Five Reasons to Consider International Recruitment

This is a guest post written by Heather Darby of international relocation specialists, Momentous Relocation (experts in relocating people — and potential recruits — from anywhere in the world) as part of our Recruiting Weekly Series, where recruiters who work at the coal face on a week-in week-out basis share their expertise. .

Foreign workers have garnered a significant amount of controversy from right-wing political parties in recent years, yet despite this they remain pivotal to the success of many businesses, offering up benefits and opportunities for business development that can’t be gained through any other means.

While being integral to the health of the British economy as a whole, international candidates can also offer benefits specific to your business. Here are five reasons to consider an international job candidate and how they could help transform your business.

Acquire Talent Unavailable in the Domestic Job Market

In the UK, a polarisation of the job market has left the country with a problem. The service industry is now highly competitive, with all but one of Britain’s most popular undergraduate degrees specifically geared towards a career in the field. As a result, the manufacturing industry is experiencing a massive skills shortage, slowing growth to a halt. What’s more, while the most popular service industry areas are filled with applications, other areas are strained under a lack of talent; careers like architecture and biology are severely lacking in potential employees.

Happily, there is an answer to this problem. The engineering sector of British industry is one under some of the greatest pressure: So many businesses are dependant on highly qualified engineers, yet so few new workers go into the industry each year. In India, however, the number of highly qualified engineers is booming, thanks to increased educational institutions and interest from young minds. The high numbers of engineers coming out of Indian universities presents UK businesses with an opportunity to hire the best and brightest international candidates, candidates that will be eager to find secure work. After all, just as our service industry is fiercely competitive due to overcrowding, so to is India’s engineering sector.

A similar situation can be seen in countries the world over, where cultural and socially desirable jobs lead to high amounts of qualified candidates that aren’t required in that nation, but are invaluable elsewhere — such as Italy’s high number of architects, or Poland’s growing pool of computer programmers.

Reports Show International Employees Work Harder

When hiring internationally, there is always going to be some concern about language and cultural barriers, and whether or not the employee will take to a job and be as efficient as an employee sourced domestically. However, as studies have pointed out, the opposite appears to be true.

International workers, besides often being better qualified for the role they are brought into — thanks to the aforementioned skills shortage — have also been found to be harder workers than their British-born colleagues, committing to longer hours and directly improving business productivity.

High-level International Candidates Can Introduce Global Networking Opportunities

You can’t travel through the business world alone, along the way you meet countless faces, each with their own unique talents, expertise and company ties. Networking is popular in Britain as a way of finding new avenues of business, which is why so much time is dedicated purely to meeting strangers in the hope of building business relationships.

Networking is also a key part of business all over the world; in China, it is of incredibly high significance. With similar mindsets found far and wide, international candidates with extensive business history have the potential to bring networking opportunities that could take your company to another level, opening avenues to new clients and business partners unlike any you could have found before.

Help Turn Your Company Into a Multinational Business

Along with a list of international businesses and clients they’ve built relationships with, international employees can also bring with them unique knowledge of markets you’re yet to tap into but could with their expertise.

It’s not a stretch to assume that a person with experience doing business in London, Birmingham or anywhere else in the UK not only understands how their city operates, but how the country does as well. They understand the customs, the way things get done and they use it to their advantage.

The same can be said for anyone else doing business anywhere in the world. As a result, international employees can give you an edge in highly competitive global markets, offering experience — such as how to secure business deals and where the market for your business is — that would be valuable to businesses based in the region, let alone your own.

Diversify Business Culture and Improve the Way You Operate

Every market has its own way of doing business, and many industries have their own way of operating within that market. The culture of London business — recruitment, business relationships, work ethics, marketing, project plans and strategies, etc — is very different from the way it is done in Beijing, yet both are highly successful hubs of commerce.

Of course, we aren’t suggesting a London-based business starts operating only in the methods, customs and culture of a one that is located in Beijing: business cultures develop out of the heritage of the location they operate within. However, we are suggesting that by bringing in international workers, you can integrate some of their experiences and business customs with your own, creating a unique working culture for your company. By doing so, you can potentially improve the way you do business, setting yourself apart from your competitors, operating in a way no other business does and opening doors unique to your situation.