If you have the wrong people on [your] bus, nothing else matters. You may be headed in the right direction, but you still won’t achieve greatness. Great vision with mediocre people still produces mediocre results.
—Jim Collins, business consultant, best-selling author and lecturer (2001) i
Jim Collins has it right. No matter what brilliant idea or well-organized plan you have in place for exporting, the basic and most important side of your enterprise is still the human side. It starts with getting the right people on your export bus. Whether you hire employees with full benefits and perks or independent contractors, you want excellent people around you who are as passionate about your company’s prospects as you are and who can do something you can’t do that will help transform your export business. Complementary values help, but accumulating talent with qualities unlike your own fortifies achieving a vision faster. Although the vision is yours, the talent will be ones with the skill set to get things done.
At the start of running a business, it’s about you, your people, and your company’s capabilities. In “Twelve Tactics for Creating Powerful Global Leadership Connections,” I talk about how people are the engine of our success and every human contact is a chance for practicing great, enduring leadership—taking your organization from mediocrity to superiority. ii Yet, you’d be surprised at how long you can go without too much being accomplished—with all talk and no action. But as you expand internationally, you will discover that success becomes less about talk and more about execution. Executing anything requires highly motivated people. Luckily for you, due to technology, hiring globally to get the work done isn’t difficult and allows you to broaden your pool of exceptional candidates.
In Chapter 1, I provided a shortlist of twelve personal characteristics that I find work in the export marketplace. These are based on my own hands-on experiences and the observations of others who have achieved success in crossing boundaries in the business world. Some of those characteristics are: the ability to adapt, to sustain a high level of cultural and emotional intelligence, and to get things done with people from diverse backgrounds. If you skipped Chapter 1, go back and read it. That’s where I highlight the fundamentals of what you need as a leader to bring out the best in others. It starts with developing a global mindset. Next, it’s about finding and developing your people.
Tip
To fully allow people to realize their personal goals—and thereby contribute to the goals of your organization—you must provide them clear objectives, rewards, and the freedom to use creativity and imagination.
So, how do you find great people to, as Jim would say, get on your export bus? How can you make sure they remain happy and motivated? We’ll find out here. I will help you to create a functional team that thinks globally yet communicates locally with cultural sensitivity, to find the best places to outsource work, and to develop a plan to work effectively with others and nurture talent.
Creating a Functional Team
The first big characteristic to look for in people destined to do international work is their ability to be comfortable and confident in their own skin, along with a heightened sensitivity to others. After that, focus on integrity: can you trust them? Assessing a person’s integrity requires frequent dealings over time. You can’t rush that. There are, however, other qualities you should seek from job candidates that are easier to ascertain in a limited time, including:
An awareness of a new breed of communication (both online and offline) that exhibits cultural sensitivity
Persistence (competitive drive)
Initiative
An interest in international matters
Bi- or multilingual language capabilities
Cultural empathy
Good writing and speaking abilities
Some international experience—and not just a vacation to Disneyland in France
Last, the individual must be sensitive to the human behavior of all races, cultures, and ethnicities. They must have emotional intelligence beyond reproach. Meaning, the individual must care. If you find part or most of these characteristics in a person, hire her.
Caution
The best education in the world will not always produce the ideal hire. Initiative and international experience matter more.
Spotting a Good Global Hire
A typical hiring scenario might unfold like this: Six people diverse in ethnicity and from different parts of the world are situated in a conference room. I invite a potential hire, Steve, into the room for a preliminary interview. Steve is wearing casual clothes with sandals and no socks and immediately starts talking to everyone. He even manages to slip in a joke about his lousy plane flight. He plops down on his chair, gulps his water, and says, “I am sure you want to know how I am qualified for the job.” And from there, he jumps into talking about everything he has done during the past five years without taking a breath or ever noticing if anyone in the room was paying the least bit of attention to what he is saying. He fumbles for his business cards and then tosses one out on the table to each person and asks, “Any questions?” Later, you notice that his application had numerous unanswered questions, signaling his lack of attention to detail.
We don’t need to concern ourselves with whether Steve is qualified for the job. Even if he has terrific skills in certain areas, he won’t cut it on manners and cultural sensitivity.
See how easy it is to spot immediately when someone falls short on manners and cultural sensitivity and etiquette?
You can see how this same scenario could play out on a Skype video call with a trade partner or client. Steve would sign in late, wearing a T-shirt and jeans, and, after fifteen minutes, abruptly leave for a moment to get a soft drink while the client wonders what just happened.
Would you want to have someone like Steve handling a critical part of your export business, like prospecting for new overseas customers? You need someone with an obsessive attention to details coupled with hypersensitivity to those around them. That’s what helps fuel an incredible export business.
Contrast Steve with Bob, the second candidate. Bob is invited the next day to a similar meeting. He responds politely when introduced to each person but does not say too much until called upon. You like that; you know that being a good listener only helps navigate complex issues in the global marketplace. Bob shares his experience as it relates to the job at hand but only after being asked. That conveys his discipline and decisiveness.
Another thing you notice: Out of respect and politeness, Bob sits down last to ensure each person has a seat at the table even without knowing whether there are enough seats in the room. People attending the interview witness that he is sensitive to others, even when it could put him in an uncomfortable position (left him standing up, for instance, due to the lack of chairs). Also, he doesn’t prompt the exchange of business cards. He pays attention to how business cards are presented to him—with two hands and the card in English with a person’s credentials facing up—similar to Japanese-business-card etiquette and that of many other cultures as well. He responds exactly the same way and waits for others to step over to him to exchange cards—and responds in kind. Exhibiting confidence, Bob asks if he can get water for everyone during a break. Only after serving another person water does he sip his. Also impressive—he wore a navy suit with a crisp white business style shirt, with a classic stripe tie and black lace-up shined shoes. It’s clear that he had found out well in advance of the interview what the appropriate attire would be.
As the interview progresses, Bob answers all questions posed to him in a seemingly honest and forthright manner. At one point, he even offers to get back to the team on a matter he is unsure about. The upshot: whatever is thrown Bob’s way, he keeps his cool, acts his true self, and proves effortlessly through the course of conversations that he has vast experience in export trade.
Before hiring a person to be in charge of any responsibility within your firm, besides the usual questions you ask in doing your due diligence, also ask these questions :
“What makes you a good fit for the role we need filled and how will your international experience support it?”
“Tell me about a time where you creatively collaborated with a diverse team or customer base worldwide. What did you do and what was the outcome?”
“When you’re not working, what brings joy to your life?”
In response to the last question, someone might answer , “I get joy from finding export opportunities in our brave new world” or “I particularly enjoy traveling internationally.” Surprisingly, they may also offer answers like “Watching thriller movies is my passion” or “Drinking Jack Daniel’s is my main source of enjoyment.”
It’s usually pretty easy to assess who will fit in and who won’t. Look for the person with the “Let’s go take on the world” label planted on his forehead. Then grab ’em.
When it’s time to negotiate a salary, research the rates (you can use www.payscale.com or www.salary.com ) that you are willing to pay for a full-time employee so you don’t make an offer that’s too low (cheap) or too extravagant. Find out what real people are earning in the market relative to the job you need done and vary your offer up or down by 10 percent. After settling on a reasonable figure, stick to it and nurture the relationship from there. Help your employees get everything they deserve and it will come back to you a hundred times over in the growth and success of your export business.
Hiring is one of the biggest challenges for business owners and particularly for exporters. Accept that you will never get it right all of the time. The stories in this section were included simply to help you see how a certain kind of person will help further your export goals while many other candidates will keep you from them.
My advice: Take it slow. Resist the temptation to fill a position quickly. Check references thoroughly. You can mitigate your risks by getting a second opinion on a candidate (internally or externally), and developing recruitment strategies that avoid costly hiring mistakes.
Caution
If someone you hire cannot do the job, eliminate them. If they are incompetent, eliminate them. If they are inaccessible, eliminate them. If they are rude, eliminate them. The longer you wait to let someone go, the longer the organization and others suffer. There’s a saying: “Hire slow and fire fast!”
Developing a World-Class Team
Now that you’ve seen a couple of examples of how to assess whether someone has what you think it takes to succeed on your export bus, let’s take a look at what roles need to be filled as you grow your export business .
Success in exporting is directly related to a companywide commitment. That commitment is the responsibility of you alone if you are a sole proprietor, or in the case of a larger enterprise, of the executive committee as well as the heads of finance, operations, sales and marketing, legal, logistics, research, technology, and culture departments. Assuming you manage an organization that is already in place, you need to be sure each of these people is on the export bus and ready and willing to make the journey with you and happy about it. If they are not, you must get the wrong people off the bus and reassign new people to their seats.
Once you recognize the human resources available to you and what it takes to export a product or service, you’ll need to prepare a list of what is required from each of the functional areas of your company. Then it’s up to you to develop your world-class team, which will work in concert. Keep in mind that many if not most of these positions can be outsourced until you are ready to bring them in-house; I’ll say more about this later in the chapter. The team might look like this:
International Finance or Accounting Manager: This person oversees international money matters (preparation of financial statements, determining the best method of payment, and handling the payroll, for example) and reports to chief finance officer (CFO).
Business Development Manager: This role is responsible for prospecting new markets and new customers.
Export OperationsManager: This employee provides assistance to key-operations personnel on business issues linked to export business; tracks compliance measures and the use of export licenses; works closely with the international logistics manager, international legal counsel, and manufacturing manager. Note: As you expand, oftentimes a manager of export control compliance is needed to manage day-to-day operations of a regulatory compliance program.
International Legal Counsel: This person oversees all legal issues pertaining to exporting (in-country compliance, contracts, trademarks, disputes, patents, and licenses).
International Logistics or Supply ChainManager: This team member works closely with operations (manufacturing), marketing, and purchasing to create a seamless export transport, and handles all technical details of the export transportation, including choice of transport mode, documentation, and varying customs regulations. These can be one in the same depending on the size of the organization.
Marketing and Social MediaManager: This employee creates social media platforms, joins and manages appropriate online community groups, and is responsible for marketing the company to the world via all social media channels. As the company enters more overseas markets, a PR manager might come on board to promote the company through a variety of media channels that foster the growth of exports.
Customer ServiceManager: This person makes sure customers are happy and satisfied and want to return. She also handles customer complaints and disputes.
HR Manager: This position plans, directs, and coordinates human resource management activities (including but not limited to outsourcing, compensation and benefits policy, equal employment opportunity matters, etc.) to maximize human potential and productivity. In addition, the HR manager and her staff (again, dependent on the size of company), recruits, interviews, and selects applicants.
Internet TechnologyManager: This role oversees all Internet-related issues, including but not limited to the development and maintenance of online platforms, e-commerce sites, blogs, social media and cloud platforms, banner ad designs, apps, and e-mail accounts.
Web Designer: The person in this position specializes in the design and development of user-centered Web sites, blogs, and platforms and manages search-engine optimization, opt-in newsletters, and globally friendly graphic designs.
Administrative or Office Manager: This person makes life for everyone far more sane by paying attention to such details as office supplies; sample mailings; answering the phone; acknowledging employee anniversaries, awards, or promotions; ensuring the company kitchen is well stocked; and coordinating and setting up meetings and web-conferencing calls.
Note
Don’t be put off by the presumable number of people it takes to export. A friend and colleague of mine, Barbara Roberts, once told me that you don’t necessarily need a dozen people to pull off growing an international company successfully. Over a seven-year period, she grew a stock-photography business from a $7 million to a $45 million, world-renowned, and technologically state-of-the-art company—all with just a handful of people. You can do this too, provided you take it one market at a time, hire on an as-needed basis, and persevere.
As you expand, you might have to hire additional people as situations develop—for example, to support a growth market that takes off rapidly and unexpectedly in India, Brazil, or China. Or you may need someone to handle new customer inquiries coming in online from China—in Chinese. And that even begets more decisions to be made: can the person who speaks Chinese reside in China or does he need to be located in the United States? These are just a few of the issues and considerations you must address, and oftentimes you don’t have the answers until you are well into it.
Caution
Don’t assume the individuals who manage a function locally will have the time or the capabilities to manage that same function on the export front. Ask. And gauge as best you can their enthusiasm for the expanded job responsibilities.
In the start-up stage, my recommendation is to have someone from each department set aside one hour each day just to work on an international sales strategy . It doesn’t matter if there are no sales pending; it is critical to arrange a structured amount of time for the purpose, which requires discipline, commitment, and an exchange of information. You should have meetings to give everyone the feelings of importance and team spirit that are critical for the growth and prosperity of the company.
People will also need to be trained. You must first communicate the company’s vision, goals, and objectives. This can be as simple as sitting down with each individual to discuss them: What are we going after on this project? How fast do we expect to get there? How will we get it done? Who will work on the projects as they pop up? How will we get help if we don’t know how to do something? How will we measure results?
You’ll quickly realize that the desire to expand internationally takes a team effort and commitment, which will define and shape the export process. If you are a novice exporter, your employees and independent contractors will learn as you learn. The point is to get input as often as possible and insist that team members execute their portion of the plan. You also want to convey that you are in this endeavor together to learn, grow, and make it a success!
Best Places to Outsource Work
Technology and the Internet have made it ridiculously efficient to search out people to do the tasks you don’t want to do yourself. How do you know when outsourcing is the solution? If you are seeking better-skilled workers than you currently have on your bus for less money, that’s the time to outsource . Another added benefit: Outsourcing allows you to access process superiority and physical resources. But here are a couple of questions to answer to know for sure:
Is there a competitive advantage to doing the job in-house? If you are a web developer, you most certainly don’t need to outsource IT, but perhaps HR or accounting is not your cup of tea and you are not at a point to hire a full-time person to oversee these areas.
Is the task at hand related to your core competency? If not, outsource it! Focus on what you are good at and let someone else do the rest.
Is the task at hand a one-off situation? You might have to manage an annual dinner conference with all your international distributors or put together an e-book on your company’s ethics policy for distribution to suppliers and distributors, for instance. In either of those cases, outsourcing would work.
Would it be cheaper to have the task at hand be outsourced vs. performed internally?
Do you look forward to the idea of getting rid of a responsibility that can easily be done by a more experienced firm who does it all the time and at a much lower rate than you would pay internally? Payroll and HR are two examples to illustrate this point.
Jobs that are ripe for outsourcing are those of a writer, editor, and translator; of a web developer, programmer, designer, and drafter (engineer); of a call-center operator and medical professional; of administrative support and human resources (to handle hiring, firing, and payroll); of social media experts and business development experts; of export-trading intermediaries; of public relations, marketing, and computer professionals; and of consulting.
The best way to find the right people is to vet them in a way that drills down on their capabilities to determine if they are a good fit. But before you can do that, you must create job descriptions for each position you need to fill. Be specific. You are hiring someone to get something done. What is it? Spell it out. Use the description as a basis for filling out a job request and for comparing it against a job applicant’s response. Here is a sample job description for an Export Manager at a consumer packaged goods (CPG) company called ABC Company. Note: This is for an Export Manager position, not an Export Operations Manager as referenced earlier.
EXPECTATIONS
Manage business relationships across a diverse worldwide geography of distributors, sales agents, and key retailers.
Develop the sales plan to grow existing ABC Company’s export businesses and markets.
Identify, prioritize, and implement business development plans in new, emerging markets for ABC Company’s brands.
Deliver the annual plan for key sales performance indicators, including profitable revenue, market share, and export trade as a percent of revenue.
Collaborate with field sales agents, marketing teams, operations/supply chain, regulatory/legal, technology, and finance to create profitable, sustainable, brand-building programs across established and new customer bases.
Manage all financials related to export customers including demand planning monthly forecasts, annual marketing and trade budgets and actuals, and post promotion analysis to identify return on investment (ROI) on key programs.
Communication of all ABC Company’s policies and procedures, pricing and trade programs, sales and marketing programs, and new products to field sales agents and distributors.
Ensure compliance with related governmental export requirements. Maintain effective relationships with said entities. Keep senior leadership informed of key trends & opportunities within this field.
Develop strong relationships with key ABC Company personnel including senior leadership, supply chain, customer service, marketing, manufacturing, finance, legal, and technology teams. Leverage relationships to grow smart and fast and push ABC Company to accelerate growth in current and new export markets near and long-term.
Desired Skills and Experience:
EDUCATION, EXPERIENCE, AND QUALIFICATIONS:
Bachelor’s degree required from an accredited college or university.
Minimum of 8 to 10 years of experience in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry. Key account management, sales planning, and field sales experience is essential.
Demonstrated expertise and results in directly managing export sales and logistics in CPG industry is required.
Excellent leadership, communication, collaboration, organizational, and cross-cultural skills necessary to manage multiple responsibilities and ability to work cross-functionally in a dynamic environment.
Proficiency required with Microsoft Office applications (i.e., Excel, Powerpoint and Word), Skype, and Citrix GoToWebinars, and working knowledge of syndicated resources (Nielsen/Information Resources/comScore).
Full understanding of the export landscape (outside of the US and Canada), especially in emerging markets, and complete mastery of global market trends for a consumer product business, customer strategies, and competition.
Ability to travel both domestically and internationally.
Must be able to communicate effectively in English both written and oral. Second language beneficial.
The following sections offer a couple of places to look for good people to match the skill sets you need.
Freelancers and Independent Contractors: The New Gig Economy
To reach freelancers and independent contractors in what is considered the new gig economy, try the following resources. Be sure to inquire about fees; they are prone to change often. For example, credit card and other payment processing charges are typically in addition to a company’s fee.
Guru: http://www.guru.com . Guru is a highly populated job-hunting site with an easy-to-get-started process and a good payment system (it’s simple and secure, for one). Guru is free to sign up for but you can upgrade to a paid membership, which gets you certain perks (Basic, Professional, Business, or Executive) and takes a project fee of anywhere from 5-12 percent of the freelancer’s invoice amount, predicated on the scope of the project. Credit card and PayPal payment processing fees are in addition to Guru’s charges. Guru has more than 1.5 million members worldwide.
Elance: http://www.elance.com . Elance, now an Upwork Company, is free to join and set up an account and takes a standard project fee of 8.75 percent (the quote submitted by the freelancer includes your fee). When the work is completed, Elance deducts its commission and transfers the rest to the freelancer.
Virtual Assistants.com: http://www.virtualassistants.com . Virtual Assistants.com is good for finding secretarial, customer service, data entry, writing, and tech support workers. You can post a job and negotiate a fair and reasonable rate based on your budget. For members who are VAs and wish to find a job, the subscription fee is $9.99 a month or $49.99 a year . Posting a VA job is free.
Zirtual: http://zirtual.com . Zirtual connects busy professionals with virtual personal assistants to do everything from research to legal and accounting to staff management. Zirtual charges $398 per month for the Entrepreneur Plan, $698 per month for the Startup Plan, and $998 a month for the Small Business Plan. The fees vary based on the work performed and the number of hours of assistance you need each month. All plans include a dedicated U.S.-based college-educated VA; 9:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m. your time zone availability; and direct contact via phone, SMS and email.
Upwork: http://www.upwork.com . In 2014, Elance merged with oDesk. In 2015, oDesk was relaunched as Upwork. Upwork is an online workplace for the world, connecting clients with freelance professionals from Chicago to Paris. The Upwork fee for freelancers is a sliding service fee (20%/10%/5%) and based on lifetime billings per client relationship.
TaskRabbit: http://www.taskrabbit.com . TaskRabbit is anonline and mobile marketplace where you can outsource everything from everyday errands (provided they are local) to skilled tasks. The pricing model is: TaskRabbit’s fee is equal to your task price (which you set) plus a service fee, which is 30 percent, excluding any reimbursements made to the Tasker (they get 100% of any reimbursements). A minimum payment of one hour is required per task.
Freelancer: http://www.freelancer.com . Freelancer is a large freelancing, outsourcing, and crowdsourcing marketplace for small businesses. You create milestones on your projects, and as the freelancer reaches the milestones, payment is released. The site’s fees are complicated and are based on the type of project and membership plan you sign up for. Be sure to review the site thoroughly to uncover any hidden fees. It is a good place to go for one-off jobs or project-based work. You can post a project for free.
Fiverr: http://www.fiverr.com . Fiverr is a marketplace for creative and professional services. Jobs can start as low as $5. Fees vary widely. Be sure to review.
Tip
Another interesting global, on-demand, 24/7 online task marketplace worth checking out to see if it fits your job requirements is Amazon’s Mechanical Turk ( http://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome ), whose system is based on taking a job and separating it out for many different people to work on in pieces. The beauty of AMT is that the tasks are quick and very simple (you might write a product review or complete a multiple-choice survey, for example) and require only tiny payments. Try it out.
Top Job Search Web Sites
You can also tap into what I consider to be online talent pools where people worldwide get social by making professional connections. Job candidates are only a mouse click away. These are the sites to consider when you are hiring for a full-time position :
CareerBuilder: http://www.careerbuilder.com . CareerBuilder is an all-around good egg—a large US-based online job site that has a presence in more than sixty markets worldwide. More than 24 million job seekers visit the site monthly and more than three hundred thousand employers work with CareerBuilder to find good people.
craigslist: http://www.craigslist.org . Craigslist is a classified ad-placement service and forum. Postings are free, except in certain geographic or industry areas—be sure to check. The site works well for finding just about anything, including jobs, housing, goods, and services.
Dice: http://www.dice.com . Dice, now DHI Group, Inc., is a career hub for techies and engineering professionals. The site also provides specialized websites for financial services, energy, healthcare, and security-clearance industries.
Experience: http://www.experience.com . Experience, acquired by Symplicity in June 2014, is a good resource for tapping into the resource of young adults who desire to learn from the experience of others. The site works for finding people for internships.
Tip
Instead of using Google, Yahoo, or Bing for a job search, try Juju.com. It’s not a job board; rather, it is a job search engine that will make a job search much easier.
FlexJobs: http://www.flexjobs.com . FlexJobs offers part-time, flex-time, and freelance jobs, with an emphasis on people looking to telecommute some, or all, of the time. Most jobs are US-based, with a handful going to people located in Canada, Europe, and Australia.
GetHired.com: http://www.gethired.com . What’s unique about GetHired.com is that once you have identified a list of applicants you want to interview, you can set aside time in your schedule and the site will invite the candidates on your behalf to meet with you in person, on the telephone, or via their embedded video-conferencing system to conduct a virtual interview.
Glassdoor: http://www.glassdoor.com . Glassdoor is a free jobs and career community. What sets it apart from other job-placement sites is the vast array of information it offers on specific companies and specific jobs, from company reviews, to anonymous actual salaries, to sample interview questions. Visit the site for job descriptions (export manager or export compliance manager, for example) and to determine the going rate on salaries for positions you need to fill.
Indeed: http://www.indeed.com . Indeed is fast, and that’s the best part about it. It helps people get jobs and companies to advertise those jobs, so it’s a good place to shop around. With more than 180 million unique visitors per month, Indeed is available in more than fifty countries and twenty-eight languages.
Internships.com: http://www.internships.com . Internships.com , a Chegg service, is an internship marketplace for students, employers and higher education institutions. The site enables students, employers and educators to optimize internship opportunities.
LinkUp: http://www.linkup.com . LinkUp, owned and operated by JobDig, does things differently. The site connects job seekers to jobs directly at employers’ Web sites. That’s the twist. Its international reach outside of the United States only goes so far as Canada and the United Kingdom as of this writing. The fees need to be checked.
ManpowerGroup: http://www.manpowergroup.com . ManpowerGroup is a workforce-solution company operating in eighty countries and territories. Whether your needs are local or global, Manpower can help you find talent.
Monster.com: http://www.monster.com . Monster is a global online employment resource for people seeking jobs and companies needing great people.
SimplyHired: http://www.simplyhired.com . SimplyHired is an online marketplace serving 30 million people a month and thousands of companies across twenty-four countries. Its unique value proposition is this: it operates job-search engines in twenty-four countries and twelve languages, reaching job seekers on the web, social networks, mobile devices, e-mail, and other partner sites such as Mashable, Bloomberg Businessweek, and LinkedIn.
StartUpHire: http://www.startuphire.com . StartUpHire is a job search engine that recruits talent for promising emerging growth companies. Its focus is on start-up companies because they are the most difficult to identify for job seekers. If you are in this boat, give the site a look.
The Ladders: http://www.theladders.com . The Ladders focuses on career-driven professionals with salaries of $40K and up. Basic membership is free for job seekers previewing job titles only, with premium membership running $25 per month for access to everything on the job search site.
USAjobs: http://www.usajobs.org . USAjobs is a not-for-profit public service organization that matches job candidates with employers. It’s a free web-based job board enabling federal job seekers access to thousands of opportunities across hundreds of federal agencies and organizations.
Vault: http://www.vault.com . Vault is a high-potential online job marketplace. The site is particularly good for insider information on what it’s really like to work in a company, industry, or profession.
Schools and Universities
Many universities make it easy for US employers to hire students. Some schools even seek out companies that are more amenable to sponsoring overseas hires. Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, for instance, has an international advisor to guide US employers on hiring international students (see http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/cmc/global ). The school itself helps facilitate employment authorization. In certain circumstances, an immigration attorney might be required.
It can be very beneficial to hire a student from an overseas market where you are considering exporting to. International students are eager to learn, relish the notion of working with an American firm, and are on the local ground, reporting firsthand to you on what market conditions are like. So if you are about to export to China, for example, look for Chinese students studying in your country (knowing they will return home after they complete their studies) with a worldly mind, fluency in both Chinese and English, and an understanding of the Chinese culture.
Tip
There are many other places to find good people. Check with peer-to-peer organizations (i.e., the Entrepreneurs’ Organization, Vistage, and the Women Presidents’ Organization); associations (i.e., The International Trade Association of Greater Chicago, the Small Business Exporter’s Association (SBEA), and the American Association of Exporters and Importers [AAEI]); universities (you can stay connected as an alum); and online community forums (banks, small businesses, and start-ups).
When to Hire; When to Outsource
How do you decide when to hire employees and when to hire contractors? Positions formerly reserved for in-house employees , such as those of a web developer, a designer, or a HR specialist, can often be done faster and more effectively with qualified remote contractors. If the following conditions don’t apply, it might be good to use a contract worker to fill a position:
Do you need a person to do the work every day?
Do you have funding to support what needs to be done every day over a long period of time?
Are you willing to pay the benefits (paid vacation, sick time, training and healthcare, for example) that come with hiring a full-time employee? Payroll and social security taxes also represent a significant expense. Watch out for hidden costs that can impact a business in a negative way.
Do you need the person to be physically in the office to get the work done?
Do you need to control the work being done?
If you answered “no” to all of the above questions, hiring contractors is your short-term solution. One of the single biggest advantages for utilizing contract help is that your company is not responsible for paying benefits to the contractor. Second to that is the added flexibility of having to hire staff only when you need them. Third is that you are changing the rules of competition. Big caution: Never treat a contractor like an employee. Misclassification of an individual as an independent contractor may have a number of costly legal consequences. Consult with your HR manager and international attorney for guidance. You don’t want to mess with the law.
Caution
Be sure to thoroughly review the key provisions in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act designed to ensure that Americans have access to quality, affordable health insurance. “Depending on whether you are self-employed, an employer with fewer than 25 employees, an employer with fewer than 50 employees, or an employer with 50 or more employees, different provisions of the Affordable Care Act may apply to you.” iii Depending on the size of your organization, you may find out it is more advantageous to hire contractors vs. more employees. ObamaCare Small Business Facts can be helpful to review as well. iv
In hiring independent contractors, set expectations right at the beginning of the project. You don’t want anyone wondering if the work they are performing is adequate or not. In addition to an initial e-mail contact, consider setting up a phone appointment to further discuss your needs. This is the best way to build trust and negotiate fair compensation. If the contractor is located in another country, consider using Skype ( http://www.skype.com ) or Google+ ( http://www.plus.google.com ) to keep the costs down while you communicate.
Check in periodically with the contractor to make sure the work gets done and that it meets your expectations and is performed on time and within budget. You might set up daily, weekly, or monthly check-in points to ensure things are on track. Global projects can be coordinated on the move with your digital device, with everything stored in one place through such trusted online repositories as: Google Drive ( http://www.drive.google.com ), DropBox ( http://www.dropbox.com ), SugarSync ( http://www.sugarsync.com ), Box ( http://www.box.com ), and OneDrive ( http://www.onedrive.live.com ).
The Hiring Plan
What’s the purpose of a good hiring plan ? It makes the hiring and training process much easier and less stressful for all concerned. First thing’s first: decide on who will be responsible for hiring and then consider these issues:
What kind of people do you want to hire? Tie that in to your company’s value, vision, and goals—the equivalent of company culture.
What can you afford?
What is your timeline?
Where will you find the candidates?
How will you vet, choose, and notify candidates?
How will you make the hiring of the person official (by contract, for example)?
How will you measure results?
Who will be responsible for getting employees on board, training, and professional development (this applies more to full-time employees)?
Be specific about the skills and expertise you need from people when you interview them, and fill out a profile of the work you want done when you hire someone. Your goal is to enhance personal growth and development for each and every person you bring on board and to make each new hire feel like a stakeholder in the business. That can be accomplished by giving new hires your time, treating them with respect and care, and making sure they are an integral part of the decision-making processes that affect their job. That’s the best-kept secret to keeping employees and contractors motivated and happy and moving toward reaching unprecedented success with your export business.
Tip
Delegate as much work as possible to others who can do it better than you. This will make your business life easier and your employees and independent contractors happy because you put trust and faith in their abilities. Just don’t overburden them. If you stay in constant contact, you will learn more quickly about little bumps in the road, and together you can fix them as they arise. Give employees the tools and resources to get a job done and then get out of the way so they can do it.
Outsourcing HR: Focus on Your Core Competencies
Is your export company growing so fast that the notion of handling your own HR initiatives is overwhelming to you? You’ll have to devote a large portion of your resources for the purpose of maintaining records, nurturing employees, improving employee performance, HR management (hiring and firing), administering employee benefits, training new staff, and so forth. Or will you? You could consider outsourcing the entire HR process to an independent firm. There are several online; you just need to conduct a search to find a firm that is a good match for your organization. The reason to outsource HR is to alleviate the burden associated with the administrative cost and enable you to focus on your core competencies.
I don’t recommend this route for business owners who are just starting to export because it’s good to have direct involvement in the nitty-gritty detail of hiring the right human capital for your business. This gets back to getting the right people on the export bus. If you are a $10 million-plus business and are currently generating a portion of your revenue from overseas exports and expanding rapidly, perhaps now might be a good time to consider outsourcing the global HR process to better enable you to think more strategically. Use your own best case study for hiring to gauge whether the outsourcer is a good fit for your needs and the best model for going forward.
Summary
While it takes a strong global leader and enthusiastic teamwork to achieve export success, true business victory cannot be obtained without an online social presence. After all, you want the world to find you, because without customers, there is no business. We’re on the export bus, so now we need to position ourselves for online success. Are you with me? If so, then turn the page!
Notes
“Good to Great,” Jim Collins, Jim Collins Web site, published in Fast Company, last modified October 2001, http://www.jimcollins.com/article_topics/articles/good-to-great.html .
“Twelve Tactics for Creating Powerful Global Leadership Connections,” ImportExport.About.com, accessed February 7, 2016, http://importexport.about.com/od/GlobalResourceCenter/fl/Twelve-Tactics-for-Creating-Powerful-Global-Leadership-Connections.htm .
. “Health Care: Key Provisions of the Affordable Care Act,” SBA.gov, accessed October 23, 2013, http://www.sba.gov/healthcare .
“ObamaCare Small Busines Facts, accessed February 7, 2016, http://obamacarefacts.com/obamacare-small-business/ .