KEY CHALLENGES FACED BY HUMAN RESOURCE IN RECRUITING INTERNATIONAL EMPLOYEES

KEY CHALLENGES FACED BY HUMAN RESOURCE IN RECRUITING INTERNATIONAL EMPLOYEES

Introduction

Staffing is one of the greatest problems that have to be overcome by human resource managers. According to Stone and  Dulebohn (2013), it even becomes more complicated if the employees to be recruited are internationally based and come from different parts of the globe. In international development, recruiting and retaining skilled local staff is particularly complicated. The topic of staffing raises a critical analysis of the review of the Key challenges faced by HR while hiring a new employee and especially across borders.  The paper will critically discuss five key challenges that organizations may face when hiring international employees from different countries. Literature notes from Carbery, R, and Cross C., 2019) on International Human Resource Management and globalization, and more comprehensive readings will be highly relied on to support and address this question. Identified challenges in attracting the right person, immigration and visa restrictions, compliance with international policies, language acultural barriers have been identified as key challenges facing HR in the recruitment of employees. In attracting the top talent will talk about the obstacles HR meet in identifying the right personnel in a pool of so many persons. In immigration control and Visa restriction, the paper will discuss the various problems faced while recruiting across borders. The paper will also review the different policies that HR needs to follow while hiring international employees. Lastly, HR needs to overcome language and cultural barriers while interacting with the recruited workers.

Challenge in Attracting top talent

One of the top challenges that face the recruitment team is pulling the best and most qualified personnel from a poll of billion candidates. As attested by Pandita and Ray (2018), attracting and retaining the top talent candidates will often take sober discernment, time, and a whole of hectic work in conducting numerous interviews. According to  Carbery, R, and Cross 2019, the HR department utilizes various procedures in the recruitment process. Choosing the right procedure to attract the top candidate for the position remains a puzzle. The process is long, requires adjustments to avoid failures. This gives the human resource department a challenge that features so high on the list of challenges faced by HR in the recruitment of international employees. A company can use data-driven recruitment metrics to constantly improve the hiring process and attract the top talent into the company. However, this also gives the hiring department a hassle in collecting all the data from the candidates and analyzing it to come up with informed decisions in hiring (Kim, 2016). A spreadsheet which is one way of tracking the data of the candidates require manual work, which is really a lot of work and prone to human error. According to Iannotta and Gatti (2016), there lacks fairness when conducting online recruitment by Human resource managers. Most of the international recruitment is done online, and the recruitment department will struggle to choose the right team and as well remain fair and unbiased in their e-recruitment.

Compliance with international labor laws.

Various laws are set aside governing the recruiting of international workers from different countries. As defined by De Stefano (2016), International labor law is an international legal body with regulates the recruitment and issues on working conditions.  Example include the international labor organization, (ILO), International Register of Certified Auditors (IRCA), The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), among other organization which set the  International labor standards. The HR hence have a hectic time understanding and coping with all the international rules and regulations before the foreign workers are recruited. According to the EEOC policies, HR should not question candidates about their citizenship prior to qualifying for the job to avoid discrimination based on country of origin (Stoilkovska, Ilieva, and Gjakovski, 2015). The EEOC stands that employment eligibility should come after the recruitment process to avoid cases of company accusations of discrimination. Labor laws give the employees some certain rights and preferences, including the number of maximum working hours, minimum wage, and other regulations on the workplace.

The laws will also vary dramatically between countries, and companies will often rely on the help of legal advisers to understand and comply with the different regulations and policies. This father adds a problem to the HR department in finding a good adviser, not forgetting the financial burden that comes with it. According to statistics shown by Tayah,.,( 2016), numerous companies find problems coping with the international regulations, laws, and rules governing the recruitment of international workers. International bodies such as the World Bank and US Agencies expect the trading partners to have strong political ties so that to allow smoothing communications and relations. According to Carbery, R, and Cross C., 2019, Pre-departure training is also a necessary requirement before the employee flies out of the country.

Immigration control and Visa restriction

Human resources staff must follow the Immigration Reform and Control Act and prepare a working visa and other travel documents for the candidate. As explained by McCollum and Findlay (2015), the employing company must obtain a foreign labor certification from the Home Affairs Department prior to having a successful candidate in the country. Kaplan and Schulhofer‐Wohl, (2017) find the registration process in registering employee with the immigration agent lengthy and hectic as the registration needs to be substantiated in compliance with all legal policies that exist between the two countries. It is only after the hiring department has succeeded in obtaining the certification that It can now work on sponsoring the travel visa.

Denial of visas is can be a problem facing the recruitment process and can one another problem paralyzing the recruitment process. The immigration control is responsible for the preparation of the visa and the traveling documents, and they pose the sole responsibility to deny or approve the visa (Wasem, R.E., 2015). According to Grant (2013), a visa can be denied due to incomplete documentation, fraud, and misrepresentation, public charge, terrorist claims, or security reasons. Some reasons can also cause a visa for the new employee denied. Deviations from the nature of work and locations may also create problems for the company by restricting future foreign recruitment process.

According to Longoni,  Pagell, Johnston, and Veltri,( 2013), the hiring department also need to consider health and safety issues. Before the preferred candidates migrate into the country, they have to be cleared first by the health department to ensure they are no potential threat to the citizens of that country. An example is with the current Corona virus threat where candidates form corona- pandemic countries in the China and Middle East have to pass through numerous screening tests and are more likely to be rejected if the country has possed travel barn from that home country.

Language barriers

The communication barrier turns to be a problem in a situation where people don’t understand each other’s language and hence posing a serious problem to the recruitment process for the HR department. When two parties speak different dialects, it becomes a huge barrier to communication. For example, the hiring department is from the USA and only speaks and understands English, and the candidate is from China, and he or she can only speak and understand Chinese. This poses to be a huge problem.

Language barriers develop not only where there is a language difference but can also exist where the candidates lack clear speech or eloquence in speaking. According to Subramaniam, Sanjeev, Kuruvilla, Joy, Muralikrishnan, and Paul (2017), the use of Jargon, which is technical terms in communication or slang, which is the use of language out of the conventional usage can result to un-proficiency and infective communication. Additionally, illiteracy and linguistic deficiency are when people have low vocabulary or understanding of the communicating language (Stubbs, M., 2014). This can exist where the candidates are being fetched from countries with low literacy levels or when the candidate is using English as a second or third language. This will pose a problem for the HR department. Likewise, the candidate will face understanding HR when HR is of high vocabulary and linguistic ability.

Language is needed to facilitate any kind of communication between parties involved in the recruitment process. Hiring teams need to communicate fast.  The language barriers often slow down the hiring process, especially when the two parties don’t understand each other, and the company is forces to seek an intermediary translator. This will further add economic cost to the department in hiring a reliable translator. The translation also slows the hiring process as both teams need to be translated to what the other person is saying. Rendering to Noe and Kodwani (2018), the language barrier also becomes a problem in training the new employee if he or she does not understand the technical worlds used or the language used in the training process. Predeparture training which Carbery, R and Cross C., 2019

Cultural barriers

As evident in Carbery, R, and Cross C., 2019 notes, the human resource department is tasked to nature and maintain a healthy business culture, which becomes difficult with cultural barriers. Statistics by Bordia. And Bordia (2015) Shows that  0ver 70% of the HR attests that foreign workers experience problems adapting to the new environment.  Foreign employees take time in cooping and becoming familiarized with the cultures of the new country, new employees, and catching with the organization’s culture. The human resources department strives to build a strong employee relationship in an attempt to improve productivity in the company. Creating cohesion between local and international staff in a new environment becomes another challenge.

 Culture goes beyond nationality or country of origin for the person and holistically refers to a pattern of beliefs, behaviors, language, values, and way of life practiced by people from different groups (Bennett, M.J., 2001).  This means the domestic and international workers will have to face differences in religion, language, behaviors, stereotypes, beliefs, and other differences while working together in the workplace.

The human resource hence tasks with a heavy-duty to blend the different cultures and bring the employees into understanding to come to one homogenous workforce that is not divided by cultural differences. According to Groysberg,  Lee,  Price, and Cheng (2018), a healthy cultural framework in an organization should be a  mix of various subcultures from different capabilities, talents, and values to bring corporate culture for the success of the organization. The Hr professionals are hence tasked with the obligation to change the cultural barrier that exists between domestic and international workers and exploit the different skills, knowledge, values that come with the international employees to build a healthy fruitful organization culture.

.

Conclusion

The paper has succeeded in chronologically discussing the challenges that will be faced by the hiring department from identifying the top candidates form a pool of thousand candidates across the globe. After identifying and interviewing the candidates, the department also has to cope with numerous international polices which regulate the hiring of international candidates. After fulfilling the legal policies, the department also needs to prepare a working visa and traveling document, which will allow the chosen candidate to migrate and settle in the new country. In new countries with different cultures and the environment. The human resource is then tasked with creating a favorable working environment and business culture for the organization, which will blend the domestic and international workers. Language barriers also posses to be a challenge, especially when the hiring team and the candidate do not speak the same tongue. Training and other forms of communication between the two parties then become a challenge, and the department needs to seek a translator, which further burdens on the financial cost. The discussed challenges will often delay and slow the hiring process and, in return bringing new a hybrid problem. The hiring team ought to hire as fast as possible to fill the vacant positions as the lack of employees will cost the company from the delay of operations and add pressure to the current employees who will need to work more to fill for the vacant slots. This further causes the bulk of problems to the already key challenges faced.  Companies got to know the chance to opt for the local employees over international workers to avoid the challenges with international workers. The  IRCA has a policy that makes it illegal to refer to foreign workers under-qualified and sticking to local workers. Unless stipulated by a government contract or other legal regulation,  the human resource has an obligation to give equal chances to both the domestic and local candidates whenever there is a job vacancy.