Crafting a Hiring Plan for Your Global Organization

As emerging markets have opened up throughout the world, global companies have come to realize that their recruiting strategies and talent capital is every bit as critical as their financial assets when it comes to building their competitive edge.

The best global hiring strategy comes down to the basics: getting the right people into the right jobs at the right time and cost. While most multinational companies do a good job of globalizing their supply chains for essential raw materials, the ones who emerge as industry leaders are those who devote the same commitment and resources to acquiring, developing and managing their talent.

The Basis of Your Global Hiring Plan

The success of your global hiring strategy rests on ensuring that qualified talent is readily available when vacancies occur anywhere in the world. Key components of your plan must include:

• Managerial mobility: Ensure that management careers are developed for both profitability and employability. Develop future global leaders from the earliest possible stage so they know the business from a worldwide standpoint, as well as understand the cultural and geographic nuances of various divisions.
• Identification of savvy managers for overseas markets. Cut trial-and-error time as you build a cadre of global managers. Emulate companies with decades of experience in global HR excellence. Be sure that when managers sign on, they know from the start that overseas assignments are part of the deal if they plan to climb high on the corporate ladder.
• An international HR database: Within hours, you should be capable of providing a choice of A-level talent when business-critical vacancies occur. Build and develop the best managers in each of your company’s markets. Devise a standard global system with local adaptations.

How to Get There

The purpose of your global program is to ensure that your organization has the right talent and cultural mix to effectively manage all its operating units.

• Put just as much effort into recruitment in overseas markets as you do in your headquarters country. This ensures that all your markets will have robust bench strength. Devote equal attention and budget to training and developing the careers of local nationals already on your company payroll. Cultural sensitivity and cumulative skills are what matter most.
• Trace the “lifeline” of your company. Identify the activities that are essential to global business success and then specify the positions responsible for performing them. Define the technical, functional and soft skills needed in each of these lifeline roles. Integrated teams of business and HR specialists should work side-by-side with line managers to roll out a worldwide skills management process.
• Assess bench strength and skills gaps. Ask current and future leaders to compare their existing skills and characteristics with the ideal requirements for their current and preferred next posts. Have them propose ways to close their personal skills gaps. Compare the skills detailed in these assessments with those identified as essential in your business plan. This forms a basis for your global management development and training program.
• Always and everywhere, be recruiting. Search for talent in every important local market. Continually develop and fine tune your employer value proposition. Become known as the “company to join” among graduates of the best universities. Demonstrate to stellar local talent how far up the organization they can climb.
• Run your own global labor market. Advertise worldwide posts internally with a multi-media focus centering on social media, mobile applications and your company Intranet. This allows a competitive internal job market to function across nationalities, genders and other categories. It also reemphasizes how ambitious people can make their future within the company.

Do you have the recruiting resources needed for your company to perform effectively in all your markets around the globe? The executive search consultants at BrainWorks can help you develop and achieve your worldwide recruitment and retention objectives. Contact us today to learn more.