors, as it is often a better solution to agree on business-to-business (B2B) contracts due to legal obstacles for regular employment.

Even though it can feel like you’re in a pickle occasionally, employing a remote workforce is far simpler than getting the staff to travel internationally or move for work. Some cases may require that employees get a visa, which, for certain countries, might be challenging to obtain.

Luckily, there are numerous solutions to overcome the need for physically relocating employees. For example, suppose your company policy is to use company servers only. In that case, remote access can be achieved via VPN to connect to your static IP address and use company files and networks.

Suppose you decide to benefit from global talent acquisition. In that case, you need to be ready to support your employees on legal matters and provide substantial documentation to make sure their onboarding runs smoothly.

2. Employer branding on a global scale

Employer branding for a global audience slightly differs from employer branding locally. A potential Scandinavian expert wouldn’t be interested in working for a company that speaks to the USA labor market only, and vice versa.

Therefore, you should craft a consistent and appealing employer brand message that showcases company values and highlights your commitment to diversity.

Already have international teams on board? Ask them to help you create an outreach campaign to attract new talent from different countries. Leverage digital platforms and social media to ensure you reach a wider network.

Furthermore, whether you are opening new offices in different countries or simply want to appeal to the global workforce, bear in mind that 85% of Millennials want full-time remote opportunities, and Gen Z shows similar tendencies.

This means that they would be more interested in jobs that offer benefits for remote work, which could be an added value you can use for advertisement. Reassure them that you provide easy onboarding for professionals worldwide, simple task management, flexibility, and other advantages for a stress-free remote working environment.

3. Adjusting compensation and benefits

Remote work is the new reality of the post-pandemic workforce, and as your business expands globally, there will be certain aspects you should consider for new international hires. Living costs and standards vary from country to country. Thus, your offer has to be competitive to attract top talent.

Learning about pay scales on different continents doesn’t imply seeking employees from third-world countries that you can pay less. In fact, offering a salary that enables a comfortable lifestyle will bring you applications from the top experts in the field.

When designing an international recruitment strategy, tailor compensation plans for different regions. Moreover, research what benefits attract employees from different cultures. In some cases, team members would be more engaged if you enabled more paid time off or opportunities to travel for team-building activities.

Current trends are telling us that what drives employee engagement and satisfaction is, in fact, the opportunity to work on their career development. An opportunity for upskilling and growing within the company can appeal more to your audience, so invest in employee training and development regularly.

4. Ensuring Diversity as a Top Value within the Company Culture

If you are putting in efforts to hire international staff, consider making your working environment friendly and ready for diversity. When it comes to the recruitment process, ensuring there is cultural competency in the hiring team is the first step in creating a more diverse workspace.

Cross-cultural assessments

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Incorporate cross-cultural assessments in the recruitment process. For example, as a multinational technology company, IBM dedicates more effort to assessing cross-cultural compatibility during recruitment.

Here are some of the practices IBM incorporates to ensure new candidates fit in:

• Behavioral interviews: IBM often conducts behavioral interviews focusing on the candidate’s past experiences working in diverse teams, handling cross-cultural challenges, and adapting to different work cultures.
• Cultural fit assessments: Besides technical skills, IBM evaluates candidates’ alignment with the company’s values and cross-cultural collaboration. This can involve scenarios or questions that tackle how well a candidate can work with people from different backgrounds.
• Diversity and inclusion initiatives: IBM strongly emphasizes diversity and inclusion and has various employee resource groups dedicated to different cultural backgrounds. Involvement or experience with such groups can be a positive factor during recruitment.
• Global experience consideration: If a candidate has previous experience working or living in different countries or cultures, IBM considers that when assessing their adaptability and cross-cultural skills.
• Assessment centers: IBM might use assessment centers where candidates are presented with tasks that require collaboration with team members from various backgrounds. This gives recruiters insight into how candidates interact and adapt in diverse teams.
• Cultural competency tests: Depending on the role and level, IBM may administer such tests to assess candidates’ awareness, sensitivity, and knowledge about different cultures and their impact on business interactions.

Expanding to a new market

In some cases, cultural background is essential in the hiring process. The best example of this is when you are emerging in a new market and wish to invest in establishing local teams.

Certain positions, such as sales representatives and marketing managers, naturally demand a deep understanding of market trends, customer behavior, cultural and political circumstances, etc.

Cultural-specific knowledge goes hand in hand with language proficiency. Let’s say a US-based SaaS SEO agency is hiring SEO experts and content writers for their clients from Finland. In this case, a native understanding of the Finnish language is essential for keyword research and writing copy and blogs that appeal to their target audience.

5. Prepare Inclusive Onboarding and Integration

When introducing new employees to your company processes and environment, ensuring their integration runs as smoothly as possible is crucial. Create a comprehensive onboarding program for international hires and ensure all essential resources can be accessed online.

Foster a supportive and inclusive work culture. Improve current communication channels when needed to welcome international remote teams. Some of the practices you can introduce to make your work environment more remote-friendly are:

• Moving live meetings to online conferences
• Hosting all-staff cultural sensitivity training
• Investing in multilingual communication (e.g., providing translated documents when required)
• Creating opportunities for cultural exchange initiatives
• Running regular check-ins and feedback sessions

In cases where you are onboarding employees required to relocate geographically, offer full support for the move. Assist them in preparing the visa documents, acquiring work permits, finding accommodation, and adapting to the social life of the new city.

Companies can benefit from the DiSC personality types test when onboarding new team members. This test helps you understand team members’ behaviors and preferences, such as what motivates and causes stress. Awareness of the employees’ personality types helps HR and team leaders create a positive and productive working environment.

In Conclusion

Having diverse teams working globally has many benefits. Cultural differences working together on a problem-solving task can develop creative and out-of-the-box solutions that like-minded people from the same backgrounds wouldn’t come up with that easily.

However, global recruiting can be challenging, especially when transforming a work environment and making it more inclusive and multicultural. To expand to the global labor market, companies must invest in employer rebranding, adapting company policies, and practical solutions such as tools for better communication and IT support systems for remote teams.

All things considered, global recruitment does imply more effort than hiring on a local level, but it can be rewarding in establishing a stronger and more competitive brand recognizable worldwide.

First published on September 11, 2023.