Hiring abroad: Attracting local talent in foreign subsidiaries requires more than translating the job posting. (Global View).

An American company decided to open an office in France and sent the future country manager to Paris. She looked for appropriate office space and found nice offices on the outskirts of Paris at a very good rate. She then advertised positions in French business magazines, looking to attract a few good employees.

One of the first candidates she interviewed was an alumnus of the Ecole Polytechnique de Paris. The interview was moving along well until she asked him for a copy of his transcript and his grade point average (GPA). At first, he evaded the question. When she insisted that she could not hire someone with only two years of professional experience without seeing his or her GPA, he reacted quite strongly and told her that he was a graduate of the most prestigious Grande Ecole and to him, that was all she needed to know. "Besides, your company's offices are not exactly in the best part of town," he added. With that, he stormed out of the office. The same day, all other alumni of the Ecole Polytechnique of Paris she was scheduled to interview called and cancelled their interviews.

What went wrong? This American office manager chose an office location in France and interviewed French candidates using American criteria. In France, however, the city centre is always the most desirable position. Only a second-rate French company would rent offices in the outskirts of Paris. A self-respecting multinational company has to have offices downtown.

Second, the French educational system is highly selective and hierarchical. French professionals will generally consider graduates of the Ecole Polytechnique de Paris "la creme de la creme." From the candidate's perspective, the American manager should have been pleased that he would consider employment with her company -- asking for his GPA was inappropriate. And third, networking in France is done through alumni associations. Information circulates very quickly between alumni of the same Grande Ecole.

As this example illustrates, attracting local talent to the foreign subsidiary of your company takes more than translating the job posting from English (or French) to the local language. Typical motivations and concerns of candidates are not the same in Canada, Germany, Taiwan, Japan, Russia or Mexico. As a result, attracting local talent to your company requires a certain amount of adaptation of its hiring policies to the local context. Indeed, what Canadians consider as sound recruiting policies may not appear sound at all to Germans, Taiwanese, Japanese, Russians or Mexicans.

Pay-for-performance

In most Canadian corporations, pay is correlated positively with performance: the better you perform, the more you earn. This can go from a higher raise for better performance all the way to having some or all of an employee's income depend on performance, as is commonly the case for sales representatives. This principle, which makes complete sense to Canadian managers and HR professionals, is not so obvious in several other parts of the world.

In former Communist countries, for instance, people were used to a system where pay and performance were not correlated. Under the old system, good employees were paid the same as poorly-performing employees. With the collapse of the Iron Curtain, the idea that pay and performance should be correlated is now making its way into people's minds. Keep in mind, however, that this is not the situation preferred by the majority people in many of these countries, as demonstrated by the return to power of several Communist parties.

In countries where people value a steady income over the possibility of making a high income if they really shine, a pay-for-performance scheme that includes a high variable fraction is often considered threatening. In countries like France and Greece, where the best graduates often choose government positions with secure paycheques for life, it is quite difficult to attract good employees with pay schemes that include high bonuses for achieving specific objectives.

In places like Hong Kong, where people value risk and are motivated by personal financial gains, employees who have achieved a significant professional result expect a financial form of recognition (raise, bonus or commission) within a matter of weeks. They are likely to look for another employer if they have to wait until their next annual performance review.

Because of these and other cultural differences, it is difficult to design a global, "one-size-fits-all" pay scheme that attracts the best talent in all countries. In particular, pay-for-performance schemes often need to be adapted to local preferences by increasing or decreasing the variable fraction, depending on whether income security or higher risks and returns are preferred.

Interviews and the selection process

During job interviews in Canada, interviewers are legally forbidden from asking any question that is not related to the professional activities of candidates. Interviewers simply cannot ask questions related to the age, marital status and number of children of candidates. By contrast, in Latin America and Latin Europe, candidates routinely mention their age, marital status and number of children on their resumes (which often include a picture as well), and these points are discussed during interviews.

Canadian interviewers who use the same approach there as in Canada are likely to lose some good candidates. At the end of Canadian-style interviews, Latin American candidates feel that interviewers did not really try to know them as people, and that the company values its employees only for the professional contributions they can make. Given the choice, many prefer to work in organizations where they feel valued as a person, not as a contributor.

Selecting the best candidate within a group of technically qualified people is often done based on attitude and interpersonal skills. In Canada, a certain amount of assertiveness is considered desirable, particularly in sales positions. By contrast, assertiveness is generally viewed rather negatively in China. As a result, Canadians interviewing candidates for Chinese sales positions may be tempted to select candidates who may actually be considered "pushy sales reps" by their clients.

Internationalizing practices

As these examples demonstrate, attracting the best local talent abroad requires some adaptation of interview and selection practices. Transposing Canadian practices overseas through translation rarely achieves the desired objectives. When creating interview and selection policies for foreign subsidiaries, Canadian corporations need to take into consideration both corporate objectives and local HR practices.

Corporate objectives determine the extent to which talent recruited locally interact with Canadian managers/expatriates, and whether local recruits are expected to move on to other countries/Canada over time (or not). This, in turn, determines the importance of English/French language, adaptability and intercultural skills that these recruits need.

Taking local practices into consideration benefits the corporation in two areas. First, it helps ensure that desirable candidates are attracted to the corporation. Second, it ensures that candidate skills are evaluated in the context of the skills and qualifications required for the local market place.

Many Canadian corporations with limited knowledge and information about foreign interviewing and selection practices could attract more and better local talent in their foreign subsidiaries by obtaining additional information on the HR practices of the country in which they are looking to hire.

Lionel Laroche, PhD, P.Eng., is president of ITAP Canada, a cross-cultural training and consulting organization located in Toronto.