No
matter what your business is, or where it is located,
staffing is one of the most challenging aspects of any
expansion you do. Finding the right people for the right
position, making sure they will fit into the culture
of your company, and ensuring their expertise at their
job can be difficult and time consuming even in the
most ideal of circumstances. When the positions you
are trying to fill are for your expansion into Europe,
the challenges are even greater.
Regardless of the type of industry you are in, when
expanding into Europe, the odds are very good that a
significant percentage of your staff will be made up
of Europeans that you will need to hire, at all levels.
In addition to the toll relocating your current personnel
can take on them, and the cost of doing so, many European
nations require
that a certain percentage of positions in foreign owned
offices be filled with their nationals or, in the case
of some European Union nations, citizens of the EU.
Some EU nations will not grant extended work visas if
there are comparably qualified EU applicants for a specific
position.
For subordinate positions, of course, the process of
finding and interviewing suitable candidates is fairly
straight forward, and not terribly different from the
process you engage in here -- in the United States.
As an example, if a job’s single requirement is proficiency
with a certain type of equipment; the hiring process
will be relatively uncomplicated and familiar to your
Human Resources professionals. For senior staff and
managerial positions – positions of responsibility and
trust – however, this is not the case.
To understand just how different the process of staffing
senior positions in your European Offices is going to
be, it is necessary to understand a little about recent
European history, and specifically some of the after
effects of World War Two. When the Nazi’s occupied a
nation, one of the first things they did was gather
massive amounts of information about that country’s
citizens. This information was then used to round up
and transport what the Nazi regime considered “undesirable
elements” (Jews, Gypsies, Communists, Partisans and
others) to the concentration camps. As a direct result
of these abuses – and subsequent abuses of the same
nature by the Communist regimes in Europe – one of the
first things many of the liberated nations did was effectively
make access to personal information about its citizens
extremely complicated and difficult to get.
In the United States, for good or ill, information on
individuals you are considering hiring is readily available
to your Human Resources professionals. Virtually anything
an applicant for any level position has in his or her
resume or job application can be checked and verified
in a matter of hours. Criminal record, credit rating,
education, previous work experience – due to the freedom
and accessibility of personal information here in the
United States, all you need is a Social Security number
and any applicant’s life can become virtually an open
book. As a matter of fact, many European companies that
are looking to hire staff for their expansions here
in the United States are shocked at just how readily
available the information on the people they are considering
is.
This is not
the case in almost all of the European nations you will
be expanding your operations into. Because of their
history and their culture, Europeans take their privacy
very
seriously. Even with the expressed permission of an
applicant, many Human Resources departments we have
worked with in the past have found it to be virtually
impossible to get the information they need to make
their decision. Even something as relatively simple
(here in the US at least) as verifying that an applicant
graduated from a certain University with a specific
degree can take weeks of phone calls and emails; and
still
may not prove to be successful. In some European nations
it is a criminal
offense for companies to release even basic
employment histories of former employees without many
complicated regulatory statutes being satisfied by your
company first.
It isn’t that the information doesn’t exist. It is there
– just like here in the United States. It is simply
that in most cases, no one will give it to you.
When staffing your European expansion, it is crucial
to remember that in virtually all of Europe, both finding
the perfect candidate
and doing a background check on them is a
process that is almost entirely based on personal contacts.
Due to the way their cultures have evolved, the “person-to-person”
connection is far more important in Europe than it is
here in the United States. Knowing who to go to in a
specific nation – and more importantly how to approach
them – is essentially the only way you will be able
to get the information you need most of the time. Knowledge
of the regulations and the most efficient way to comply
with them is critical to your successful search. Unless
your company already has a well established European
presence and a continental Human Resources department
in place with years of experience, you will in all likelihood
find it necessary to hire a firm to hold your hand through
the process. Most importantly, having a reputation
for honesty and obeying the various privacy laws will
be the key to establishing a presence in this market—Europeans
have good reasons for protecting their privacy and you
should respect this.
The following example illustrates the above point.
We were engaged by a U.S. client in a search for a senior
executive who, at the client’s request, had to be European.
We identified a strong candidate and after several interviews
were ready to introduce him to the client. Prior
to doing so we needed to verify some of the client’s
professional experiences but were unable to do so through
direct enquiries at the former places of employment.
Making a judgment call, we decided to tell the candidate
that we would contact his former employers; having established
our reputation for honesty and sensitivity to European
business practices neither the candidate nor the former
employers objected and we obtained the required information.
Much has been written about both the benefits and the
risks associated with the amount of information that
is readily available to everyone about citizens of the
United States. New laws, combined with the massive amounts
of information available on the internet, have made
our open society more open than at any time in our history.
This is, in large part, based on our unique cultural
traditions and development. Based on
their cultural traditions and development,
most of the nations of Europe have gone in exactly the
opposite direction. It is important to remember that
they are not wrong – just different. As with every other
part of your expansion into the European Markets, if
you want to play on their field, you are going to have
to play by their rules.
Attempting to go it alone when staffing your European
expansion is, in most cases, going to be difficult,
frustrating, time consuming and can prove very, very
expensive. Hiring a respected and well established European
based Executive Search firm – and specifically one that
has a proven track record of successfully staffing US
based companies’ expansions in Europe – will usually
prove to be both cost effective and get you up and running
in a more timely fashion. While there will be many challenges
in your expansion into Europe that you will be able
to handle alone, the odds are very good that staffing
will not be one of them. For that challenge, having
someone hold your hand is definitely better.
Author Bio: Steve McLaughlin founded Global
Market Insights, with offices in Europe and the U.S.,
with his vision of giving clients two synergistic competencies:
knowledge of the global marketplace and industry expertise
in manufacturing, finance and information technology.
Steve has over twelve years of international experience
in three continents, having started in executive search
as a Beckett-Rogers Associate. Steve is a graduate of
Rice University, where he was student body president,
and completed post-graduate studies in International
Economics at the Universidad Mayor, Santiago, Chile.
He is available for consultation and can be contacted
directly by Email:
smclaughlin@gmi.lu or Phone: 352-26364921. Additional
information is located on his website:
http://www.gmi.lu
