In the post-Covid world, you can’t afford to limit your recruitment efforts to domestic talent only.
Successful companies are increasingly turning to a global talent pool — not just hiring offshore for call center staff and tech support, but recruiting high-level talent from abroad, too.
With job vacancies still topping 8 million in the U.S., a global talent acquisition strategy is a must for businesses that want to fill key vacancies with A-players and remain competitive. But if you’re new to recruiting global talent, you might be uncertain where you should start. Let’s run through what you need to know — including key challenges and the best strategies to use.
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Why Do You Need a Global Talent Acquisition Strategy?
A global talent acquisition strategy gives you access to untapped talent, with eager offshore candidates waiting to join your company. In July 2023, the U.S. unemployment rate was just 3.5%, vs. 8% in India. That big difference nearly triples your odds of hiring top talent when you hire overseas.
Global talent acquisition (also known as global talent sourcing or offshore talent acquisition) opens up possibilities. Want to offer a 24-hour customer helpline? Instead of paying a premium for U.S. shift workers, hire from across the globe, bringing in staff to work during (their) regular business hours. Need to cut costs? Hiring a project manager in the Philippines could cost you just $21,458 vs. $108,000 in the U.S.
Global Recruitment Challenges
Global talent acquisition opens up a warehouse of opportunities — but it also brings important challenges in knowledge and retention.
- Know the local labor market in the countries you’re hiring from. It’s important to be sensitive to local customs and cultural differences. For instance, if you’re hiring from the Philippines, be aware of mandatory “13th-month pay.”
- Know how to reach your ideal candidates in different countries. You may not be able to rely on the same job boards and social media sites you typically use for recruitment in the U.S.
- Retain the talented workers you’ve hired. A remote employee working for your company from across the globe has the option to work for any other remote company, anywhere in the world. That makes turnover a bigger issue than when you hire domestically.
Best Global Talent Acquisition Strategies
You can overcome the unique challenges of recruiting globally if you put the right global hiring strategies in place. Look to create a strategic workforce plan, learn the local job markets, strengthen your EVP, and bolster your DEI.
Have a Strategic Workforce Plan
A strong global talent acquisition strategy (just like any talent acquisition strategy) needs a solid strategic workforce plan. That means measuring your organization’s skills gap, and understanding the business goals you’re aiming for (in the short and longer term), and the roles you need to hire for first. You may want to set specific talent acquisition goals as part of your strategic plan.
Learn About Local Job Markets
The job market you’re used to in the U.S. won’t map directly to the offshore job market. For instance, in the U.S. you can ask about military status or citizenship, but in some countries, these questions are considered discriminatory. Legal issues aside, you may find yourself inadvertently falling foul of local customs or practices, creating a poor first impression.
Even in other English-speaking countries, the job markets can have major differences. For instance, in the U.K., employees are legally entitled to 5.6 weeks’ paid PTO each year. In the U.S., there’s no legal requirement for paid PTO at all, though 2 weeks’ PTO is customary.
Improve your Employee Value Proposition (EVP)
In your local area in the U.S., your employer brand may be well known and well respected. But when you’re recruiting from across the world, top candidates may never have heard of you. That’s why your Employee Value Proposition (EVP) is so vital in global talent acquisition. Your global EVP answers “what’s in it for me?” for the employee. That includes salary, benefits, and other advantages, like professional growth opportunities.
Increase Your DEI
Hiring globally is a fantastic opportunity to improve your company’s DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion). A more diverse workforce brings your organization a whole host of benefits, with McKinsey finding that the most racially diverse teams were more profitable than the least diverse by 36%. But companies with flagging DEI efforts will have a harder time attracting top talent from abroad. So — know how to strengthen your DEI drive.
Global Recruitment Best Practices
However effective your global talent acquisition strategy is on paper, you need to be able to implement it well to reap the benefits.
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Build Your Employer Branding
Global talent can’t stop by your offices or talk to locals to find out about your reputation. That makes your online presence crucial. Your website — and particularly your Careers page — should get potential talent excited about working for you. But that doesn’t have to take months. For example, Discovered – Performance Hiring Software makes it easy to put together a world-class careers page in minutes.
Write Your Job Descriptions
To find the perfect employee amid a global pool of candidates, you need to start with a crystal clear job description that sets out exactly what the role involves. AI can save you 3-4 hours here on every job description you write, crafting a detailed, expert-level job description for even the most challenging role in seconds.
Post Your Job Ads
To recruit global talent, you need to place your job ad where prospective employees are looking. That means posting to big, international job boards like Indeed and LinkedIn — along with more niche, local job boards.
Create Employee Scorecards
Use employee scorecards (also called candidate scorecards or talent acquisition scorecards) to make sure your global talent acquisition team is aligned on what you’re looking for in interviews. This saves time, but it also prevents you from making incredibly costly hiring mistakes. Again, AI can do the heavy lifting for you.
Screen Resumes
Got way more applications than you can handle? Powerful AI software lets you screen resumes automatically, sifting through to unearth the best of the best.
Administer Custom Pre-Employment Skills Tests
Pre-employment skills tests let you instantly evaluate whether a candidate has what it takes to do the job. This is especially important when hiring globally, since you might not be familiar with the university a candidate attended or the qualifications they’ve received. AI can help you put these tests together.
Give Culture-Fit Tests
Even if your company uses a largely remote workforce, you need everyone to get along. Culture fit tests, produced almost instantly by AI, can help you uncover a candidate’s values and attitudes to work.
Test for Integrity
If you only test for one thing, make it integrity. Candidates with low integrity could cost your company a fortune — we’ve seen this in huge studies of workers’ compensation claims.
Automatically Check References
As many as 87% of business owners and hiring managers don’t check references. When you’re recruiting talent globally, it’s easy to skip this step due to time zone differences and language barriers. But unfortunately, skipping reference checks robs you of the most reliable way to predict whether a new hire will work out. Automated reference checking lets you easily get written references that you can view at your leisure.
How Discovered Can Guide Your Global Talent Acquisition Strategy
Discovered – Performance Hiring Software is a comprehensive, robust hiring system designed to take you every step of the way from the initial job description to a successful new hire. It’s packed with features like one-way video interviews, pre-employment assessments, candidate scorecards, and interview guides so you can be fully confident in your hiring decisions.
If your talent acquisition team itself is global, no problem. Discovered makes it easy to collaborate asynchronously, through one-way video interviews and communication tools, all accessible from a single dashboard. Book your demo today.
