Many companies are struggling to find qualified candidates, but at the same time many companies are also worried about hiring from abroad. Because of this, international recruitment causes unnecessary concerns within HR. However, it does not have to be difficult. If you hire international candidates, it can strengthen the employees that already work in your company and increase your company’s growth.
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SlaterConsult and StepStone Denmark work together to help companies hire internationally. |
More and more companies upgrade and prepare production and daily operations for a digital future. If you want to be good at what you do, you need to have the right players on your team – people who know the global market and have the specialist skills and competencies that you are looking for.
This task cannot necessarily be solved only with the field of specialists that we have in Denmark now.
No more specialists available
Many companies within the same specialist field or industry are struggling to find highly qualified candidates, because the pool of candidates is not expanding fast enough to meet the demand.
Therefore, many Danish companies compete for the same specialists and the negative impact of this competition is disturbing, according to Lone Skriver who is partner at the consultancy agency, SlaterConsult.
»The total growth decreases when companies recruit from each other. It drives salaries up, at the same time the level of knowledge decreases, because it takes approximately 1-2 years to build the necessary knowledge within a specialist area in the new organization,« Lone Skriver from SlaterConsult emphasizes. SlaterConsult advises companies to recruit internationally to meet the challenge.
»There are many myths about the difficulties of hiring internationally. Companies may forget that during the last years, Denmark has spent considerable resources to make the process easy and manageable.«
»Are you looking for new employees internationally, you can generate double profit: There will be more people added to the pool of candidates and the cost of each employee will not increase at the same speed. At the same time, you strengthen your current team of specialists, because a diverse workforce has a positive impact on growth and on the level of knowledge in a team of specialists.«
Prepare for the future
When you need to recruit highly educated specialists, you should recruit for the future – exactly like you do when investing in automation and digitalization of production and daily operations.
»The same goes for international recruitment. You need to upgrade your workforce to meet future challenges. By hiring international specialists, you increase the growth potential of your company. The longer it takes for you to move forward, the further you will lag behind in terms of competitiveness,« Lone Skriver observes.
»It would be incorrect to say that international recruitment does not require extra effort, but when you experience the benefits of recruiting an international specialist to your team, you will soon realize that the benefits by far make up for the extra effort you had to invest.«
Myths about the elephant in the room
At SlaterConsult it is well-known that Danish companies project their concerns to the candidate and think that the company’s and country’s systems and infrastructure are so cumbersome that the candidate will have a hard time using them.
»Companies may not know that a candidate searching for a job in Denmark already made a decision to move to Denmark and learn new things – including Danish. Most international employees are able to navigate the Danish language within their first year in the country. Even though your company systems are not in English, an international employee will learn to use them anyway and you only have to focus on translating the most critical elements such as safety procedures,« Lone Skriver points out.
»International recruitment also provides an opportunity to reflect about the company’s self-perception – is it really so cumbersome to hire English speaking employees? In many specialist jobs the work descriptions and systems are already in English and the young Danish employees (white collar as well as blue collar) navigate without difficulty in a world of English speaking YouTube videos, computer games and movies without subtitles. Today, most Danish specialists live in a more or less globalized world because of what they do in their free time.«
We help you get started
»We ensure that the company gets ready to hire internationally, hereafter StepStone helps prepare the job postings that are marketed via The Network,« Lone Skriver explains.
»We begin by determining the company’s readiness in a dialogue with management and employees about international recruitment. Does the company have any experience with international recruitment? What are their expectations or concerns? What resources are available?«
»Hereafter we facilitate a workshop where we together with relevant management and employees work on the barriers that are present in the company to find the right model for the company to hire international, highly qualified employees.«
»We recommend that the company starts the implementation of the results from the workshop as quickly as possible after the workshop, and at the same time starts the recruiting process. The reason being that the organization constantly changes, as do the prerequisites for the recruitment itself. By starting the recruiting phase quickly after the workshop, the company ensures it did not waste time preparing without any action to follow.
Published 26-04-2017
