Hiring hacks: Top tips for expanding into new markets

How can you make sure that expanding into a new market isn’t going to sink your company, and that you are able to effectively hire the talent you need to be successful?

The decision to expand into new markets poses a significant challenge for organisations across all industries.

From having to communicate with people based overseas, to cultural challenges, understanding the laws, fees and tariffs, through to adapting documentation and processes, there are numerous aspects that need to be considered. One of the main challenges businesses tend to face is the talent requirements for operating in a new country.

Companies that decide to hire an entire new team will have to face a significant financial investment. Those who choose to transfer their existing team to new location will encounter a challenge of having to replace the “lost” employees in the original location.

While having to face the staffing challenge is unavoidable, it can be addressed and resolved successfully.

Below is a list of some of the HR and project recruitment challenges that companies face when expanding into a new market and tips on how these can be approached.

Lack of resources to execute high volume hiring

Recruitment is the fundamental element of expanding business into a new market. The key question that needs to be answered here is: How will your organisation find and hire talent for your new location?

There are several strategies to choose from:

• Temporarily transferring your permanent team to the new location
• Handling majority of hiring process remotely
• Outsourcing the recruitment process to a specialised provider

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For most companies, the mixture of all three ingredients usually works best. While transferring some team members to the new location will help to ensure that the new hires are a good fit culturally, using remote hiring methods will allow other people to participate in parts of the hiring process (when and if required).

Additionally, working with a recruitment outsourcing vendor will provide the capacity to handle high volume hiring in a short space of time, any required technology and access to local market knowledge.

Lack of local market knowledge

Companies that plan to expand to a new location conduct in-depth market analysis and research. In the area of staffing, there are several aspects that employers consider:

• Employment laws and regulations
• Quality and supply of talent
• Average salaries and costs of living
• Employment and hiring trends

However, the level of knowledge required to execute successful hiring in a local market is much deeper than strategic data. The hiring (TA or HR) team will require information on the local job boards, sourcing channels that work for specific skills and communities and typical hiring processes.

As mentioned, market knowledge is something that can be acquired by working with a recruitment outsourcing provider, or simply through partnership with a consulting agency. Chambers of commerce and other business membership organisations, especially those focusing on the subject of FDI, might also be able to provide this kind of information and advice to your team.

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As an experienced entrepreneur, CEO or business owner, you likely already have a list of contacts who you can work with and get advice on operating in the local area. If you don’t have such a list just yet, it’s time to start building your network.

Local culture vs corporate culture

An important challenge to consider is the local culture in the context of the culture of your organisation.

It might be worth mentioning here that by company or corporate culture we mean the entire system of policies, values, mission and beliefs shared by employees of a given organisation. It is something that informally guides the thinking processes and behaviours of employees across different departments and levels of your company. The majority of successful businesses have a well-defined corporate culture that needs to be maintained when opening up in the new markets.

However, values and expectations of employees, as well as the way of working, vary greatly from place to place, which can make it challenging when trying to implement corporate culture across different global locations.

TIP:

The first step to overcome those obstacles is to identify and factor in all those cultural differences. These will (and should) impact the implementation of your systems, processes and procedures.

On the practical level, that might mean having to set ground rules and agree on frameworks, while allowing the local team members work out the details. It will allow you to adapt your corporate culture into the new cultural logic of a foreign environment.

Final thoughts...

To ensure success, business expansion projects need a customised and structured process for recruitment that takes into account elements such as your current resources, local market knowledge, culture, and networks of contacts who you can partner up with to set up operations in the new market.