Whether you’ve been recruiting talent around the globe or you’re looking to, one thing is for certain: 2020 and all that it entailed has changed the recruiting environment at both the domestic and international level.
Without a doubt, the global pandemic played a starring role in many of these changes.
What Has Been the Impact?
In the US specifically, we saw rapid shifts in hiring needs, changes in where the greatest demand for workers were (for example, spikes in frontline healthcare roles and warehouse roles), high unemployment, and unfortunately for talent acquisition teams, a mismatch in the jobs that needed to be filled, and the job seekers available to fill them.
In a recent study by Appcast, Boston Consulting Group, and The Network, more than 200,000 international workers weighed in on their shifting preferences around workforce mobility. For US employers, there are some key findings to note:
The US Is No Longer the Top Destination for Global Talent
For the past eight years of the Global Talent Survey, the US has enjoyed the top spot in the minds of global job seekers looking to relocate for work. However, sentiments changed in 2020 (see Exhibit 5 below) and the US was superseded by its neighbor to the north – Canada. There are likely many reasons why this has changed, including opinions about the US pandemic response, social unrest, and increasingly nationalistic policies. But one thing is for sure, this does impact an employer’s ability to attract global talent to the US.
The Global Workforce Is Less Willing to Relocate for Work
Not unrelated to the previous insight, there is a global trend toward staying home (as shown in Exhibit 3 below). Perhaps being mandated to do so made many people more comfortable with it, but more likely is that Covid-19 caused many people to feel that moving abroad was uncertain and unsafe from both a health perspective and an economic perspective.
US Companies Are Tops for Remote Work
During the pandemic, many people were forced into the experience of working remotely and, as a result, interest in virtual mobility has increased across the globe. Fifty-seven percent of respondents to the Global Talent Survey say they are willing to work for an employer that doesn’t have a physical presence in their home country, which is well above those who are open to physical relocation. The good news for US employers? The US ranks #1 for international remote employment, as shown in Exhibit 10.
Opportunity to Reach Global Talent
While Covid-19 has posed many challenges, both domestically and internationally, there are great opportunities to find and attract the talent you need to drive your business forward. We always say that data is your friend and certainly the Global Talent Survey is a great start.
Note: If you’re recruiting in North America or you’re looking for benchmarks around recruitment marketing or performance advertising, we also recently launched the 2021 edition of our Recruitment Marketing Benchmark Report.
What do we now know about the current recruiting in the global workforce (from a US employers’ perspective)?
- People are less willing to relocate, and if they would, their first choice is Canada.
- People are more likely to work remotely and would choose a US-based company to do so.
- It is complex to recruit in different countries due to different job posting models, varied languages and cultural barriers, and legal and regulatory hurdles.
Taking this into account, what can you do to get the candidates you need for your open jobs? We’ve got a few ideas:
Seize the remote employee opportunity
If you aren’t already, could you be more open to recruiting remote workers? Are there positions you’re recruiting for that can be done from any place at any time? Why not start by targeting the top 10 countries that list the US as top pick for remote employment?
Top 10 Countries that list the USA as a top pick for remote employment:
Ensure your job postings indicate remote
We often talk about brevity in job titles and the positive impact that can have on converting more candidates into your hiring funnel. However, it is also very important that your job descriptions clearly and accurately describe the job — and this certainly applies (pun intended) to remote jobs, too!
Some job sites now provide you with the option to include “remote” as the job location but you can also include the term in your title.
For more tips on recruiting for remote jobs, check out our whitepaper: Appcast Futurecast: Recruiting and Hiring Workers for Remote Jobs.
Promote jobs on global and local sites
It’s true there are many global sites that will help you win the attention of your desired candidates around the world (think about sites like Indeed and LinkedIn) but if you want to target specific and strategic geographic regions (perhaps start with the 10 countries listed above), you’ll want to post your jobs on local sites too, as it gives you broader reach to the right candidates and often comes at a lower cost than the larger, global sites.
For more help with Hiring Global Talent, check out our guide on Cross-Border Recruiting.
Find a technology partner to help
As mentioned above, make sure you are getting your jobs in front of the right candidates, at the right time and place, and with a job posting that resonates (especially with those remote-ready job seekers) can be challenging, due to the varied job sites and models in different countries, different languages and cultural norms, and just the sheer complexity of managing multiple postings in multiple currencies. If you have to scale recruiting to transcend these challenges, you’re likely at the stage where you could use some help.
For US employers who need access to talent around the globe, Appcast can give you a one-stop shop to post your jobs in 138 countries as the official US partner of The Network. We take the complexities of global talent acquisition off your shoulders so you can focus on the candidates and getting the right people into your open positions.
