3 ways to attract international talent to your company

There are two main problems in the Estonian labor market – the lack of jobs and workforce. Several companies have begun to look for solutions to these problems across the border, and in today’s world it is totally understandable activity. Hiring international talent is, however, an important first step that requires a good plan for even better implementation. Whether you are a startup or an existing company, onboarding every global talent comes down to simple rule: how to make the process smooth for both parties.

Working elsewhere in the world is appealing to people mainly because the location itself is no longer as important as it used to be. Now the content of the work is more important because people are interested in self-development and better financial opportunities. However, there is a need for a strategy for finding talented employees on the international market. In this article we will outline what Leonardo Ortega (Estonian International House), Kaarel Holm (MeetFrank) and Karel Kask (Jobbatical), experts on recruiting and foreign labor topics, are thinking about international job opportunities.

Country branding

Because every individual has a choice in which country he/she works, this leads to the importance of branding of the destination country. When looking for a new job at foreign country, the only thing important isn’t just a workplace, but also the surrounding community and culture.

The Estonian International House is operating in Estonia with the aim of creating Estonia to be an attractive place to live, which helps to find talented employees. According to the representative of the Estonian International House, Leonardo Ortega, they want people to have a positive first emotion from Estonia and to feel that Estonia is a good place to live and work.

Company brand

According to the surveys conducted by MeetFrank, 90 percent of companies are ignored by job seekers in the first search. Companies, who have familiar name or brand, are most likely to be contacted first. This gives some advantage to B2C (business to customer) brands.

“If your brand is not in the country where you want to find an employee, it is highly likely that your company will be among this 90 percent that comes up in the second or third search cycle,” said Kaarel Holm, one of MeetFrank’s founders. One opportunity to find international employees is to participate in fairs and conferences abroad, but another option is to use professional service providers.

New type of service providers – recruitment startups

If the company does not have B2C services or products and company’s branding does not fit into the marketing budget, then it is worth considering using existing service providers.

With a very aggressive strategy, it is possible to use nearly 20 different service providers in parallel. In recent years, some platforms have emerged from the Estonian startups, which can be used to find the next talent in your company:

• Jobbatical is a service and marketplace that empowers digital talent to work in different countries seamlessly. They’re connecting companies worldwide and help them to find, qualify and relocate the best international talent to support their growth. In their network they have over 300 000 international talents all over the world and they even have a recruiter from North-Korea. They even offer the opportunity to fly the potential employee to the country where your company is located.
• MeetFrank is a secret recruitment app that allows people to be active in the job market on their own terms and without being tagged as job seekers. Company is set to become the first on-demand HR marketplace driven by the needs of talent, not the companies.
• TalentAtlas finds talents in seconds anywhere in the world! Filling job vacancy with TalentAtlas is cost effective and easy and it enables to use the automated and innovative search and selection tool to reach the Global Talent Pool.

The potential employee can also be found through company’s own channels. Different social media channels (Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, etc.) as well as traditional media portals are perfect for this. It is important that search and messaging take place on platforms where the potential employee spends most time. To do this, you should learn about local media statistics – media consumption habits may vary considerably from country to country. However, if you finally reach the right person with your message, you just have to hope that the content of the message is covering the needs and expectations of the potential employee.