In for the long haul
- as published in the UK Sunday Times
Global recruitment is a tricky business for large organisations, which have to navigate cultural and legal minefields to tempt talented people to relocate. If a business does decide to outsource the task of finding, hiring and settling in people to work in a different country, they will need a recruitment outsourcing (RO) specialist that understands the local employment culture as well as the working ethos of the particular client.
Some providers work with a network of national recruitment outsourcing companies. This can raise questions of consistency of service, but it does mean that knowledge of local recruitment do’s and don’ts is often stronger, and that hiring times can be shorter.
There is particular fierce competition for high-level global candidates in the engineering, not-for-profit and renewable energy industries, with employers also demanding individuals with commercial skills. In the oil and gas sector, projects can last many years but the talent pool for key skills such as project management and engineering design is relatively small.
Former project engineer John Richards started energy industry consultancy Mentor IMC Group 23 years ago to help clients such as Exxon Mobil and Chevron recruit top-level industry professionals quickly across international borders when they need to execute different phases of often complex energy projects. His company handles about 200 experts around the world at any one time, but he says the total global talent pool of high-level experts numbers only a few thousand, of whom about 65% are British.
“Energy companies ask us to sort out visas, employ translators, ensure workers go through the necessary medicals, provide cultural and language support, and even help them open bank accounts and find schools for their children,” says Richards.
Mentor IMC Group also retains the services of accountancy firm Price Waterhouse Coopers to ensure compliance on immigration issues so that bureaucratic delays are minimised.
The internet is an essential tool in international recruitment, allowing employers to keep track of potential staff throughout the world. In Australia and New Zealand, for instance, about 80 companies are paying £3,500 a year each to the recruitment website TrackMeBack.com to identify and target their nationals working in the UK. There is a shortage down under of people with engineering, underwriting, accounting, banking, nursing and telecoms skills.
Mikela Goulden, head of recruitment at the ANZ Bank, says risk management, governance and compliance skills are in demand. “New Zealand does not produce great bankers but they tend to migrate as generalists and return home as specialists with great experience, having worked for large financial organisations overseas,” she says.
TrackMeBack.com is planning to introduce a similar service in the UK this year to help employers tempt back home British people working across the world. A number of recruitment outsourcing providers can be expected to sign up to the service to help secure the talent their clients crave.
However, in certain labour markets the internet has limited reach, according to David Heath, global director of people capital at recruitment outsourcing specialist Alexander Mann Solutions (AMS), which provides cross-border support to more than 25 clients including Credit Suisse and Vodaphone.
He says that adapting to how candidates prefer to be wooed is crucial. In India, for instance, face-to-face networking via university campus recruiters and job fairs is still the most effective tool, rather than the online networking sites such as LinkedIn that are increasingly popular in the west.
And in certain countries – Brazil, Russia, China and, closer to home, Belgium – there has been a backlash against online processes such as psychometric testing.
Some companies can be deterred from outsourcing their global recruitment through a single contract because they cannot find one company which they feel is capable of handling the role worldwide. Instead, they prefer to work with regional outsourcing experts who collaborate with one another.
US-based measurement company Agilent scours the world for top-flight engineers, scientists and researchers to add to its team, and last year began working with recruitment outsourcers Pinstripe in the United States and with Ochre House in the UK for the Europe, Middle East and Africa region.
The two suppliers share a talent pool, strategic ideas and technology through a global applicant tracking system supplied by business solutions company ADP VirtualEdge. The software is also used to screen potential employees.
“Both partners handle everything from sourcing candidates to helping onboard new hires,” says Agilent’s global staffing programmes manager Nury Plumley.
“Our primary objective was to have scale and flexibility. We have also looked for a third partner in Asia Pacific, but have not yet found anyone suitable.”
Plumley says that Ochre House has a slightly different brief to Pinstripe when it comes to acquiring talent in Europe, where cultural and regulation differences can make it harder to make contact with passive candidates.
Ochre House managing director Sue Brooks points out that strong candidates in France, Germany and Spain are best found through networking, while talented people in Russia prefer to be approached in their own language and are suspicious of job offers presented by anybody with and American or British accent.
Some companies remain reluctant to outsource all their global recruitment needs. Capgemini, the international provider of consulting, technology and professional services, moved to an outsourcing model eight years ago for the UK and Poland using Alexander Mann Solutions for permanent hiring. However, its own HR teams still handle its recruitment needs elsewhere in the world.
Capgemini’s headquarters are in Paris and it has more than 90,000 employees across the world with regional operations in North America, Europe and Asia. Ann Brown, vice president of UK HR, says it takes two years to get a new provider fully up to speed with a client’s culture. She agrees that one of the biggest challenges is finding the best way to engage with potential candidates in their own country.
Other companies prefer to find all their international recruits themselves to ensure people slot smoothly into their corporate culture.
The car rental business Hertz recruits up to 8,000 people a year around the world and vice president of global talent management Karl-Heins Oehler has devised competency standards for 41 different job functions. “An RO provider would struggle to find people to match these profiles exactly,” he says
“In for the long haul”, was published in UK Sunday Times, 28th March 2010