Tag Archives: Europe

How Do You Expand Business Internationally? Five Suggestions

Situation: The President of a company wants to expand its business in Europe, but has limited resources, particularly in terms of personnel. What have others learned from their international business opportunities? What has worked and what hasn’t? How do you expand business internationally?
Advice from the CEOs:
• Hire a Business Development person to develop your European business. You want to find an individual who has experience working with international partners as well as their clients.
• Allocate budget not just for the individual hired, but also the travel budget to fund extended trips.
• Plan for time to train existing and interested international partners to sell or service your offering.
• Hire an individual who is at least minimally comfortable with the language or languages of your prospective European partners. While most European business people are fluent in English, they appreciate foreigners who at least make the effort to speak their language.
• Network with local and online resources to identify both potential customers and allies in Europe who can assist you. LinkedIn is international and a good way to search for both customer and partnership opportunities. Check your local Chamber of Commerce for others who are engaged in international business and network with them. Utilize networking organizations such as the Alliance for Corporate Growth which has chapters around the country and internationally. Connect with the International Trade Administration’s U.S. Commercial Service. They specialize in promoting export opportunities for American companies. Partner with a venture capitalist who has European contacts and who may be interested in supporting your efforts.

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How Do You Hire Foreign Personnel? Four Observations

Situation: A rapidly growing US software company has an office in Europe. Prospects for key positions have been flown from Europe to the US for interviews. Two or three good prospects have withdrawn their applications before the company could make an offer, citing cultural incompatibility as their reason. How do you hire foreign personnel?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Cultural incompatibility can be an evasive non-response. It is important to dig deeper, perhaps with the assistance of a European-based consultant, to determine what the candidates perceived as the incompatibility. Do this with the candidates that have already rejected the company. Identifying the deeper reason will help to pre-screen future candidates before flying them to the US for interviews.
  • It is important to have a local leader. This appears to be the individual that the company is attempting to hire. The local leader will then do the hiring for the local office. Employees work for their managers and with their peers and will decide on whether to accept a position based on their feelings of compatibility with these individuals.
  • Given that the company is attempting to hire the leader of the European office, review and approval of the candidate by the CEO is important. Here are options to explore:
    • Spend some time studying the culture of the country in which the office is located (European countries vary according to local culture) and adapt the interview style so that it is more compatible with this culture.
    • Hire a European that the CEO trusts to do the recruiting, screening, interviewing and selection a final set of candidates. Ask this individual for their input on the best way of facilitating a meeting with the CEO. For example, instead of flying candidates to the US, once several candidates have been identified travel to Europe and instead of conducting formal interviews, have dinner with each of the candidates. This reduces the tension and makes the interview more congenial. Consider taking the head of HR with along and both of you having dinner with the candidates and their spouses. Again, this will reduce the tension in the meetings, and you will have two viewpoints on the candidates.
  • If, after trying the suggested alternatives, it continues to be difficult identifying a good European candidate, an alternative is hiring an American – someone with solid experience managing offices and operations in Europe – to oversee the European operation.

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