Recruitment across countries
Sat, Jan 22, 2011
In the 90s, the management literature examined the link between human resources management and cultures. A number of papers both in the Anglophone and in the Francophone literatures uncovered the scope of cultural differences in the various activities performed by people who manage human resources.
Recruitment is one of the areas where differences in societal beliefs, expectations, self perception and values can insidiously appear.
Let us examine some of them:
Geert Hofstede, a pioneer in the intercultural management literature, explained that his interest in exploring this field is related to his personal experience. As Dutch, he failed to be recruited by US firms. According to him, he did nothing wrong during the interviews…yet he was not convincing and therefore he wanted to understand why. The comparison of the Dutch and the American right way to act during a recruiting interview is quite different.
The ideal US applicants should display confidence, enthusiasm and they should be proactive in detailing their achievements, often amplifying the small ones in order to make a good impression. The best candidate is a winner!
On the contrary, by Dutch standard, these attitudes would not be valued: they would remain humble, wait for people to ask specific questions before proving their ability to perform. Their belief in a need for a strong control of their emotions may be perceived as a lack of enthusiasm and motivation by American standard. The collision of two different sets of values and expectations may cause American recruiters to make an inaccurate appraisal of Dutch job applicants. Conversely, a lack of knowledge of cultural differences misleads Dutch applicants who behave the Dutch right way in front of a US recruiter.
Other non- US nationals experience the same type of cross-cultural misperceptions and misunderstanding during a recruitment process.
US developed recruitment guidelines suggest questions to ask to applicants. Some questions can be perceived quite differently across societies and subsequently result in biased responses. For example, in a US context, asking an applicant to pinpoint a past mistake is not seen as negative. It proves that the applicant reflects on past mistakes and takes step to correct and improve. US applicants would not be shy in raising inaccuracies and mistakes.
However in other cultures, applicants can be extremely uncomfortable in raising past mistakes because they believe that this could adversely impact on the impression they make. They would think of anything they did or showed that can be perceived as both positive and negative. As a result, it is not possible to figure out whether these candidates reflect on past mistakes and take step to improve.
Expected skills and personality traits are also part of a screening process. A number of questions or games can assess whether applicants are team players or not. Knowing whether the applicant is performing a collective sport or is playing a leading role in a community can assume the acquisition of the expected team spirit.
This is again based on an American view of social interactions and on values distilled from childhood onwards. In countries such as France and Belgium, nor school nor parents distill the belief in being a team player. On the contrary, from early schooling, pupils are taught to be very competitive and individualistic. Teachers do not conceal their comments of how better some students do than their peers, causing the strongest to look down at the weakest. Later on, when they work, French are known to have a specific view of teamwork that will not fit into the US definition. Playing a game or responding to a question may therefore mislead a US recruiter.
These are only some examples of how the societal culture impacts on a recruitment process. Other important cultural differences take place in communication style and body language.
US guidelines should be reviewed in line with local expectations and foreign objectives.
Africans who have had little chance to travel and work overseas are prone to be misled when they blindly implement imported recruitment techniques. Foreigners assigned to an African country should pay more attention to the local values and beliefs in order to select the right candidates!
Tags: Africa, cultural differences, recruitment
Wow, Pascale, I LOVED this article. Have you thought of a follow-up post discussing how Americans interviewing for positions abroad should modify their interview behavior in order to be hired?
Best regards,
Mary
Mary, thanks for your feedback.
Helping people to adjust to a more culture-sensitive approach to recruiting is the core of my business. All too often both foreigners and indigenous blindly apply human resources techniques, questions as if these were unaffected by the cultural context where recruitment is taking place ! Best regards Pascale
Interesting subject that American perspective, on the behaviour of the applicant.
Do you have the idea that the teachings on internet about recruiting techniques etc. do influence the african recruiting professionals. I cannot think of a recruiter that approach an applicant of his or her own culture in an unpolite way with disturbing questions.
Can you tell something about the difference between the interpretation of that (US oriented) advices and activities in West Africa and in East Africa.
What are the most stron Eurocentric misconceptions of the different culturalcontext affected behaviours in Africa.
thanks Jacques for your interest and feedback.
Local recruiters usually have a very good command of the local social and business etiquettes. However such aspect is limited to ‘how they ask questions’ and what recruiters need to say to make the applicants comfortable.
The ‘what to ask’ is tied to the view of what a desired applicant should display in terms if skills, competences and experience. Here cultural differences insidiously interfere: the best practices distilled in the recruitment guidelines feature a culturally-limited Western way people envision roles and responsibilities within the organization(rather than a Western way it is an American way).
When problems are approached and fixed on the basis of a different view of people’s roles and expectations, there is a need to question the whole approach to recruiting including ‘what you ask’ and ‘what you are looking for’. For example, in some specific African contexts and for specific jobs, technical competence can be less important than other locally specific skills that traditional recruiting techniques will never screen.
In order to know how to develop a culturally sensitive approach to recruiting, you should learn about the ‘local way’ and then evaluate the extent to which the approach distilled in the manual will enable to recruit the right candidate.
I am doing this type of exercice with HR personal who usually are confused by what they had to learn.
Often they tell me ‘this does not work here’…
Now your second question about the differences between West and East Africa…the differences are not related to such clustering but rather to a more elaborated categorization…
If you want more details … I am afraid you may have to enroll in a training session !
Best
Pascale
est ce qu’il ya une culture d’entreprise qui propre a l’afrique
Merci Monsieur Coulibali pour cette question intéressante.
Avant d’y répondre il faut clarifier le concept de culture. Lorsque nous travaillons nous sommes, souvent inconsciemment- influencés par des normes sociétales qui ne sont pas partagées en dehors de nos frontières. Dans certains pays africains, le manque d’accès à la périphérie peut causer une diversité de règles sociétales propres à des régions, à des ethnies, à des langues… Tant que nous n’avons pas voyagé, nous croyons que notre manière de nous comporter en société est la manière de tout le monde. En Afrique, malgré les déclarations de communautés de valeurs, il existe des règles sociétales et culturelles différentes… si on vous dit que les Africains partagent des valeurs communes, en y regardant de plus près on voit que derrière ces similitudes se chachent des différences d’interprétations et de priorités…
A côté de la culture sociétale, il existe le concept de culture d’entreprise. Celui-ci est une création des gurus du management. La culture d’entreprise est un ensemble de manière de faire et de se comporter qui sont propres à une entreprise. Dans les années 90, ce concept était très à la mode et actuellement encore il est utilisé par les entreprises multinationales qui veulent uniformiser les pratiques et comportements de leurs employés des différentes filiales…
Cela dit des recherches ont prouvé que cette culture d’entreprise n’est pas très efficace quand ses principes et valeurs sont en contradiction avec les valeurs de la société.
Aussi bien au niveau de la culture sociétale que de la culture d’entreprise, il n’y a pas d’uniformité propre à l’Afrique. J’espère avoir répondu à votre question ! meilleures salutations Pascale