The HR challenges that multinational organisations face when assessing new staff around the world, including dealing with legislation and languages, are explored and answered in a new white paper from Talent Q, the assessment specialist.

Called ‘Global assessment: Achieving scale and managing risk’, the paper highlights the benefits that employers can gain by standardising the application of assessment processes worldwide. It examines how to conduct globally-consistent assessment by implementing successful practices across different markets and it includes an action plan to guide HR teams through the process.
“The ability to recruit the right staff around the world is a crucial success factor for any multinational employer,” said James Bywater, Director of Product & Innovation at Talent Q. “Talent is now increasingly a global commodity and with the advent of multinational applicant tracking systems and assessment providers, it has become much easier to introduce and manage a consistent assessment process worldwide.”

The paper warns that it’s not practical for multinational employers to provide exactly the same assessments in every country.
“You’ll always need to adapt your assessment process for certain markets,” explained James Bywater. “The challenge is to identify what can be standardised and which aspects need to be tailored to meet the requirements of different markets and the different areas of your business.”
As psychometric assessment practice is more established in the United Kingdom and the United States, the paper highlights that these countries are often the favoured starting points for anyone looking to implement a global process.

“Multinationals will usually review the markets in which their assessment process is working well and then look to export that model to other countries,” said James Bywater. “By doing this, you can retain the essence and principles of best practice around the world but in certain markets you’ll still need to make local adaptations.”

The paper offers seven steps to help HR teams create a globally-aligned assessment process. These include gaining stakeholder support, conducting a job analysis of the target roles, selecting appropriate assessments and training local hiring managers.

“Assessing candidates effectively should be an important objective for every local HR team, because people who are well-suited to the job and the organisation will perform better and be more engaged,” added James Bywater. “Now that the infrastructure is available to support global assessment, multinational businesses can benefit by consistently recruiting the right people in every country.”
Talent Q’s complimentary new paper ‘Global assessment: Achieving scale and managing risk’ is available here.