Types of Approaches to Staffing

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Hello friends.

Come, now let’s talk about “international recruitment and selection”.

Now you might wonder what this international recruitment and selection is? Right?

Generally, what happens is, so far, we have talked about the recruitment and selection process within the same geographies. Correct?

Well, “international recruitment and selection” is not that much different but yes, there are some specific things that we need to pay attention to and if we get the proper knowledge of this, then we can easily link it to our business strategy and create a very effective recruitment and selection plan.

So, come, let’s get a deeper understanding of this, and let’s see how we can go about having international recruitment within the organization.

So, as I said, “international or global recruitment is basically a process where you search and hire the candidates from anywhere across the globe”.

If you have a look at the overall scenario today, then the organization would want to hire the most capable, skilled, efficient, and qualified individuals. Okay. What happens is that they have the overall knowledge of the business strategy, and business goals, and hence they become very easy to meet.

Gone are the times when we had to work with the candidates we were getting within the specific geographies. Nowadays if there is a talented candidate in any other country also, the companies would not hesitate in getting that person on board and treating him like a talent in their organization. Okay.

Now let's talk about what approaches we can apply for international staffing.

So, the first approach is "ethnocentric staffing".

Now “ethnocentric staffing” means that we are hiring people from parent countries and placing them all across the world wherever we have open positions. (Got it?)

For example, if we want to fill an executive position role, say in the USA and the parent country is India, then we have 2 options.

Either we relocate one of our existing employees who is a permanent resident of the parent country, then suppose we are sending someone from India to pick up that particular role in that country. Or the second approach is that we should hire an individual who already lives in that country or has a desire to go there. (Understood?)

So basically, the ethnocentric method when we are opening a branch in a new country or setting up a new organization altogether, then it is generally easy that the individuals who are already familiar with our company's policies, procedures, and cultural values, they should go to the new branch from the parent country itself as it becomes a very smooth transition.

Also, as they know the parent country, they know how the organization was set up, and what ideologies it works on, so it becomes easier to transfer that into the new country's branch office as well. Okay.

Let us now talk about the second approach which we call "polycentric staffing".

In this approach, we hire locals, then fill our positions in a host country.

Well, we can create contracts with local job boards or with local recruitment agencies to fulfill this particular kind of need. So, we use a polycentric approach when we need local candidates that are skilled enough in our day-to-day business.

Now, say for example, if we want to increase our clientele in a particular country, we will hire a local professional who is well aware of the market and we will tell him our end-to-end requirements so that, that person would be able to carry forward the sales operations.

So, we can generally use any approach if we don't get qualified candidates, but the biggest advantage of polycentric staffing is that you can easily find local talent and that will be more beneficial than you bringing in some other candidates from other geographies. (Clear?)

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Now, let’s talk about our next approach which is “Regiocentric staffing”.

This approach is very easy to understand by the name itself. That is “Regio”. Basically, we hire or transfer people within the same particular region.

So, say for example, if we want to transfer some employees within the Scandinavian countries, then we can hire someone from Sweden which is the host country and we can transfer one of our employees from Denmark which is the host country within the same region.

So, we can transfer people within the same range from Sweden to Denmark or Denmark to Sweden as per our convenience.

We basically use the regiocentric approach “when the costs of transferring an employee from a host country are lower than transferring them from the parent country”. (Understood?)

While deciding to go for this approach, we need to keep one thing in mind. The local language, cultural barriers, and cultural adaptabilities. If these 3 things are clear, then you can easily transfer people from one geographical region to another. Okay.

Now, basically, we use the “geocentric approach” when we need to fill some specific positions and we are not concerned about where the candidate is coming from and where they live currently. Therefore, the country of origin or the residential country is not of any concern.

Now, this can mean 2 things.

First, we can hire local employees very easily. Now, we mainly use this option when we want to hire someone in a country where we don’t have offices.

For instance, we will use this when we want to create a customer support system in a country to cater to our customers there. However, we don’t have a formal setup, so the particular candidate can either work from home or they can go to a particular center and operate from there.

The second is “relocating our employees”.

This basically means, bringing both foreign talent into our parent country and relocating people to a new host country.

We use this particular approach when we need someone’s physical presence at a specific location. And when the best talent for the job lives elsewhere, that’s when we relocate our employees…

Now, if we want to use the geocentric approach, then we need to have a look at the global outlook on recruitment.

For example, wherever the position is available, whether in the host country or the parent country, the hiring team can do certain things like;

– “Advertising on global job boards before using the local job boards”. By doing so, we can start getting good candidates from the start only.

– Then, we can source the candidates online without looking at their current location. We have to be more cautious in this, whether the person would be able to meet our requirements or not”.

– Third, we “check our global employee database to find internal candidates who may wish to relocate” to those countries. What happens many times is that some candidates are such that they have an interest in getting relocated to other countries, but they do not get opportunities immediately. So, through geocentric staffing, we can give an opportunity to those internal candidates also.

– Next, we can ask the recruiters operating externally to suggest candidates that meet our requirements, and generally, these candidates are easily found at international job fairs or career events.

– Then, we can also ask for referrals. We already talked about referral programs; I hope you remember. Well, they are applicable in international staffing as well. So, we can ask people to refer to someone within their network that is an absolute fit for the job and that person is also willing to relocate. Okay. (I hope everything is clear)

Well, if you have any queries or doubts, click on the discussion button below and get your questions answered, discuss them with your fellow learners and share your experience as well.

Thank you.

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