Recruiting and Selecting

Staff for international

assignments
Definition of Recruitment

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  Recruitment refers to the process of identifying and attracting
qualified people to apply for vacant positions in an organization.
The recruitment stage usually begins with a company’s
assessment of its needs in terms of human resources. The
company then decides how it will make potential applicants aware
Definition of of the job vacancies.
Recruitment  Recruitment methods include among others, applications and
advertisements placed in news papers or on the Internet, internal
job postings where companies post a list of vacancies on their
websites or internally, use of private or public agencies and use of
recommendations from current employees (Cullen and
Parboteeah, 2010).

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 Research shows that US managers see newspaper advertising as
one of the most effective recruitment channels, while university
recruitment was judged among the most effective only for
professional and technical jobs. In contrast, other forms such as
employee referral and use of personal contacts for recruitment
purposes are not seen as very effective (Cullen and Parboteeah,
2010).

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 The Myth of the global Manager
Myth 1: there is a universal approach to management
Issues in Staff Myth 2: people can acquire multicultural adaptability and behaviors
Selection Myth 3: there are common characteristics shared by successful
international managers
Myth 4: there are no impediments to mobility

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  Inability to adjust to the foreign culture
Factors  Length of assignment
moderating  Willingness to move
expatriate  Work-related factors
performance  Psychological contract

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: International
assignments: factors
moderating
performance

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Inability to adjust to the foreign culture
US Firms

 Inability of spouse to adjust

 Manager’s inability to adjust
 Other family problems
 Difficulties associated with different management styles
 Culture and language difficulties .

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  Inability to cope with larger overseas
responsibilities
• Inability to  Difficulties with the new environment
adjust to the  Personal or emotional problems
foreign culture  Lack of technical competence
Japan firms  Inability of spouse to adjust

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The phases of
cultural
adjustment

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  The U-Curve is not normative
 The time period involved varies between
individuals
The phases of  The U-Curve does not explain how and
adjustment why people move through the various
phases
 It may be more cyclical than a U-Curve

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 The word Expatriate means an individual living in a country other
than their country of citizenship, often temporarily and for work
reasons. An expatriate can also be an individual who has relinquished
citizenship in their home country to become a citizen of another.
Expatriates are able to play tremendously significant roles during
Expatriate
worldwide assignments. The internalization of business has resulted in
Selection Criteria
the increasing use of expatriates by organization to fulfil a variety of
functions in their offshore operations. The effective management of
such personnel has been the focus of considerable attention of Human
Resource Management (IHRM) literature, (Suutari and Brewster,
2000).

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Tanzia Rahman Assistant Professor NDUB 12
  the person’s ability to perform the required terms is an important
consideration. Technical and managerial skills are therefore an
essential criterion. Indeed, research findings consistently indicate
that multinationals place heavy reliance on relevant technical
Technical skills during the expatriate selection process.
 However, the assessment of the potential candidate is usually
ability based on their previous working experience, where statements
and evaluation records from the candidates superiors is available.
 An example of technical abilities can be that financial managers
need to make use of business appraisal tools to assess and set up
financial statements like the income statement and balance sheet,
(M. Birdseye and J. Hill, 1995).

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  According to Dowling and Welch, (2004) important things to
consider when assessing the candidates cross-culture suitability, is
language skills, culture empathy, the attitude toward new cultures
and the level of personnel and emotional stability." In practice, it is
not easy to evaluate the cross-culture suitability of a candidate as it
is hard precisely know what factors should be included. The
Cross-cultural multinational enterprise (MNE) emphasizes the importance of
expatriate’s abilities to create and maintain a natural relationship,
suitability but means to measure such abilities is not always accurate enough.
 Finally, successful expats typically accept their new host culture
and become less affected by the cultural differences. They become
more comfortable dealing with unfamiliar situations and more
tolerant of cultural habits that they may previously have been
disturbed by.

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Family requirements

 The contribution that the family, particularly the spouse, makes to the
success of the overseas assignment is now well documented. In developing
countries the employment of house servants is quite common but this is an
aspect of international living that many Westerners from developed countries
such as U.S have some difficulty adjusting to. It is often not possible for the
spouse/partner to work in the country of assignment and the well-being and
education of the children may be an ongoing concern for the spouse. Though
the majority of spouses are female, accompanying male spouses/partners
face similar problems of adjustment. In fact, when one adds cultural
adjustment problems to such a situation, it is perhaps not so surprising to
find that some couples seek to return home prematurely, (M. Harvey, 1985).

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 If the international assignment is accepted, the lack of a work
permit for the accompanying spouse or partner may cause difficulties
in adjustment and even contribute to failure. For these reasons, as

Country/ reported above, some multinationals provide assistance in this regard.

cultural Some regions and countries are considered ‘hardship postings’:

remote areas away from major cities or modern facilities; or war-
requirements torn regions with high physical risk. Accompanying family members
may be an additional responsibility that the multinational does not
want to bear. There may be a reluctance to select females for certain
South East Asian regions such as China, Saudi Arabia. in some
countries a work permit for a female expatriate will not be issued

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  Language skill is a significant factor, knowledge of the host
country’s language can be considered essential for many top level
management positions, along with the capacity to communicate
successfully. Knowledge of the host country’s foreign language
helps the expatriates and their families/spouse feel more contented
Language in the new environment.
ability  Language skills may be regarded as of critical importance for
some expatriate positions, though some would argue that
knowledge of the host country’s language is an important aspect
of expatriate performance, regardless of the level of position.

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  The MNE’s requirements have an enormous impact on the
decisions and which selection criteria to use. Training skills
are very important, so that expatriates can train locals and
emphasize negotiating skills in new international business
Multinational environments.
Technical abilities is an important factor in the case of selecting
enterprise international staff, it provides the employee with the basic
(MNE) understanding of what is included in their tasks and what they believe
requirements they are capable of doing. The multinational enterprise (MNE) view
the experience of expatriate as very important, prolong experience is
needed to have the appropriate knowledge to develop a successful
organisation.

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 The criteria for selecting expatriates have been discussed, and it
was noted that it does not differ much from the regular employee
selection process. In order for an international organisation to
operate successfully in a foreign country they first need to selected
an international strategy to enter the international
market/environment.

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 DCC refers to a situation where both husband and wife
are in jobs. It becomes difficult for the HR manager to
convince the employee to accept foreign assignment if
the spouse is not willing to accompanied him or her
because of the effect of such an assignment on his or her
Dual Career career prospects.
Couple Spousal or dual career issues are often cited as the
reason for rejecting international assignments,
(DCC) particularly in the US and European organizations, but it
is less visible in Asian Countries. The number of dual
career couples is increasing and the trend is world wide.
DuPont, for example, has 3,500 dual career couples in
the work force of 1,00,000. How to manage DCC?.

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Several ways have been tried, most of them with positive
results. Following are the major ones:
• Turn down the foreign assignment.
• Find the suitable job for the trailing spouse.
• Commuter assignments: additional supports from
company.
• Sabbatical: The trailing spouse may take a sabbatical - a
career break that allow him or her to accompany to his her
wife while he /she works abroad.
• Intra – company employment: Means sending the couple in
the same subsidiary or in the same department.
• On assignment career support: Career support is extended
to a spouse, who was in a job till the assignment

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 Motorola India, for example provides educational assistance to
employee’s (on an international assignment) spouses for getting a
suitable job abroad. If the candidates fit in with organization needs,
Motorola has a practice of hiring the person in.
 Infosys provides up to one year’s leave without pay for an
employee to join his / her partner abroad. However, the employee
needs to have completed at least one year of service to be eligible to
avail this benefits

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