Careers in a Global Environment
This pool of highly talented potentials fills as soon as the vacancies are announced. This is mainly because of the influence of HRIS Technology, which states −
“For any vacancy, with large number of internal candidates, pool programmed skills are mandatory, that should match the candidates to the openings in the firms of any size.”
Earlier, when managers were sent overseas for some projects, it was as if their career has been sent into exile, if not over completely, but today, this is like a step towards the top.
This change is mainly due to the rising of a clearly Global Business Environment. Large companies are the first ones to avail the latest technology to internal staffing and career development. As the companies are now becoming more data centric, they check their own databases first, mining internal HR data for potentials, before looking outside.
The new demand of highly qualified multinational managers has resulted in laying out several new principles of international career management. These are as follows −
Employees whose career will benefit and are willing to contribute the knowledge gained to the organizations should be selected.
Selected employees should be groomed only for international assignments. Pre-departure training should focus on the cross cultural differenced in social life, political atmosphere, religion and language along with technical expertise necessary.
Career planning is very important to direct how the overseas experience will groom the potential of the employee. Having the big picture of where the migration cycle will take you beyond the actual task is very important to success and can help get over the feelings of abandonment.
It is very important for the employee to be updated about the country policies, projects, plans and staffing changes via communication. This keeps the manager in touch with the company and helps in re-entry.
The re-entry jobs should use the skills and experience the employee has gained during the project. One way of doing this is by drafting recent migrants as mentors or facilitating a forum for sharing their experience.
Training for home country managers should be an ongoing function. This training will help to learn the value of international experience and the ways it can be utilized within the organization.
However, these principles have not been executed yet. This often results in migrant failures rate of up to 40% which have been reported, and 20% employees leave their company after their overseas assignment. It is suggested that people willing to opt for international experience should go through many self-evaluation and planning steps, to ensure that international assignments will not have a negative impact on their overall career objectives.
What to Check Before Opting for a Foreign Assignment
Before opting for any foreign assignment, the main factors which you need to go through are its −
- Geographical Location
- Culture
- Customs and
- Political Status of the place
This is to make sure if you can adjust to the new place. However, there are some contradictions regarding the international careers. As the demand for managers understanding business from more than one national perspective increases, there has been a hesitance in sending U.S Citizens abroad because of the terrorist attacks of 2001.
Just like high costs and struggles are linked with the uncertainties about the migrant's ability to perform effectively after arrival have also led many nations with international operations to develop local managers in the foreign countries where they function. This would eventually limit the overseas developmental projects for the future global manager.
