CHAPTER 4

ATTRACTING AND RECRUITING FOR CULTURAL AGILITY

Originally from Argentina, Marcelo Baudino recalls being inexplicably drawn to an international career by the time he was a teenager. His home city of Córdoba is located in the center of Argentina, quite far from the neighboring countries of Chile, Bolivia, Paraguay, Brazil, and Uruguay, countries Marcelo visited briefly as a child on family vacations. His middle-class upbringing was hardly the picture of a cross-culturally rich environment. Marcelo remained in Córdoba for university, attending the Universidad Blas Pascal. Not much changed in Marcelo’s transition to university; his friends in college were identical to him on almost every salient demographic dimension. But even with such homogeneity in his life, Marcelo had a deep personal desire to experience the various cultures around the world. He knew he was different from his siblings and some of his friends, who had scant interest in meeting people from different countries or cultures. Whereas they had no interest in careers that would take them out of Argentina, Marcelo could think of no other career that would be satisfying. He wanted an international career and was highly motivated to make this goal a reality.

Marcelo’s first exploration was not far—to the corner of a nondescript building within the campus of Universidad Blas Pascal. This small office held a big and life-changing opportunity: it was the International Relations Center, where Marcelo learned about the international programs offered through the university. One of these immediately caught Marcelo’s eye: the opportunity to spend a semester studying at the University of Richmond in Virginia. Through dogged persistence and sincere interest, he convinced his parents that this was the developmental opportunity of a lifetime. He was right. During his stay in the United States, Marcelo used every opportunity to learn about Americans, American culture, and the importance of cultural differences. In addition to meeting and befriending Americans, Marcelo connected with other international students from many different countries and enjoyed the rhythm of his new culturally diverse circle. He found their differences and similarities intriguing, and learning about them aroused his curiosity to continue exploring the world.

After returning from his study abroad stint in the United States, Marcelo’s psychological pull to see the world was stronger than ever, and he wanted a future career that would provide him with the opportunity to do just that. In Marcelo’s mind, this cross-cultural feature of his career was nonnegotiable. Marcelo took every opportunity he could to connect with international professionals. He became very active in the local chapter of the Association Internationale des Étudiants en Sciences Économiques et Commerciales (AIESEC), an organization dedicated to the global leadership development of youth through conferences, international internships, and experiential opportunities in intercultural learning environments.

Making his international career goals known to recruiters and networking relentlessly, Marcelo began working globally upon his graduation from university in 2005. Since starting his career, he has worked in Mexico, Switzerland, and the United States, and his business travels have taken him all over the world, to such countries as Egypt and India and all throughout Europe. In these seven years since graduation, Marcelo has become a well-respected culturally agile professional, speaking three languages and possessing cross-cultural competencies to work effectively in diverse cultures. He is even a sought-after cross-cultural trainer, teaching others how to work effectively with people from diverse cultures.

Marcelo’s persistent motivation for an international career accelerated the development of his cross-cultural competencies and cultural agility. Do you know colleagues like Marcelo who seem to have an irresistible attraction to international experiences, an unrelenting desire for cross-cultural professional endeavors?

Finnish researcher Vesa Suutari and his colleagues would describe Marcelo’s psychological pull for a global career as his international career orientation or career anchor.1 Career anchors and orientations are deep motivating factors propelling people to make career decisions consistent with their self-identities.2 Like Marcelo, professionals with an international career orientation have personal and professional dedication to international, multicultural, and cross-cultural career activities. The cultural challenges propel them and motivate them. They cannot envision any other type of career. Professionals with this career orientation make career decisions such that their successive career moves are self-reinforcing, and, as a result, they build their cross-cultural competencies and become culturally agile. As professionals who actively build the competencies in the Cultural Agility Competency Framework, they are the exact individuals you will want to attract to your organization.

Through their research interviews, Vesa and his colleagues have captured the attitudes and sentiments of professionals with international career anchors. Here are some examples:3

These quotations illustrate how professionals with an international career orientation will seek out and initiate international experiences and thrive on the complexity that cross-cultural activities bring. If you hear any of your colleagues or job candidates sharing sentiments like these, you should look more closely at whether they are being leveraged fully in cross-cultural situations. Once they are equipped with the right set of technical skills, you’ll want these individuals in your global talent pipeline.

In most organizations today, the gauge for identifying colleagues with an international career orientation is broken. In most firms, accepting or completing an international assignment has been the gauge, erroneously equated with an international career orientation. This gauge is giving organizations far too many false positives. Professionals who have lived and worked internationally do not necessarily have an international career orientation, nor will they necessarily ever gain cultural agility. Vesa Suutari and his colleagues found that only half of the professionals who had accepted international assignments had international career orientations. The other half accepted their first assignment not because of any desire to work in another country but rather because of job demands, supervisors’ requests, a sense of duty to the organization, or the boost in income associated with the international assignment. The old gauge is correct only 50 percent of the time. True international career orientations are deep motivational forces that begin to surface relatively early in individuals’ lives, evidenced through successive self-initiated career decisions.

In most firms, accepting or completing an international assignment has been . . . erroneously equated with an international career orientation.

The old, faulty gauge for identifying an international career orientation considers only the experiences professionals have had. The new (and highly reliable) gauge considers both the motivation for culturally diverse experiences and self-initiated activities carried out during these experiences. Udo Fichtner’s stellar career as a culturally agile professional illustrates this well. Udo is a German national who has had three significant international experiences. As is the case for most individuals with international career orientations, Udo’s interest in cross-cultural experiences began with a trigger event during his teenage years. Unlike most, his trigger event had a tinge of friendly sibling rivalry.

When Udo was thirteen years old, he made his confirmation (a significant milestone in Christian religions). To celebrate, his parents gave him a beautiful piano—a perfect gift considering that Udo was a passionate and accomplished pianist. He was thrilled. Two years later, his younger brother, Wolfgang, made his confirmation and received a comparably valuable gift—one year of high school in Oklahoma in the United States. Wolfgang returned from the United States with his English language skills polished, stories that sounded exotic to teenage ears, and a fully stoked international career orientation. Not to be outdone by his younger brother, Udo was determined to start his international experiences and catch up. Immediately after high school graduation, Udo spent seven months in the United Kingdom as an au pair, living with a British family to hone his English language skills and learn about a different culture.

Udo’s second international experience began in 1996 when he was working for Deutsche Bank as a relationship manager for corporate clients and financial institutions. Seeking a deeper international dimension to his career, he actively initiated the opportunity to become the chief representative of Deutsche Bank in Bahrain. This did not materialize as planned; instead he was offered a position in his home country of Germany. But, as is typical of those with an international career orientation, Udo immediately rejected the domestic opportunity and insisted on an international assignment as the next step in his career. Two months later, in early 1997, Deutsche Bank responded by relocating him to Thailand to be a senior relationship manager for corporate clients within the global banking department. Udo’s goals for this move were to learn about global business firsthand and, even more important, to gain insights into the way people live and work who are very different from himself. Udo spent two-and-a-half years with his family living and working in Thailand.

While in Thailand, Udo sought out diverse cultural experiences. He learned the basics of the Thai language and connected with his Thai colleagues and friends by cultivating an interest in and appreciation for their religious and social activities. In particular he gained a better understanding of their fascination with the Thai Royal Family. Udo traveled extensively throughout Thailand, not just to enjoy the beautiful beaches as many expatriates do, but also to visit ancient sites and to learn more about the history, culture, and economic development of the country. Breaking away from the traditional German (and Western) expatriate community, Udo fostered relationships with his Thai colleagues, investing time in earning their continued (and unbroken) trust. On the personal side, Udo and his family received invitations to the private homes of his colleagues, a social practice reserved in Thai culture for only one’s closest friends. On the professional side, these close relationships enabled Udo to observe and model ways to be an effective professional in Thailand. Udo’s cultural agility grew exponentially.

Upon returning to Germany, Udo continued to apply his cross-cultural competencies by taking the lead on a challenging international project, which turned him into a globetrotter. In 2000, now working for the multinational specialty glass manufacturer Schott AG, Udo received an opportunity to design and implement an employee ownership program for the entire corporation globally. His integration of the standard Schott AG corporate practice was so well executed that it remains in use today in every subsidiary around the world; to date, every year a new series of Schott Performance Shares are offered in thirty countries. This experience gave Udo a chance to further refine his cultural responses and develop his cultural agility through a significant professional challenge.

In 2004, again propelled by his international career orientation, Udo was looking for a greater cultural challenge and another opportunity to live and work in another country. He was initially offered an opportunity to return to Asia. Although he liked Asia very much, having lived and worked in Thailand, Udo requested a different challenge. Typical of those with a strong international career orientation, Udo wanted to broaden his cross-cultural competencies and gain some exposure to a very different cultural environment. His commitment to his career goals paid off, and he accepted the role of vice president of human resources for the Americas and vice president and general manager of Schott’s corporate office in New York. During his three-and-a-half years in the United States, he became deeply embedded in American culture, personally and professionally, just as he had in Thailand. In New York, he learned a different way of making decisions, managing people, and dealing with employee issues—again sharpening his ability to leverage various cultural responses.

Through his experience in New York and his other personal and professional cross-cultural experiences, Udo has been recognized as a true global business leader. In 2008, he accepted a senior executive global leadership role with TRW Automotive in Germany. Three years later, he became vice president of human resources and corporate services at Hirschvogel Automotive Group, a global technology leader and one of the world’s largest automotive suppliers in the area of forging and machining. He has a well-worn passport and continues to develop his cross-cultural competencies at the executive level. Udo’s career history offers an illustration of how international career orientations unfold for culturally agile professionals through self-initiated activities and motivation for cross-cultural challenges.

In case you were curious, Udo’s younger brother, Wolfgang, was also motivated by his international career orientation. His career has included three years in Johannesburg, South Africa; three years in Ohio in the United States; two years in Belgium; and a continued interest in international opportunities.

Finding colleagues like Marcelo and Udo (and Wolfgang), who have demonstrated both motivation for culturally diverse experiences and self-initiated activities during those experiences, is critical for building a pipeline of culturally agile professionals. No business leader should leave this important first step to chance. Today, when more people than ever are traveling, studying abroad, and working internationally, there’s a lot of “noise” on the radar screen in the form of professionals who may appear culturally agile on the surface. You will see more people with international experience who might not have commensurate cultural agility. The challenge is to cut through the noise as you search for, attract, and accurately select professionals with an international career orientation—those with the motivation for acquiring cross-cultural experiences and have self-initiated these opportunities in their lives. These individuals are out there. You just need to know where to look for them.

FINDING CULTURALLY AGILE PROFESSIONALS

In your search for talent with international career orientations, you will need targeted recruitment practices, both for new graduates and for midcareer professionals. It is relatively easy to identify an international orientation among new graduates and young professionals because they have made certain decisions while in school that will indicate this orientation. As I’ve already noted, a reliable gauge for international career orientations accounts for motivation and self-initiation of activities. The gauge is more reliable for this more junior group because, in that phase, almost every extracurricular activity is self-initiated and a function of their individual motivation. Identifying more senior talent is a greater challenge because of the broader influences that can obscure a candidate’s real international career orientation. Let’s consider both groups—and where you can find those with an international career orientation.

A reliable gauge for international career orientations accounts for motivation and self-initiation of activities.

Finding Culturally Agile New Hires

In the summer of 2010, Goldman Sachs hired thirty-one newly minted graduates from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. This is not surprising; Wharton is one of the world’s leading business schools, ranked number one for finance. What might be surprising, however, is that Goldman Sachs hired the same number of graduates from Brigham Young University (BYU), which has a far lower (albeit respectable) ranking of thirty-second.4 Some have attributed the hiring of these BYU students, many of whom are of the Mormon religion, to preferential treatment whereby senior Mormons hire fellow junior Mormons (the so-called Mormon Mafia). Although that “similar-to-me” bias might be present to a limited degree, this young talent from BYU brings more to the party than Wharton graduates in terms of their cross-cultural competencies and foreign language skills. They have had a significant developmental experience: every male Mormon is required to interrupt his college career (or whatever else he is doing in life) to spend two years in missionary service in another country, after having spent time learning the language and the culture of his assignment.

Jon Huntsman, the former U.S. ambassador to both China (2009–2011) and Singapore (1992–1993), learned how to speak Mandarin Chinese and Taiwanese Hokkien during his Mormon missionary service in Taiwan from 1979 through 1981. Huntsman described his experience in Taiwan as “akin to experience in the Peace Corps, the foreign service or the military. You learn to live a regimented lifestyle, you learn a language fluently and you learn to deal with people at the street level.”5 The obligatory Mormon mission is a profound developmental cross-cultural experience, and a reason why leading global firms such as Goldman Sachs, Google, Apple, Chevron, IBM, Intel, and many others have targeted some of their recruitment efforts at BYU.

International University Programs

Despite its merits, BYU is certainly not the only place to find talented new hires with deep cross-cultural experiences and the propensity to gain cultural agility. Roughly 1 percent of all European college graduates participate in the European Community Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students (ERASMUS), a program designed to encourage international mobility among (mostly European) university students. ERASMUS is a large and coordinated effort that allows students with the strongest international career orientations to actively pursue an opportunity to study abroad by lifting some of the financial burden of the experience through subsidies. Since its inception, over 2.2 million college students have taken part in exchange programs where they live and study in a different country. Once in their professional roles, these same ERASMUS students are 15 percent more likely to work in a foreign country after graduation,6 seek employers who will offer international opportunities,7 and pursue international assignments.8 Considering that the ERASMUS program comprises roughly four thousand universities in thirty-three countries, it is relatively easy to find new graduates who have participated. For an example of a practice to attract this talent, see “Build Your Employer Brand Among Culturally Agile Young Talent by Hosting Networking Parties” on the next page.

Beyond ERASMUS, there are thousands of other study abroad programs available from almost every university around the world. However, I offer a word of caution on using the study abroad experience as a gauge. You cannot assume that merely engaging in a foreign educational experience as an international or study abroad student is evidence of a new graduate’s international career orientation. You will need to consider the nature of the program as an index of the type of experience the student has sought out (see also “The Money Trap” on page 78). Not all study abroad programs are equal in terms of their cultural immersion. In fact, it is not unusual for international students to seek culture-free opportunities, either by living and associating with fellow year-abroad students from their home country or by choosing a study abroad location where they can be embedded within a large compatriot immigrant community. For example, parts of New Jersey in the United States have some of the largest concentrations of Indians outside of India. Indian international students who opt to live in those communities could, effectively, have little contact with Americans. (This is akin to the professional expatriate communities in many of the world’s major cities, which can also be culture-free zones that serve to buffer any real cross-cultural experience.) I advise you to focus your recruitment efforts on international and study abroad students from university programs where the language of instruction is the host national language, where the students live with host national families or other international students, and where the geographical location does not afford access to a large compatriot community. Students who have selected these highly developmental programs for themselves have actively sought out and completed a cultural immersion experience.

Around the world, we have seen a steady increase in students interested in study abroad programs. Some universities have even changed the design of their programs to encourage more students to study abroad. For example, universities are encouraging students with more technically demanding majors with few available electives, such as engineering and pre-med, to study abroad during their freshman year when they are still taking their general education courses. Other universities are crafting their programs to have richer cultural experiences. U.S. News & World Report named the top study abroad programs in the United States based on their academic rigor and their offering of “considerable interaction between the student and the culture.”9 The students who have successfully completed these high-interaction study abroad programs are more likely to have greater cultural agility compared to those students with study abroad experience that limited their interactions with host-country nationals (for example, classes with compatriots, compatriot dormitories).

International Volunteerism Opportunities

Young professionals with international career orientations often engage in international volunteer opportunities as a way to have significant global experiences while concurrently lending their technical abilities to the communities they serve. Thousands of college-educated volunteers return each year, highly motivated to pursue professional careers where they can leverage their newly developed cross-cultural competencies and cultural agility. These returning volunteers are well educated, well trained, multilingual, and highly vetted, making them desirable (and prescreened) candidates for your organization. Although some former volunteers want to continue their work in international aid organizations and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), many others seek professional careers in private sector organizations—and almost all welcome opportunities to continue enhancing their cross-cultural competencies and foreign language skills.

The largest numbers of volunteers deployed for international service are organized through governments, such as the Peace Corps in the United States and the European Voluntary Service in the European Union. Combined, the Peace Corps and the European Voluntary Service have over ten thousand returning volunteers each year.10 At the same time, a multitude of volunteers for NGOs also complete their assignments, adding many more to the pool of desirable potential candidates.

You can source these candidates directly through sponsored career fairs, networking events, and Web sites for returning volunteers. For example, the Peace Corps organizes annual career conferences for their thousands of returning volunteers. To date, almost all of the dozens of organizations recruiting at these Peace Corps conferences have been government and aid organizations. With the exception of Disney and Deloitte, private sector employers have missed this opportunity to search for culturally agile talent.

Cross-Cultural Majors, Activities, and Clubs

Christina Biedny is a newly minted MBA in finance with a strong international career orientation. It first became evident when, as a teenager, she was drawn to books and movies set in foreign locations, allowing her to dream of cross-cultural experiences. She jokes that her earliest international trigger was watching the movie When in Rome with her younger sister. In the movie, two young girls (played by the twins Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen) travel to Rome in order to participate in a Model United Nations competition. Inspired by the movie, Christina started a Model United Nations club at her high school and studied French avidly through both high school and college. She also studied Arabic in college and tutored others in French as one of her part-time jobs. As an undergraduate, Christina majored in political science and focused several of her electives on Middle Eastern politics, eventually completing an honors thesis on the Moroccan monarchy.

Christina’s international interests also carried over into business school. Under the advisement of an International Business professor, she completed a master’s thesis examining the impact of stock market openness in emerging markets. Christina’s decisions demonstrate the classic motivation pattern of a new graduate with an international career orientation. Even with a graduate degree in finance, her résumé was filled with self-initiated participation in internationally oriented clubs, organizations, and coursework. Prior to graduation, Christina applied for a position teaching English in Korea. Instead of going to Korea, however, she ended up accepting an excellent offer of a finance position with a top accounting firm. Although the position was located in the United States, one of Christina’s first conversations with her supervisor upon accepting the job was about the international opportunities that might exist for her within the firm.

Looking at your candidate pool, consider students with international career orientations, like Christina, who are drawn to internationally oriented fields of study and elective coursework in such areas as international business, affairs, law, development, and politics. New graduates who have combined these or any foreign language concentration with their more technically oriented majors (for example, engineering, accounting) should be considered seriously. Language majors should also be considered closely. In some job families, it will be easier for language majors or internationally oriented social science majors to gain technical skills than it will be for technically competent graduates with no interest in cross-cultural experiences to gain cultural agility. Even if they need some technical training at the onset, internationally oriented students are likely to be valuable in the long run.

Other places to actively target recruitment efforts are university clubs and organizations designed for students with cross-cultural interests, such as language clubs, Model United Nations, foreign affairs clubs, international business clubs, and the like. Connecting with members of these clubs, organizations, and associations is easier now than ever before given that most of them have an online presence on Facebook, Linked-In, and other networking sites.

Finding Culturally Agile Midcareer Professionals

When the Peace Corps celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 2010, I had the privilege of attending a reception at Rutgers University in honor of the first Peace Corps volunteers. Now in their seventies, these men (they were all men) had been in their twenties when they answered President Kennedy’s call for young people to serve their country to perpetuate peace through living and working in developing nations. Nicknamed “Colombia 1” for their service destination, the men trained for three months at Rutgers University in the summer of 1961. Thirty-five of the original sixty-two volunteers returned to the place where their life-altering journey started.

At the reception, Kevin Quigley, president of the National Peace Corps Association, described three certainties: “death, taxes, and the fact that the Peace Corps will change your life for the better.” The honored guests, those original volunteers, now retired, roared in applause when he spoke those words. It was as though Kevin had shared their treasured secret, a secret they had waited fifty years to pass on. The profound experiences they had in the Peace Corps triggered an international career orientation, launching many successful global careers in business, academe, government, and the military. Periodically breaking into Spanish just for the fun of it, these former American volunteers regaled each other with one story after another recounting fifty years of international assignments, global roles, and travels. Listening, I marveled at their cultural agility.

These original Peace Corps volunteers stood out fifty years ago when relatively few people lived and worked outside their home countries. They self-initiated a profound global experience that, predictably, opened subsequent career doors that may have remained closed to others lacking the cross-cultural competencies they had gained while in Colombia. In past decades, internationally oriented careers were a rarity; even top-level executives lived and worked in their home country with only occasional foreign travel. Those with the interest and aptitude for cross-cultural positions stood out because, typically, they were the only ones with a track record of living and working internationally. Today, with a greater amount of international travel and the ease of technology in connecting people, identifying midcareer professionals with international career orientations is more difficult. There are more false positives when it comes to predicting those who are or will become culturally agile based on having an international experience.

William Hamilton/The New Yorker Collection/www.cartoonbank.com

In searching for midcareer professionals with international career orientations, consider the pattern of their successive self-initiated career moves, language acquisition, personal development activities, and the like. Professionals who have a strong international career motivation will satisfy their cross-cultural desires through multicultural clubs and associations even when their current roles don’t require the use of their cross-cultural competencies. See “Sourcing Culturally Agile Professionals: InterNations” for an example of one of these associations.

Try this exercise: How would you identify adults who are talented and motivated musicians, but are not currently playing professionally? You might look at their previous experiences in music and then consider the types of activities they currently participate in, such as singing in community choral groups, playing in garage bands, taking classes to further their musical talent, attending concerts, and the like. They would be likely to practice their instrument in their spare time, just for fun. The same would hold for midcareer professionals who are motivated to build their cross-cultural competencies. They will independently practice their craft, volunteering their time to engage in cross-cultural activities, learning another language, taking an active interest in the world, and spending free time in multicultural experiences, such as off-the-beaten-path vacations in different countries.

I cannot emphasize enough that merely having a professional experience in another country is not the same as possessing cultural agility (any more than parents’ forcing piano lessons for five years would give a child a love for music). At all stages, be certain you are recruiting those who are demonstrating their motivation through self-initiated international and cross-cultural experiences. Your goal in attraction and recruitment should be to meet them where they live—literally or virtually—and showcase to them the international and cross-cultural opportunities available in your organization. The goal is to create buzz for your organization among those with an international career orientation. See the box for an at-a-glance summary of ways to find culturally agile talent.

To build a pipeline of globally talented professionals, your organization will need to find the right talent and craft your employee value proposition such that these individuals will apply for the jobs and accept the offers if they are extended. Finding culturally agile professionals is only half the challenge. There is not much sense in developing recruitment methods to source culturally agile talent if your offers are not accepted. Once you have found these desirable candidates, you will need to deliver a recruitment message highlighting the cross-culturally oriented benefits, offerings, and developmental opportunities your organization offers that they will find attractive. In doing so, your organization will become an employer of choice for those with an international career orientation. In the next section, I’ll discuss a variety of methods to become an attractive employer for culturally agile talent.

Deliver a recruitment message highlighting the cross-culturally oriented benefits, offerings, and developmental opportunities your organization offers.

ATTRACTING CULTURALLY AGILE PROFESSIONALS

In every industry, an organization’s ability to successfully recruit the best people for key roles is widely recognized as a source of competitive advantage. The challenge is that the most desired candidates—those individuals your organization most needs in order for it to win the future—will often have plenty of employment options. Why should skilled culturally agile talent select your organization? Leading organizations have effectively developed methods to improve their employer brand and increase their attractiveness as employers. You can apply these same practices to attract culturally agile talent to your organization.

Before we discuss ways for your organization to become an attractive employer, however, it is important to realize that the attraction initiative needs to be part of a targeted and strategic approach geared to maximizing your organization’s long-term success. Whatever your organization’s key talent needs are—scientists, engineers, culturally agile professionals—becoming an attractive employer for key categories is a strategic talent management practice and not a blunt instrument. A scattershot approach to becoming an employer of choice will only result in a larger workload for hiring managers and recruiters, who will then need to sift through an increasing number of subpar applications. Enhancing your employer image generally will only create more work for recruiters, whereas targeting your efforts to burnish your organization’s image among the talent you most wish to choose is a valuable talent management strategy. Tailor your recruitment practices with precision to find and attract the talent your organization needs most—in this case, culturally agile professionals.

A scattershot approach to becoming an employer of choice will only result in a larger workload for hiring managers and recruiters.

Global Image and Attracting Culturally Agile Talent

The attractiveness of your organization’s employer brand for culturally agile talent begins with a factor that is likely to be beyond your control—your organization’s global image. Organizations with a global consumer brand, cosmopolitan image, or worldwide organizational presence are naturally more attractive employers for culturally agile talent. These organizations are all around us. You know them when you see them—they’re the ones whose brands transcend national boundaries in the eyes of their clients, customers, and future employees. These companies, such as Apple, Mercedes-Benz, and McKinsey & Company, are respected worldwide, and their products and services are relevant across cultures. If you work for an organization with a strong and positive global image, it will be easier to recruit culturally agile talent. If you work for an organization with a weaker global image, you will need to be more strategic (and perhaps a bit creative) to implement recruitment practices to attract culturally agile talent.

In speaking about the relationship between consumer brands and employer brands, Danny Kalman, global talent director at Panasonic, notes, “My overriding impression has always been that most employees feel a real sense of pride in being associated with a strong brand, and want to work for one.”11 Candidates are also attracted to organizations that align their consumer brand with their values and self-image. For example, individuals with a cool, fun, and hip self-image are attracted to working for organizations like Facebook, Diesel, Zappos, and MTV because of their cool, fun, and hip consumer brands. Organizations like Siemens, 3M, Intel, and Apple, with innovative, cutting-edge, high-tech consumer brands, tend to attract individuals who want to work with cutting-edge technologies. It is easier for firms with a strong consumer brand to recruit talent, especially among the individuals with values that align with the consumer brand.

The same holds true for those with cultural agility. Culturally agile individuals with an international career orientation will be most attracted to companies known for their global product brands (for example, Coca-Cola, Disney, Starbucks), cosmopolitan image (Gucci, BMW, Cartier), or global organizational presence (Nestlé, Google, Procter & Gamble). These organizations have a global reach that translates to perceptions of their employer brand.

You can see this phenomenon yourself by reading the following lists of “top 10” companies. You will find the complete lists (100 Most Recognizable Global Brands, 100 Most Reputable Organizations, 50 Most Attractive Employers for Those in Business, and 50 Most Attractive Employers for Those in Engineering) in the Appendix.

Read the full lists in the Appendix. Do you see the pattern? Roughly half of the companies that appear on the first two lists, those with the best reputations and the most recognizable brands, are also considered attractive employers by job candidates globally. An organization’s positive reputation and recognizable consumer brand translate into its becoming a more attractive global employer. These organizations have an easier time attracting candidates with an international orientation compared to lesser-known organizations.

Looking at the Universum lists of most attractive employers for both engineers and business professionals, you may have made another observation: almost all of the top ten in each category are headquartered in the United States. This can be explained, in part, by their transnational reach, with subsidiaries and employees all around the world. But there is also another possibility. Reflecting on the high number of U.S. companies appearing on the 2010 list of most attractive employers, the CEO of Universum noted that “American corporations are increasingly the preferred destination for global top talent. They are often perceived as the true international organisations, where nationality will not stand in your way to the top.”12

The equal opportunity laws, practices, and values that are prevalent in the United States are being perceptually extended to help form the impressions of U.S. organizations as global employers. As the beneficiaries of this positive association, U.S. organizations are being credited with certain values: that they will recognize employees’ merit as the basis for promotion (irrespective of nationality) and that they will embrace the diversity of cultures in the workforce. This perception gives U.S. firms an advantage in attracting culturally agile talent globally. However, there are other countries (notably Canada, Australia, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland) that share these egalitarian values and, therefore, should—with some coordinated communication—share this perceptual advantage when recruiting globally oriented candidates. And, in fact, the Global Talent Index Report lists these same seven countries among the top ten with the best capacity to produce and attract talent; the others are Singapore, Switzerland, and Hong Kong.13 To assess your own organization’s attractiveness as a global employer, take the Your Organization’s Global Image quiz (see box).

At this point you may be thinking, “This is very interesting, but what if my company is not located in one of these top ten countries?” The good news is that organizations headquartered in any country can control and leverage the values that are most attractive to internationally oriented candidates. If providing equal opportunity (irrespective of nationality) is a true value of your organization, then this value should be conveyed clearly in your organization’s recruitment materials. You can craft your recruitment messages to communicate that the organization embraces diversity of national cultures. With this suggestion on necessary recruitment messages, we turn to the next section, which describes practices you can implement to become an attractive organization for culturally agile talent.

Recruitment Messages to Attract Culturally Agile Talent

As an organization, Nestlé traditionally tops the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) list of the most transnational companies in the world.14 With roughly 280,000 employees and 443 factories in eight-one countries, Nestlé deserves its position at the top of this list of global corporate giants.15 To compete effectively in almost every country in the world, Nestlé relies on culturally agile professionals in key positions—individuals who can, for example, adapt food and beverage products to local preferences while maintaining Nestlé’s standards for operational excellence, product innovation, and ethics.

The message to any job candidate who would like a professional career with Nestlé is unambiguous: to be successful at Nestlé, your career will be global, and you will need to be successful across cultures. These messages start at the top. The last time I visited the home page of the Nestlé careers Web site, the page focused on the Nestlé CEO, Paul Bulcke.16 Roughly half of that home page contained Bulcke’s picture and brief biography listing the many countries where he has worked, including the United States, Germany, Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, Portugal, Peru, Ecuador, Chile, Switzerland, Spain, and Belgium. The other half was a message from Bulcke to anyone interested enough in working for Nestlé to land on this careers page. His message reinforces the global nature of having a career at Nestlé and is designed to attract culturally agile talent (and, in so doing, to deter those with a more local lens). His short message includes the following:

Nestlé is the world’s foremost Nutrition, Health and Wellness Company, committed to serving consumers all over the world . . . We have operations in almost every country in the world, and strive to help our employees to achieve their full potential wherever they are. At Nestlé our commitment to your development can lead to an exciting career that takes you all over the world, as it did for me . . . If you’re excited by the prospect of outstanding career opportunities in a global company with ambitious goals, in a truly international culture, Nestlé provides just that.

What message do your organization’s careers Web site and other recruitment materials convey to those candidates with (and without) an international career orientation? Is the message being clearly communicated to attract the culturally agile professionals you desire and need? Your careers home page is important because this is the first impression many will have as the result of actively seeking information about your organization. Step back from your organization’s recruitment materials and media for a moment and put yourself in the place of a brand-new candidate. What would a newcomer who knew little about your organization’s reputation glean in regard to what the organization values in its employees? Do “cross-cultural competence” and “international experience” spring to mind? If these values are not conveyed clearly, consider adapting the implicit and explicit messages in your recruitment materials.

Does your careers home page force a candidate to immediately “select a country” before being able to navigate further on the site? Dividing position searches by geography makes a certain amount of sense, given practical mobility issues and limits related to visas and immigration. In practical terms, not every job globally is open to every person at every point in his or her career. However, forcing job candidates to immediately select a country sends the message that the organization limits its associates to careers in their home country, which is not the message you want to be sending to those with an international career orientation. Make the “select a country” feature part of the application process or a second level of navigation. Be sure to keep the cross-cultural aspect of careers prominently featured on the careers home page.

Does your careers Web site contain testimonials of your associates? If it doesn’t, it should. When candidates perceive that their future colleagues are similar to them on important dimensions related to their self-image, they become more attracted to working for that employer.17 If your associates are perceived as worldly, cosmopolitan, globally aware, and valuing of diversity, then your organization will be more apt to attract culturally agile talent. If individual associates are profiled in your recruitment materials, is it clear that international experience is valued? Examine the global diversity of associates profiled on your careers home page, throughout your careers Web site, and in your other recruitment materials. Do most of these profiles reflect careers limited to the country of your organization’s headquarters? Profiling only those from one country sends the wrong message about the value your organization places on the careers of associates from different countries. Choose the associates represented to reflect the global diversity in your organization. Likewise, focus on their successful global careers and multicultural projects.

The careers Web site is important, but it is not the only opportunity to focus your organization’s image to attract and recruit culturally agile talent. Let’s consider some other recommendations.

Recruiters

Reflect on the first level of face-to-face recruitment in your organization. Are these recruiting professionals able to credibly discuss international career opportunities? Have they themselves worked on multicultural teams or internationally? Do they fully understand the cross-cultural opportunities available within the company? Make certain that your organization’s recruiters and search firms can accurately present the variety of cross-cultural opportunities available within the firm. Ideally, they should be able to describe associates’ careers specifically, even using their own careers as examples if they can be viewed as typical for the candidate’s future career within the organization.

Social Media

What is the social media buzz about your organization’s global image? Monitor your image within social media—what are individual employees saying about your organization as an employer?18 Testimonials from employees are very persuasive, especially when they appear on open Web sites that rate employers, such as Glassdoor, or are more informally discovered on Facebook, Twitter, and the like.

Job Postings

Examine how your job postings are written. Do they convey excitement for the global challenges your associates are able to address? Here are two examples of job postings for a senior finance manager position. The first is from Apple and the second is from HP, two organizations appearing on lists of most attractive global employers.19

Apple: There’s the typical job. Punch in, push paper, punch out, repeat. Then there’s a career at Apple—where you’re encouraged to defy routine, to explore the far reaches of the possible, to travel uncharted paths, and to be part of something bigger than yourself. Because around here, changing the world just comes with the job description.

HP: From your very first day at HP, you’ll notice it—we do things differently around here. You’ll be challenged to lead from day one, and rewarded when you do. Because we’re in over 170 countries around the world, your work will have a real impact in the lives of people everywhere. So bring your passion to HP; together there’s no telling what we can achieve.

These job postings help candidates visualize a broader career—one that will allow them to expand their mental and physical boundaries. Those who embrace the hope of a globally oriented career with worldwide challenges would find these job postings compelling.

Thus far in this chapter, we have discussed ways to find and attract culturally agile talent. But finding and attracting are only the beginning; you need to be certain that when you extend a job offer, it will be accepted. If desirable candidates turn down your offers, then your targeted recruitment practices become nothing more than an academic exercise. In the next section, I discuss ways to create a compelling value proposition to maximize the likelihood that your offers will be accepted.

CREATING THE EMPLOYEE VALUE PROPOSITION FOR CULTURALLY AGILE PROFESSIONALS

When I was on the academic job market in the early 1990s, I was considering two competing offers. The first university offered 20 percent higher pay, greater prestige, and a highly desirable location. The second university offered like-minded (and fun) colleagues and an opportunity to teach in Singapore each year. To the surprise of many, I accepted the latter university’s offer.

The department chair and the search committee of the second university were savvy enough to surmise my career values from my dissertation research (on international careers) and from the fact that I was in India at the time when I was called for an interview. They correctly assumed that I would be most attracted to the international teaching opportunities available in their department. The other university might have had similar international opportunities (as was typical of many business schools starting in the 1990s); if it did, however, the recruiters didn’t think to tell me about or “sell me” on them. The value proposition my chosen employer offered—great colleagues and international opportunities—aligned closely with my values and my international career orientation.

Creating an employee value proposition for employees means that your organization’s jobs have attributes and benefits that, ideally, align with the attributes and benefits your top recruits most desire from their future jobs. In the case of culturally agile professionals, this employee value proposition would include the opportunity to work with people from different cultures, to travel internationally, to work on global projects, or to grow one’s career on a global level.

Jyoti Yagnik, a culturally agile professional from India, worked in the banking, hospitality, and education fields after completing her MBA from the University of Pune in India. Although she enjoyed the professional roles she held in India, she wanted to change her career in two important ways: first, she wanted to work in human resources; second, she wanted to have a truly global career. To achieve these two goals, Jyoti decided to return to school and pursue a master’s of human resource management (MHRM) degree at a university in the United States. She applied to the top five U.S. MHRM programs and was accepted into each. Ultimately, Jyoti chose Rutgers University in New Jersey, even turning down a scholarship at another top university. She selected Rutgers because of the program’s leading record in strategic and international HR management and an opportunity to serve in internships with top global organizations. The Rutgers program satisfied her student value proposition, if you will.

Jyoti’s decision proved an excellent one. As she neared graduation, she was extended job offers from several leading global organizations. Among the many top companies recruiting her, she was most attracted to IBM, as she had previously interned at the IBM corporate headquarters in Armonk, New York. Recalling her internship experience, Jyoti said how exciting it was “to interact with some of the world’s most intelligent people from different cultures, with different languages, professions and perspectives, all working for one globally integrated enterprise called IBM.” IBM’s world-class talent, global business strategy, rapid foreign market growth, and international opportunities were all a magnetic pull, aligning with the core of her career values.

Upon graduation, she joined IBM’s world-renowned and highly prestigious Human Resource Leadership Development Program. For Jyoti, this opportunity at IBM meant she would be able to build her international career, work in different roles in different countries, and work for a company that had strongly held values that had been defined by IBMers themselves. She was attracted to being a part of IBM for its core shared global values that shape the way all IBMers decide, act, and lead. Jyoti said she felt empowered when she joined IBM, a company “where employees are inspired to create innovative solutions to bring about world-changing progress, with dedication, trust, and personal responsibility. I wanted to be a part of it.” Jyoti is currently on a rotational assignment, in a leadership role in IBM’s HR Center of Excellence in Malaysia.

Jim Kupczyk, an American culturally agile professional, was also looking for an international dimension in his employee value proposition, but in his case it was to work with colleagues from different cultures rather than relocate to different countries. Jim is a senior international supply chain analyst for Rich Products, headquartered out of Buffalo, New York. Originally from Buffalo, Jim wanted a career in which relocation would not be necessary. Part of Jim’s employee value proposition was to remain in Buffalo in order to stay close to his family; but, at the same time, his interest in culture made opportunities to work with colleagues from different cultures also highly desirable.

Jim chose Rich Products, a privately held $3 billion organization (specializing in nondairy food products) for its global reach and the opportunity to work with international suppliers and develop deep professional relationships with colleagues from around the world. Jim shares that “this role has reignited my passion for international affairs and how the world is interconnected. Something happening within any country’s political system can affect sales . . . Volcanoes or earthquakes in another country affect my decisions on a daily basis—just as much as currency fluctuations or commodity prices. My world is much bigger and far more exciting in this role.” For Jim, the international business challenges are an enjoyable aspect of his career.

At the same time, he also appreciates the many opportunities to form relationships with colleagues, customers, and supply chain partners when they visit Buffalo for conferences or meetings. True to Jim’s ever-increasing cultural agility, he notes, “I enjoy finding the common ground I have with my colleagues from around the world. Equally, I am fascinated to learn about different cultures—their tastes, preferences, values, worldviews, priorities, family values, and just about any other topic they want to discuss.” He credits Rich Products with giving him the opportunity to develop a deeper connection with his colleagues around the world and is happy that he “now has friends on almost every continent.”

I share Jim’s and Jyoti’s stories, along with my own, because they illustrate different ways in which organizations can satisfy the employee value proposition from the perspective of cultural agility. Creating a winning employee value proposition is about aligning your organization’s offerings with the values of those you are trying to recruit. In Jyoti’s case, it was an opportunity to be on a global rotational program. In Jim’s case, it was to work with international colleagues on international projects. In my case, it was about opportunities to teach internationally. In many organizations, the opportunities and benefits already exist; they just require some repackaging to showcase how they align with what your job candidates are looking for in an employer.

Creating a winning employee value proposition is about aligning your organization’s offerings with the values of those you are trying to recruit.

Following is a list of offerings that might already exist within your organization and would be attractive to culturally agile professionals. When targeting these candidates, consider highlighting the following company offerings during networking meetings, in recruitment materials, on social media, and on your organization’s careers Web site.

• Your organization’s global reach, scope, and orientation for growth in the future
• Career paths that generally include opportunities for international assignments
• International volunteerism opportunities, such as corporate service-learning programs and supported international volunteerism programs
• Language and cross-cultural training offered through the company
• Career paths that include working on teams with diverse colleagues from different subsidiaries around the world
• Global leadership development programs that include an international rotation
• Total rewards that take international careers into account (for example, retirement solutions for employees on international assignments)

This chapter described an important first step for building a pipeline of culturally agile professionals: you will need not only to find but also to attract and recruit those with an international career orientation. You want to implement the practices to acquire the talent among those who have (or have the capacity to gain) cross-cultural competencies, those who have had (or are interested in engaging in) developmental cross-cultural experiences, and those who speak (or are enthusiastic to learn to speak) another language.

TAKE ACTION

Based on the information presented in Chapter Four, the following is a list of specific actions you can take to begin implementing strategies to attract and recruit candidates with the attributes needed to build your pipeline of culturally agile professionals:

• (Re)train recruiters. The ideas in this chapter can be integrated into a training session for recruiters who will be critical in finding and recruiting culturally agile talent.
• Select recruiters for cultural agility. Identify recruiters who will be particularly effective in attracting culturally agile talent because they themselves are culturally agile.
• Revise your careers Web site and other recruitment materials. Select some of the most culturally agile employees in your organization and ask them how they would improve these materials to be more attractive to those who are internationally oriented. Use their feedback as a basis on which to brainstorm possible changes. Implement the best ideas.
• Create a winning employee value proposition. Start by brainstorming the features of your organization and key positions that would be particularly attractive to culturally agile professionals (for example, its global reach, rapid global growth, cross-cultural training offered, international volunteerism opportunities, international assignments, global projects, globally oriented career advancement opportunities). Now refer to the suggestions in this chapter and decide how best to embed these features into your recruitment messages.
• Evaluate recruitment methods. Try a few of the methods for sourcing culturally agile talent suggested in this chapter. Collect yield ratio data (in other words, data on how many applied, how many were selected, how many agreed to join) for each of the talent sourcing methods used. For those who join the organization, also collect performance data and cross-cultural competencies. Over time, you will be able to develop a “source of choice” for recruiting the highest-performing, most culturally agile talent.

Notes

1. Vesa Suutari and Milla Taka, “Career Anchors of Managers with Global Careers,” Journal of Management Development 23, no. 9 (2004): 833–847.

2. Edgar H. Schein, Career Anchors: Discovering Your Real Values (San Francisco: Pfeiffer, 1996).

3. Vesa Suutari, “Global Managers: Career Orientation, Career Tracks, Life-Style Implications and Career Commitment,” Journal of Managerial Psychology 18, no. 3 (2003): 185–207; Suutari and Taka, “Career Anchors.”

4. Erin Burnett and Michelle Lodge, “Mormons Wield Influence in Business,” CNBC, June 23, 2010, http://www.cnbc.com/id/37872991/Mormons_Wield_Influence_in_Business; U.S. News & World Report, “Best Business Schools,” 2011, http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-business-schools/mba-rankings.

5. Burnett and Lodge, “Mormons Wield Influence in Business.”

6. Mattias Parey and Fabian Waldinger, “Studying Abroad and the Effect on International Labor Market Mobility: Evidence from the Introduction of ERASMUS,” Economic Journal 121, no. 551 (March 2011): 194–222.

7. Christof Van Mol, “The Influence of European Student Mobility on Migration Aspirations” (paper presented at the British Educational Research Association conference, Warwick, England, 2010).

8. Christof Van Mol, “The Influence of Student Mobility on Future Migration Aspirations. Empirical Evidence from Europe and Recommendations to Study the Impact of International Exchange Programmes,” Canadian Diversity 8, no. 5 (2011): 105–108.

9. U.S. News & World Report, “Study Abroad,” Spring 2011, http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/study-abroad-programs.

10. Education and Culture DG, “Youth in Action Programme, Overview of Activities 2007–2010,” http://ec.europa.eu/youth/glance/doc/youth_in_action_figures/overview_2007_2010.pdf.

11. The Economist Intelligence Unit, The Global Talent Index Report: The Outlook to 2015 (Chicago: Heidrick & Struggles, 2011).

12. Universum, “Big 4 Challenge Google’s Position as the World’s Most Attractive Employer,” press release, September 28, 2010, 2.

13. The Economist Intelligence Unit, Global Talent Index Report.

14. United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, The Universe of the Largest Transnational Corporations (New York: United Nations, 2007), http://www.unctad.org/en/docs/iteiia20072_en.pdf.

15. Nestlé, “About Us: Quick Facts,” 2010, http://www.nestle.com/Common/NestleDocuments/Documents/Library/Documents/About_Us/Quick-Facts-2010-EN.pdf.

16. Nestlé, “Careers,” http://www.careers.nestle.com/meet/Welcome.htm.

17. Shelba Devendorf and Scott Highhouse, “Applicant-Employee Similarity and Attraction to an Employer,” Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology 81, no. 4 (2008): 607–617.

18. Greet Van Hoye and Filip Lieven, “Investigating Web-Based Recruitment Sources: Employee Testimonials vs Word-of-Mouse,” International Journal of Selection and Assessment 15, no. 4 (December 2007): 372–383, http://users.ugent.be/~flievens/mouse.pdf.

19. Maryann Stump, “How Do Strong Brands Affect Talent Recruitment? Top Brands Attract Top Candidates,” Interbrand, 2010, http://issuu.com/interbrand/docs/interbrand_strong_brands_and_recruitment?viewMode=presentation&mode=embed.