Challenges in Internationalizing Staff Selection and Assessment - Literature review Example

The main social and technical challenges in firms wishing to internationalize their staff selection and assessment approach, strategies to challenges and why these strategies are effective. Student Name Course Code and Name Professor University State Date Due THE MAIN SOCIAL AND TECHNICAL CHALLENGES IN FIRMS WISHING TO INTERNATIONALIZE THEIR STAFF SELECTION AND ASSESSMENT APPROACH, STRATEGIES TO CHALLENGES AND WHY THESE STRATEGIES ARE EFFECTIVE. Social and technical challenges According to Iles (2012, p.271-275), the human resource department of any organization usually has multiple responsibilities, selection of staff being one of the responsibilities, therefore it is unlikely for them to go through the lengthy research reports regardless of their benefits. Hiring companies will conduct a rigorous interview in order to get the best talents. Resources such as good remunerations and advertisements are some of the best strategies used in order to attract the most favorite candidate. This is as a result of organisations wishing to internationalize their staff selection and assessment and thus they understand that the human resources is the greatest or most important resources to them. There are various methods used to assess and select staff in their organization that seek to internationalise. However, when firms fail to consider the right approaches, conducting ineffective staff selection and assessment can result in disruption, under productivity and difficulties in personnel management and many more. While selecting staffs after getting a number of applicants, the best candidate is sourced through interviewing and test conduction. This paper therefore seeks to highlight the social and technical challenges that organization face while internationalizing their staff, the best strategies that can be used to help solve this problem and how effective they will be if adopted. In deed internationalization of employees is a challenging task to most multinationals due to the various challenges hey encounter. Diversity challenge There are various challenges associated with staff selection and assessment for firms willing to internationalize their selection and assessment procedures. Diversity management is one of the challenges while selecting staff. International environments comprise people who differ in various ways from colour, gender and ethnicity (Appelbaum. and Fewster 2012, p.66-80). The major issues on diversity are based on gender inequality being the most predominant issue in the workplace, example the hiring of male instead of incorporating female in the workforce has immensely affected most international firms, this gender based discrimination makes the organisation not to meet international standards of Staff selection and assessment, pay inequalities are also rampant in most of the companies the Human resource managers normally under pays some of their staffs depending on who they are, ethnicity is also a major problem in diversity where the human resource managers only hire based on race or specific groups of people and others are left out, diversity challenges are also related to the remuneration that employees are given and the kind of appraisals that can be conducted in order to promote an employees in the order of merit (Killion 2010, p. 47-51). Therefore, diversity brings about difficulties in selection, as organizations often hire unqualified candidates. This challenge is propagated further by organizations ignoring the assessment approach and performance test that are essential in providing direct evidence of the applicant’s ability and skill to work on the job. Ambiguity is a frequent occurrence that influences assessment thus the diversity challenge may lead to miscommunication and poor organization performance on a global scale (Mendenhall, Dunbar and Oddou 2013, p.331-345). Social media challenge Social media has become a modern tool in the corporate world. Its help in staff selection and assessment in firms that are trying to internationalize this process cannot be underestimated (Lievens et al, 2012 p.580-601). However, it possess challenges to the human resource managers and organizations in general while conducting their duties on staffing and assessment which are not limited to, the social media tool often reduces the standardization of staff selection since not all the ethnic group can access social media in order to post their profiles for aspiring companies hence leading to poor assessment and selection by organization more so when recruiting in third world countries (Appelbaum and Fewster 2012, p.66-80). The validity of the information provided through social media cannot be supported by any empirical evidence hence maybe misleading to the human resource manager and end up with the wrong people in the work place, the legality of the system is also unknown since not all job sites can allow posting of information in them, some are privately owned hence using this system brings challenges to the IHRM mangers and organizations that seek to engage expatriates on international duties. Cross cultural challenge According to Black and Mendenhall,( 2015 p.511-539),cross cultural challenges normally occurs during recruitments for international assignments, they range from the way of doing things, reactions during interviews and language of the candidate, these mostly may mislead the recruiter in his or her assessment and selection and it may lead to someone of different culture failing to select someone who can be equality important and with good performance only because of their cultural differences or due to stereotyping among cultures. It is of great importance for every recruiter to focus on what is essentialy required rather than putting more focus on the individual’s culture. In the global world, considering the diversity in people majority of the egocentric human resource managers may consider their culture to be superior and as such this brings about hindrance in recruiting the best personnel into their organization to help carry out their international duties, hence the increased pressure of MNCs to localize their staff instead of importing talents (Iles 2012, p.271-275). Cross-cultural challenges also may make the staff conducting selection to look down on the interviewees as they cannot comprehend to work with them and consequently denying them opportunities to workforce the organization despite being qualified. Some recruiters also in their own thinking may cause them to have an internal judgment against the person being interviewed depending on his or her culture case in point most Africans and Muslims are discriminated hence this human resource managers often conduct wrong assessment and eventually leads to the selection of the wrong personnel for an organization’s international duties (Lievens et al. 2012, p.580-601). Strategies to challenges These challenges need to be addressed with speed in order for the firms to be in line with international standards of staff selection and assessment. Regarding the diversity management, the IHRM need to address equality among employees the Human resource managers have no options than hiring people from all genders. Equality to the top management that is increasing number of women, Empowerment strategies are also required for the ethnic minority groups thus, it will be the duty of employers to carryout effective assessment and selecting staffs from all groups equally, awareness training of employees is another strategy that need to be employed in order that when selection and assessment is conducted for international assignments equality will be accorded to all (Mendenhall, Dunbar and Oddou 2013, p.331-345). Periodic audit on the rightful remuneration and appraisal for staffs requires that the human resource managers do a thorough appraisal while selecting rightful employees, removal of pay inequality is also a critical strategy in diversity management that is all employees are paid equally depending on the department people are working in and in regards to the economic conditions of the country they are being sent to. The demand for workers with competencies and motivation is important while selecting staffs and assessing them they need to look at the benefits they will bring to the company while working at the international subsidiaries (Killion 2010 p.47-51) Social media challenge on the other hand needs to be addressed by the IHRM strategies by conducting an internal analysis and developing a well-documented information regarding the candidate who has posted in the social media. keeping candidates’ information legalized will help avert deceit since some of the candidates post incorrect information about themselves and hence after inviting them for job, the employer discovers that information given was false hence wasting time and surging an organization’s recruitment costs (Appelbaum and Fewster 2012, p.66-80). Moreover, conducting an assessment prediction can be another strategy for the IHRM in order to select the rightful employees also after conducting an online selection and assessment the recruiter needs to request the candidate to attend a face to face interview in order to verify the information provided online and the use of specialized sites where specific vacancies are posted can help the IHRM overcome these social media challenges by establishing a website where the applicants can send or post their application will lead to secured ways for the applicants to be sure that their confidential documents do not reach the unintended persons (Gilbert and Karahalios 2011, p.211-220). Considering the cross- cultural challenges on staff selection and assessment the human resource managers of firms interested in internationalizing staff selection and assessment need to establish strategies which will deter discrimination of candidates in terms of their cultural backgrounds and some of the strategies includes, the interviewers to perform a self-assessment on the culture of the candidate behavioral values rather than stereotyping (Iles 2012, p.271-275). This can be done before assessment and staff selection, on job training regarding cultural enlightening programs to increase the knowledge of recruiter and workers that they are all similar, appreciating the overriding differences in the culture of different people, also educating employers to hire people coming from different culture will be effective in staff assessment and selection having that the organization seeks to internationalise (Mendenhall et al, 2013 p.331-345) Also the use of an in- house diversification strategy will effectively help to deal with cross-cultural challenges. The international selection and assessment staff are bound to conduct interviews without any prejudice or stereotyping in their mindset so as to come up with the best team that can perform extemporarily (Black and Mendenhall 2015, p.511-539).. Effectiveness of these strategies The strategies outlined above will be essential for the firms that are willing to internationalize their employees in order to help them have a global outlook, these strategies will be essential in the following ways the growing and improving workforce mobility this can make the employees to work anywhere in the world by meeting of international standards. Diversity managements makes it possible to improve on the quality of decisions that are made by effective employee who are hired without any prejudice, the development of international or world market is possible with diversity in the staff selection and assessment as this brings about a unique way on how the world is viewed (Mendenhall, Dunbar and Oddou 2013, p.331-345). Through these strategies there will be good supply of competent workers in the international arena and organisations will be able to perform outstandingly in the global market. Further, with a diverse workforce companies will be able to attract customers from minority groups since they will be seeing that their people are working in the same organisation hence willing to purchase or do business with such companies. Human resource also needs to implement the above strategies in order to minimize the pressure in the market that is becoming globally competitive, these strategies also helps organizations to attain the expatriates that they require (Gilbert and Karahalios 2011, p.211-220). In order for these companies to meets international requirement on selection they have no option than to hire the best staffs. These strategies are also effective in that they help to balance the knowledge available in the human capital and have evenly distributed knowledge from all field and diversified cultures and this will eventually lead to the success of the business or the company (Killion 2010, p.47-51). Sourcing the right manpower is a rigorous activity but these strategies will help an organization have an international outlook and will be achieving the social corporate responsibility as required in the business environment of any nation. With the continuous rationalization of the staff selection and assessment it will also lead to evenly distribution of wealth in the economy as all communities will be well represented and no one group will be left behind that is, the trickling down effect (Black and Mendenhall 2015, p.511-539). In conclusion, staff selection and assessment is a critical determinant to the kind of staffs a company may have, these staffs normally determines the productivity and the future success of that company and its outlook in the international arena. Diversity, cross-cultural and social media presents some of the challenges involved while conducting staff selection and assessment, these challenges requires direct strategies to solve the negative effects they may pose during hiring and recruitments, equality among ethnic groups, gender balance, legality of recruitment, job validation of documents are some of the strategies that are involved in order to conduct the rightful staff selection and assessment leading to the company having an international outlook. I think organizations should seek to understand the market they want to venture into and do thorough selection on the right manpower to help propel its agendas there. References Appelbaum, S.H. and Fewster, B.M., 2012. Global aviation human resource management: Contemporary recruitment and selection and diversity and equal opportunity practices. Equal Opportunities International, 21(7), pp.66-80. Black, J.S. and Mendenhall, M., 2015. A practical but theory‐based framework for selecting cross‐cultural training methods. Human resource management, 28(4), pp.511-539. Gilbert, E. and Karahalios, K., 2011, April. Predicting tie strength with social media. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 211-220). ACM. Iles, P., 2012. Managing staff selection and assessment. McGraw-Hill Education (UK). Pp.271-275 Killion, J., 2010. Assessing impact: Evaluating staff development. Corwin Press.pp.47-51 Lievens, F., Van Dam, K. and Anderson, N., 2012. Recent trends and challenges in personnel selection. Personnel Review, 31(5), pp.580-601. Mendenhall, M.E., Dunbar, E. and Oddou, G.R., 2013. Expatriate selection, training and career‐pathing: a review and critique. Human Resource Management, 26(3), pp.331-345. Read More