As an international employer who regularly recruits for roles requiring international candidates, or a company looking to source their first international employee, you will already be aware that recruiting internationally can bring greater challenges than recruiting for local candidates, that is the process can be: more expensive, require more coordination and take longer. Of course, in most cases the rewards to the business of international recruitment far outweigh the costs.
Even so, you should be aware that international applicants may be at greater risk of leaving the assignment early or under-performing as they may have additional cultural adaption issues to deal with than local applicants. So to ensure that you maximize the return on your investment in a foreign employee – meaning they stay and prosper for the long term – you should identify and address the unique issues that foreign applicants may face so they can ultimately perform better in that role.
Therefore, to help you do this, I have outlined 5 of the most common concerns that international employees face, based on the findings of the HSBC Expat Explorer Survey 2011. I have also given a little advice on how these concerns can be addressed.
1.Creating a new social network
The HSBC survey found that 41% of expats considered that making friends and forming suitable social networks was their biggest concern. So, to address this, why not provide all new expats with the contact details of local expat support groups, or international groups/clubs – and provide advice on building their network during their new hire orientation?
2.Missing their friends and family
Th next biggest issues – reported by 34% of those surveyed – was 'missing their friends and family' after relocation. To address this issue, where possible, provide spousal relocation and job seeking support to make it easy for the partner to accompany the international employee. If this is not possible, consider including a benefit of one or two paid flights home a year, or alternately why not include flights for family to come and visit the international employee?
3. Worried about their career
32% of those surveyed were concerned about their partner finding, a job or that the job may not work out for them. To address this, why not provide spousal job support which could mean getting your recruitment team to provide some CV and career coaching advice and to put them in touch with some good recruiting agents.
4. Language barriers
30% of expats are worried about learning the language of the host country and how a failure to do so will make it harder for them to integrate. Therefore why not encourage new overseas applicant,s who are not fluent in the local language ,to take language lessons and support them in finding a language school? You could offer to help with costs or allow some paid time off for them to attend lessons.
5.Cultural Adaptation
30% of expats are worried that they would find it difficult to adapt to the culture in the new country. To address this, why not offer some internal cultural adaptation training during the new hire orientation and/or give the employee a contact who they can go to and ask questions they have about the new culture?
While we urge you to do all you can to help the employee to adjust to the new country and culture, once they have joined, you of course won't know how the employee will cope until they get there. This is why it is also useful to combine this approach with a more targeted screening process which favours applicants who show the ability to adapt to the culture of the host country. One good way to assess an applicant's ability to adapt to a new culture is to a cross-cultural adaptability test, one of which you can find here.
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