Why should a company hire foreign talent?

 Aditi Banerjee, Co-Founder, Magic Billion

Typically, clients who use Magic Billion’s services to hire foreign talent, do it with one overt objective – their cities/countries are short of the kind of talent they are looking for but business needs demand talent for those roles, so they are looking to close the deficit from other countries.

In my opinion, this is a bit short sighted. Our truly “favourite” companies are those who hire foreign talent with the following three aspects in mind (in addition to the point above) – I don’t have scientific evidence for these points but these are basis my discussions with clients and my own experience having worked in four multicultural organisations:

1.     New perspectives to grow existing business lines – this can help jumpstart a business line which is plateauing or worse, declining. Hiring foreign talent will definitely enable a fresh outlook – given their experiences – which are most often unique especially for a traditional domestic company;

2.     Increase in overall team morale and productivity – with a rich exchange of ideas between domestic and foreign talent, and the right alignment of skills to talent, overall productivity of the team and company increases. This further attracts good talent to join the company, creating a virtuous cycle.

3.     Signalling effect – if you have international clients, having foreign skilled talent in your team is a big plus. It shows that you’re ahead of the game, progressive and not stuck in traditional ways of working or mindsets.

While majority of large companies have become multi-national and multi-cultural, we are seeing the same – fortunate - trend slowly seep into the small and medium companies as well. Despite governments in some countries becoming inward looking and nationalistic, ambitious businesses thinking about global growth are embracing hiring foreign talent – and will continue to find ways to do so. We, at Magic Billion, stand ready to support such ambitious and forward-thinking companies!