As more local organisations continue to set their sights on ‘going global’, the demand for international talent continues to accelerate across Hong Kong and China. But times are changing and the traditional role of the expatriate is evolving. HR Magazine caught up with James Mendes, Managing Director, Futurestep Asia for his take on what HR professionals can do to ensure they appoint the right people from the right places and what the future holds for the globe-trotting expat.
Despite the volatile nature of regional economies, businesses across Hong Kong and China are continuing to source foreign talent in order to gain diversification and better alignment of talent to support their global growth. But whilst demand for strong international resource is still high across the region, it is becoming more apparent that the conventional role of the expatriate resource is changing with time, posing several further considerations for HR seeking such talent.
Succession planning
Mendes explained, “Go back five years or so and an expatriate would come into an organisation, spend three or four years in their role, move on and then the company would bring another expatriate in to replace them. Now, what is happening is that when there is someone who is appointed as an expat, they are actually assigned with succession planning and developing their own successor. So, we are not only seeing a shift in the role of the expatriate, but also in the sourcing strategy that organisations are adopting and sticking to.” Unsurprisingly, the shift in the role of expats has resulted in a shorter turnaround of talent within businesses across the region. However, what can organisations do to ensure that they are sourcing the right talent in the first place?
Assessing key skills critical
The way firms assess, recruit and induct people into talent management is essential, according to Mendes, and it is vital for HR to know what skills they are looking for. In the case of businesses across China, India and Asia, he claimed that dealing with ambiguity and learning agility are the two biggest competency gaps that exist and these remain the top factors that determine a candidate’s future success within the organisation. He explained, “For firms looking to bring in fresh international talent these qualities should be at the core of assessments, above more traditional aspects such as verbal and numerical reasoning. If you can measure these and find them at interview stage then you know you have discovered a premium skills set.” Mendes suggested that such skills can be assessed through several methods: a combination of case study role-play exercises and understanding the environment that people have been working within, as well as their peer and boss relationships and how they have gone about making decisions in the past.
Attracting talent
Knowing what skills to look for is one thing, but what can organisations do to ensure they attract the best foreign talent from overseas? “From a sourcing strategy, many organisations are moving more into web 2.0 social media platforms, and integrating the employer brand and the corporate brand because that messaging all pars into the candidate attractiveness,” said Mendes. He added, “We are seeing many organisations trying to get leverage out of tools like LinkedIn and Facebook. They all have benefits: they are incredibly fast, provide real-time information, are self-managed, can be updated very quickly and are globally accessible. However, these tools also pose several key challenges for businesses looking to recruit. LinkedIn, for example, can be a fantastic tool to support the recruitment process, but the challenge firms have is validating the information and career experience that it provides.”
Mendes also highlighted the issue of retaining the networks and information that recruiters accumulate once they leave the organisation, “I would recommend that if companies are going to use this tool, they make sure their recruiters are set up with a recruiter professional license to ensure that the network stays with the company as well as follows that employee. Simple things like that can be put in place and can be very effective. A lot of people ask me if I believe LinkedIn is the death of the recruitment industry but I actually think no, it can be a really fantastic tool if used in an integrated and effective way and there will always be a role for it within the industry.” The ability to control messaging and maintain consistency of messaging on social media are other challenges facing companies during their recruitment drive, according to Mendes. What sounds simple in theory can be surprisingly difficult to achieve in practice. All messaging should be aligned to the organisation as a whole and this will be a big job for recruiters and HR professionals across Asia in the future.
Disconnect between Board and HR
Whatever advice and strategies organisations choose to take moving into the second half of 2012, Mendes maintains that one thing remains certain: firms should be focused on aligning their HR strategy with their business strategy. “The biggest mistake that I see in HR is the lack of workforce planning and this highlights the disconnect between the Board and the HR department.” It is absolutely critical that organisations think in advance and plan ahead to ensure their business objectives can be realistically achieved and that they have the resources to do this. He added, “If you don’t have workforce planning in advance you’re immediately in a reactive mode. It’s so important that companies have a clear evaluation of the talent that already exists within the organisation and can identify the skills gaps that need to be fulfilled in order to achieve the future needs of the organisation.” Mendes concluded that the most important thing for HR and CEOs alike to remember is that they can’t expect things to change overnight and should understand that it takes time to go from where they stand today and where they hope to be tomorrow.
Paul Arkwright
Publisher
