Recruiting Without Borders
In today's global marketplace, recruitment agencies are increasingly finding themselves dealing with clients and candidates with very different ideas on what constitutes a "great fit".
Take for instance the cross cultural dilemma IKEA was faced when recently recruiting in France. Accustom to recruiting individuals who share IKEA's Swedish values, the IKEA recruiters were quite surprised at how difficult it was to find the appropriate French translation for the word "humbleness" - an important Swedish cultural value - when writing their French recruiting advertisement.
In contrast, Americans are brought up to sell themselves on their resumes, and in job interviews. While this is culturally encouraged in the U.S., in an extremely modest culture such as Finland, Japan, or China, this kind of behavior would be seen as overtly boastful and even dishonest. This might lead a recruiter to misjudge an otherwise perfectly capable American candidate.
Of course, the same thing happens in reverse here at home all the time: The Indian candidate whose limp handshake is mistaken by the interviewer to be a sign of weak people skills. A Japanese candidate who replies to the question "why are you the best man for the job?" by saying he might not be the best choice but will commit to try his very best. Or the Israeli woman whose curt and abrupt comments give the impression she'd be a "high maintenance" employee.
Social psychologists tell us that many core cultural values are firmly instilled by the age of seven. What we do, what we say, and how we evaluate others are influenced by those values. Usually without our ever realizing it. So how can recruiters get through the ‘cultural noise’ and judge the real quality candidates?
As global recruitment increases, hiring managers will come more and more into contact with cultures who think and behave differently from us.
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