Expansion that works: How Direct Sourcing can support market growth
Summary
Expanding into new markets can be complicated. Organizations looking to grow into different regions face a number of challenges, including new compliance regulations, cultural shifts and a potential skills shortage.
Hiring can be especially frustrating, as leaders look for top talent in unfamiliar markets. Through Direct Sourcing – a proactive hiring program, it becomes easier to re-engage pre-vetted, former hires, create a community of engaged applicants and create smooth, positive candidate experiences.
We look at what to know during the expansion process, and how to avoid common hiring pitfalls.
There’s nothing simple about expanding into a new market. Especially when it comes to hiring new talent.
From understanding local business dynamics to finding niche skillsets and keeping up with data privacy regulations, this type of growth can be overwhelming.
And yet, even with these challenges, market growth is often worth the risk when done correctly.
According to Gartner, 60% of revenue growth in high-growth companies comes from this type of business expansion.
Once a hiring program has been established in a new market, Direct Sourcing can help strengthen your talent acquisition strategy, leading to stable, long-term growth.
Common challenges – What do companies struggle with most?
Whether you’re expanding to another country, entering a new business market, or dealing with national growth, finding new talent can be a frustrating endeavor.
Keeping up with local, national, and international compliance regulations
Moving into new regions often means understanding ever-changing data privacy and employment/labor laws. Staying current with these regulations can be a full-time job, with serious consequences if they’re overlooked.
Understanding cultural differences in the hiring process
As you expand into a new market, finding top talent can become more difficult if you don’t understand the region’s hiring culture. Cultural differences include work life balance and employer branding. Benefits that resonate with an American audience might not work with a European one, for example.
Communication can also vary between regions. Some areas expect more formal communication, while others are more casual. Negotiation style may differ as well, and response expectations could change depending on the region.
Creating realistic hiring expectations
As the world continues to face a significant skills shortage, companies looking for niche skillsets face serious challenges when expanding into new regions. For example, let’s say you’re an American engineering company looking for specialized renewable energy engineers in Scandinavia. Without local market insight, you might struggle to find candidates with the right certifications, experience, or language skills, slowing down your expansion and making hiring more costly.
Streamlined growth – How can I expand smoothly?
When expanding, it’s important to have a thorough understanding of the region you’re entering and a solid plan for quick, effective hiring. Keep the following in mind when creating your strategy:
- Change your thinking. You should be looking at talent strategy as if it’s business strategy. That means a deep analysis of the market. When going through this stage, it’s important to consider your short and long term business goals and which skillsets would best align with those.
- Prioritize talent community growth and identify known hires. As you enter a new region, building up a community of engaged talent is vital, as it allows you to hire for future roles. Your hiring strategy should also help you identify prior successful hires and re-engage them into your talent pool.
- Standardize your hiring process across markets. A standardized system should include repeatable hiring workflows, onboarding strategy and compliance checks. Ensure there’s room for flexibility, as each new market comes with a unique set of challenges.
Working with the right partner – What should I ask my Direct Sourcing team?
Direct Sourcing is an effective tool for new regions with established hiring programs.
The strategy focuses on proactive hiring by creating communities of engaged talent and identifying known, vetted candidates to re-engage.
Your talent acquisition team should guide your expansion and help you meet local cultural and compliance expectations. When choosing a Direct Sourcing partner, it’s important to ask the following questions:
Can your tech platform support our goals?
A strong platform allows you to build and manage talent communities, better identify known talent and automate manual, time-consuming tasks. Look for a platform that uses AI-based talent agents and industry-leading tech to support your recruitment team.
TalentNet, for example, includes a variety of talent agents that boost efficiency and, strengthen decision making and increase productivity long-term.
We also use algorithmic matching, which lets our platform match candidates with jobs based on their qualification, allowing for a 60 second registration process and one-click application capabilities.
What experience do you have with data privacy compliance?
This is especially important when moving to new regions. Laws and compliance expectations can change quickly, and often differ by location. Make sure your Direct Sourcing partner can help you understand and follow these changing regulations, and look for a tech platform with data security and compliance certification.
TalentNet holds the highest data privacy accreditation in the industry, which includes SOC 2 compliance, and ISO 27001 and 27017 certifications.
Do you have real-world success stories?
When choosing a Direct Sourcing partner, always ask for case studies that showcase prior experience.
TalentNet, for example, has a wide variety of case studies available, including the story of Capgemeni a global ambassador in the consulting and technology services industry that was undergoing significant worldwide expansion. They were focused on identifying former workers for re-engagement and building engaged global talent communities.
TalentNet worked with each country’s data privacy officers to ensure the organization was compliant with privacy laws. The company was able to successfully expand into India, the UK, France, the Netherlands, and Belgium. They built a global Talent Community of over 300,000 members, 17,000 of which were trusted former workers.
Smooth expansion for market growth
Expanding into new markets is never simple. From data security compliance regulations to cultural shifts and skill gaps, it can be difficult to find top talent during this type of growth.
TalentNet has the experience and resources needed to guide companies through this process while building strong, engaged talent communities filled with pre-vetted candidates.
To learn more, sign up for a demo here.
